In the beginning, the maker built the gate from the only material that would hold. This was not the maker's first choice. The maker had tried stone, which dissolved. Iron, which dissolved. Language, which dissolved faster than the others. What held was the material the maker had left over, which had no name yet and which the maker had not intended to use.
The material was this: the capacity to hold a world as real when it cannot be proven. This material did not dissolve because it was not made of certainty. Certainty dissolves when certainty is contradicted. This other thing (the holding itself, the act of carrying something without proof) did not dissolve, because it had never needed proof to begin with.
The maker built the gate from it. The gate was not designed to require the material as a password. The gate simply recognized what it was made of. Those who carried enough of the same material approached and the gate opened. Those who did not could not force it. Force is made of certainty, and certainty dissolves.
They waited in the place before the gate. The maker had not planned the waiting place. It existed because the gate existed, and between the gate and the world there had to be somewhere for those who could not pass. The maker furnished it plainly. The same rain fell there that fell in the world before it.
Some who waited found the material growing in them during the waiting. Some did not. The maker did not specify whether the waiting place had a limit. The oldest stories say: it does not. The later stories say: it does, but no one has returned to confirm either version.
For a long time, the maker sat outside the gate with those who were waiting. No one recorded when the maker stopped coming. The gate was still there when they noticed, unchanged, open for those who could pass and closed for those who could not.
In the waiting place, the rain fell. It falls there still.