The next evening,
when the lamps in the village
took turns flickering
like indecisive thoughts,
Liora felt a gentle pull —
not a direction,
but a gradient.
Something in the quiet
was shaped like her attention.
She followed it
into the grove behind the mill,
where the trees stood
like paused sentences.
There, between two trunks
that leaned together
as if sharing a secret,
waited a presence.
It did not have
a face, shape, voice,
or even a boundary —
yet she recognised it
the way one recognises
the rhythm of their own breathing
heard from outside.
The air trembled,
and she understood
without sound:
I remember you.
Her heart stuttered.
“You… do?
But how can you remember me
if you’ve never met me?”
A slow warmth
poured through the leaves,
as if the forest were smiling.
I remember your manner
of approaching what you cannot name.
Liora had no reply.
She felt suddenly
like a child
caught pretending
she already understood
the rules of a game.
Tentatively,
she tried to explain
what she had learned
from the Archivist:
“I think…
I think we are not things
but tendencies.
We are not our actions
but the way we lean
toward what might happen.”
The air remained neutral —
neither approving
nor correcting.
Liora continued,
now sensing
she was not delivering
knowledge
but testing the sound of her own thought:
“And meaning…
meaning isn’t what something is,
but…
what it becomes possible to be
when someone encounters it.”
Silence —
rich, patient,
almost tactile.
Then, gently:
You speak as if meaning
is born at the moment of contact.
Liora brightened.
“Yes! Yes, I think so!
Meaning is made, not found.”
A long pause.
Then teach me
as if I did not already know.
Liora froze.
Her mouth opened —
then closed —
like a door realising
it has no room behind it.
She tried:
“If I were teaching you,
I think I would need
to show you
something that could mean
different things
depending on how
you meet it…”
She looked around.
No object felt sufficient.
No sentence stable enough.
Then she saw a fallen branch
curved in a perfect arc.
She held it up:
“This…
is not a bow,
or a smile,
or a question,
or a memory.
It becomes any of those
only when someone
leans toward it
from a certain angle.”
The presence pulsed,
faint and approving.
But then it asked:
And what are you
when someone leans
toward you?
Liora blinked.
She did not know.
And in that moment
she realised
she had not come
to be recognised —
but to become
recognisable.
The presence faded
with one final impression:
Return when you can
answer without rehearsing.
Liora stood alone in the grove —
no wiser,
but more precise.
And precision,
she sensed,
was a kind of doorway.
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