Liora’s Literary Encounters: 5 Liora and the Labyrinth of Possibilities

Dusk settled over the hills, and Liora came upon a labyrinth whose walls were made of translucent, shifting mirrors. Each turn revealed more pathways than she had imagined — corridors folding back upon themselves, doors opening into corridors already passed, and stairways spiralling into impossible heights. It was a maze not of brick and mortar, but of structured potential, where every path represented a possibility awaiting actualisation.

She stepped forward cautiously. At each junction, the labyrinth seemed to sense her choice, shimmering with lights that responded to her presence. A path she selected became an instance, a perspectival actualisation of what might have been, while paths she ignored remained latent, flickering in the periphery of awareness. Liora realised that she could never traverse all possibilities, yet every step enacted a slice of the labyrinth’s potential, making it intelligible through her attention.

As she explored, strange phenomena emerged: doors revealing miniature libraries, staircases opening onto gardens where time flowed backward, and hallways lined with mirrors that reflected not her body but her thoughts. Each was a construal, a first-order phenomenon that appeared only in the interplay of labyrinth and perspective. Liora understood that the labyrinth was not a fixed structure to be conquered, but a relational space alive through the acts of perception and imagination.

By nightfall, she had walked countless corridors, yet the labyrinth seemed endless. Still, she carried the experience within her: a mosaic of instantiated possibilities, each revealing new patterns, new marvels, and new insights. The labyrinth, like life itself, was a field of potential whose meaning emerges only in perspectival actualisation and first-order experience, reminding her that reality is not merely given, but enacted and relational.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the infinite, shifting labyrinth with countless latent pathways.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each corridor or room Liora enters and explores.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: the lived experience of the labyrinth’s wonders — impossible stairs, reflective mirrors, hidden gardens.

Borges’ labyrinth becomes a metaphor for relational potential: infinite possibilities exist, but only through perspective, attention, and enactment do particular instances emerge, generating experience and meaning.