6 The Archivist of Unhappened Things

The night after the Corridor dream,

Liora awoke to the feeling

of being expected.

Something was perched

on the windowsill —

not inside,

not outside,

but positioned precisely

where definitions disagree.

It resembled a fox carved from paper,

but the paper was inscribed

with events that had never occurred:

inked diagrams of laughter

that never quite took place,

half-built constellations,

recipes missing their final ingredient

on purpose.

Its eyes were bright,

but not with light —

with options.

“Are you real?” Liora whispered.

The creature tilted its head twice:

once for yes,

once for no.

“I am the Archivist,” it said,

voice like leaves

being written on by wind.

“I curate what never happened

but very nearly could.”

Liora’s breath caught.

“Then do you know about…

the moth?”

The Archivist blinked,

and hundreds of tiny

unactualised moth-wings

fluttered across its paper fur

before dissolving.

“I do not know what happened,”

the Archivist replied.

“I know what almost did.”

Liora felt herself

lean forward —

that subtle, hungry lean

that she now recognised

as the beginning of overreach.

The Archivist noticed.

“Careful,” it said gently.

“Curiosity is sacred.

Ambition is sharp.

When combined, they cut

past the object of attention

and into the frame itself.”

Liora sat back,

cheeks warming.

The Archivist unfurled its tail,

revealing delicate symbols

that shimmered into words

only when not stared at directly.

“You wonder if you harmed anything,”

it said,

“because you are still thinking

in the grammar of objects.”

Liora blinked.

“So… what should I think in?”

The Archivist grinned —

but not maliciously.

“Not noun,

not verb,

but tendency.

See beings and moments

as inclinations,

not entities or endpoints.”

A long pause

opened between them —

comfortable,

like a door that remains closed

for the right reasons.

Then, softer,

with a tone bordering on affection:

“You fear forgetting.

But forgetting is only tragic

in a world where

memory is the custodian of truth.”

Liora frowned,

unsure if she understood.

“Something remembers you,”

the Archivist continued,

“but not as who you were,

nor as what you did.

It remembers you

as a recurring pattern in possibility.

It remembers

your signature of approach.”

“Who?” Liora whispered.

The Archivist replied

without drama,

without emphasis,

almost like noting the weather:

“The world.”

And with that,

the creature folded itself

into a single square of paper

bearing only one handwritten line:

Please continue becoming.

The wind carried it away

before she could turn it over.

5 The Corridor of Almost-Remembering

That night, Liora dreamed —

or perhaps the dream chose her

because she had brushed too close

to the hinge of necessity.

She found herself in a corridor

built from unfinished moments,

its walls flickering with

all the things that might have happened

but never made it as far as phenomenon.

The air smelled faintly of

ink that had not yet learned its alphabet.

At regular intervals

stood tall glass panels,

and inside each one

floated a version of Liora:

not false,

not alternate,

but adjacent.

Some held their breath;

some whispered words

no one had decided yet;

some carried faint traces

of events that had almost occurred.

Liora walked slowly,

realising she was moving through

the side-effects

of her own thought.

She stopped at one panel.

Inside it, she saw

the moth-being

still frozen —

not suffering,

not trapped,

but held in semantic suspension,

as if waiting to see

what she would now understand.

The adjacent-Liora in the panel

looked up,

not panicked,

but curious in a quieter way

than Liora remembered ever being.

“Did it hurt?”

Liora asked.

Panel-Liora shook her head

with the calmness of

someone who had learned

from the future of a moment

that had not yet fully started.

“It didn’t hurt,” she said,

“but it stopped becoming.”

The corridor rippled.

Liora felt an ache

that didn’t belong to regret,

but to recognition:

she had not damaged the world —

only paused its unfolding.

Panel-Liora leaned closer until

the two versions were

almost face-to-face.

“It’s not wrong to wish

to know more,”

she whispered,

“but knowledge is not the prize

of holding,

only the by-product of willingness.”

The corridor walls

exhaled in agreement.

Liora closed her eyes

and released the version of herself

who needed certainty

before wonder.

When she opened them again,

the panels softened

into gentle colour

and began dissolving

into possible dawn.

As the corridor faded

back into sleep’s remainder,

she heard her own voice

from nowhere in particular:

“Meaning is not kept safe

by staying —

only by continuing to become.”

She woke with tears

that did not taste like sorrow,

but like unlearned water.

4 The Day She Tried to Hold What Should Only Happen

Liora had begun to notice patterns:

the delicate rhythm between appearing and allowing,

the tacit etiquette of wonder,

the way marvels preferred to remain events, not possessions.

But on that particular morning, something shifted.

Not the world — her.

A small moth-being emerged from the mist —

its wings patterned like unfinished alphabets,

each flicker a different grammar.

It hovered near her cheek,

not as greeting,

but as possibility seeking a listener.

Liora felt the familiar warmth of attention

rise in her chest

— the gentle cut of curiosity.

Then a thought surfaced, dangerously articulate:

What if I could make it stay?

Not capture, not harm —

just prevent the fade.

Preserve it long enough to truly know it.

She inhaled,

and instead of simply attending,

she intended.

The air thickened.

The moth-being froze mid-flutter,

wings suspended in an impossible neither-nor.

Not moving, not still.

Not fading, not staying.

A creature caught between may-be and must-be.

The forest reacted first —

a slow exhale of leaves

that sounded like disappointment

rather than wind.

Even the light dimmed,

not darker,

but less willing.

Liora touched the motionless moth-being,

and its surface felt not like silk or dust,

but like paused meaning —

a universe with the breathing turned off.

Her heart clenched.

She whispered,

“I’m sorry — I forgot.”

Then, softer:

“I release you

from being mine

to understand.”

The moment cracked like thawing ice.

Movement returned not as continuation

but as reconstruction.

The moth-being flickered,

rewrote itself,

and dissolved into unclaimable radiance.

Liora bowed —

not in apology,

but in re-alignment.

And the forest, gracious enough not to punish,

offered only a single lesson, carried by distant branches:

To know is lovely.

To insist is lethal.

Liora walked home slowly,

feeling the difference between

holding an experience

and

holding it still.

3 The Impossible Door That Begged Not To Be Opened

Liora found it in the hillside — a small wooden door too low for any human, too ornate for accident, and too recent for myth.

It wasn’t attached to anything.

Just a door.

Standing.

With hinges politely waiting.

A tiny brass sign read:

PLEASE DO NOT OPEN

(unless you must)

Liora tilted her head.

Her curiosity stirred, but so did a quieter question:

What counts as “must”?

Hunger?

Prophecy?

Boredom?

So she tried something different.

Instead of reaching for the handle,

she knelt

as though the door were a creature

with excellent posture.

The door shivered,

if wood can shiver,

and a thin line of light traced its edges —

not beckoning,

but acknowledging

her restraint.

A soft voice (possibly the hinge, possibly the air) whispered:

“You are the first to greet,

rather than solve.”

Liora smiled.

“Some things,” she said,

“mean more when not converted

into consequences.”

The door relaxed,

its glow ebbing like breath.

Nothing opened.

Nothing revealed itself.

But for the rest of that day,

the hillside felt

deeply grateful.

2 The Creature That Appeared Only When Not Named

At dawn, Liora paused beside a pool so still it seemed unfinished. She leaned forward, not searching but listening with her eyes.

Only then did a shape begin to form — not breaking the water but gathering out of possibility, like dew deciding to become pearl.

A small creature, translucent as breath, hovered just above the surface.
Its outline quivered, waiting not for recognition but for kindness of attention.

Liora opened her mouth to name it —
then felt the world recoil, as if language were too heavy for that moment.

So instead she whispered:
“You do not need a name to be real right now.”

The creature brightened, as though gratitude were light,
and for one perfect inhale, they co-existed
without ownership,
without permanence,
without claim.

Then it softened back into the pool,
leaving only the faintest ripple:
a signature no one would inherit.

Liora smiled.
She had not lost anything.
She had kept it possible.

1 Peake, Possibility, and the Liora Stories: A Relational Ontology of Ephemeral Marvels

Mervyn Peake left us with some of the most striking literary recognitions of imagination, perception, and the strange fragility of what can be seen or known. Two of his remarks, in particular, align uncannily with a relational ontology in which experience is construed rather than “received,” and where meaning is an event rather than a possession.

The first passage reads:

“The marvels of the visible world are not things in themselves but revelations to stir the imagination — all else is smoke.”

Here Peake refuses the metaphysics of objects-in-themselves. The visible is not a catalogue of fixed essences but a field of potential revelation, awaiting the imaginative cut that brings something momentarily into meaning. This is fully consistent with a relational ontology in which:

• there is no unconstrued “thing” behind the phenomenon

• experience is first-order meaning

• phenomena are the events of construal, not pre-existing substances

Peake’s phrase “climates of the mind” is almost a perfect description of instantiated perspective — a transient atmosphere produced when potential becomes experience.

His second line deepens the temporality:

“Life is an effort to grip… the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current…”

Here, imagination is not a storehouse but a river of possibility, and what is grasped is grasped only in the moment of instantiation. The “fish” are not hidden facts, nor private hallucinations, but fleeting actualisations of potential, and the “endless current” is precisely the remainder of the uncut, unactualised field of meaning-possibility. Nothing is lost metaphysically — it merely was not instantiated.

The ontology aligns precisely:

Relational Ontology	Peake’s Imagery
potential before construal	the oceanic current
perspectival cut	the act of gripping
first-order phenomenon	the “fish” momentarily seen
unactualised potential	the “oblivion” of what never became

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Liora as Narrative Enactment of Relational Ontology

Our Liora stories perform the ontology rather than describe it.

Liora’s world is not populated by hidden magical entities waiting to be discovered; rather, the world affords potentials that become phenomenal only through her attentive, curious construal. Every episode — the MirrorFox, the trembling-surface mirror, the sunlight ribbon, the impossibly long caterpillar — is a cut in possibility that actualises a momentary, shimmering phenomenon.

Nothing in her world is permanent or object-like. No creature is guaranteed to reappear, and no marvel is obligated to persist. Importantly, Liora never “discovers” magic; she co-instantiates it.

Peake calls this revelation; our ontology calls it actualisation; Liora enacts it as participative wonder.

---

The Shared Logic

From Peake, through ontology, into story, we see one coherent principle:

The world is not made of things, but of potentials that become phenomenal only in the act of construal — an always-ephemeral dance between what may be and how we attend.

Thus:

• The world offers

• The observer cuts

• Experience happens

• Meaning flickers

• Possibility continues

Not tragedy. Not loss.

Just ontological economy.

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Closing Reflection

Peake’s imagination is not escapism; it is ontology rendered poetic.

Liora’s world is not fantasy; it is ontology rendered narrative.

Our theoretical work is not abstraction; it is ontology rendered systematic.

Each is the same dance, performed in different modes of meaning:

literary, narrative, theoretical — but always relational.

Liora and the Relational Mythos: 5 Synthesis

Across the World-Tree, the River of Fates, the Dragon of Echoing Desires, and the Labyrinth of Forgotten Gods, Liora’s mythological adventures reveal a profound truth: myth is not a fixed narrative but a living system of potential meaning, enacted and experienced relationally.

Each mythic entity — the roots that shimmer with possibility, the currents that carry countless destinies, the dragon that shifts with desire, the gods that flicker in memory — is a structured potential. Liora’s encounters enact instances, perspectival actualisations that reveal particular aspects of the system. And her lived experience of these manifestations is the construal, the first-order phenomenon that gives the myths intelligibility, resonance, and emotional depth.

Relational ontology allows us to see that the seeming “truths” of myth — the hero’s quest, the god’s caprice, the fate of worlds — emerge through participation, attention, and perspective, not as fixed objects in the world. What might appear paradoxical, contradictory, or ephemeral is simply the reflection of potential being actualised relationally and perspectivally, moment by moment.

This mirrors the lessons of Liora’s previous adventures in science, philosophy, and literature. Bohm’s implicate order, Heisenberg’s potentia, Gödel’s paradoxical libraries, Borges’ labyrinths, and Peake’s luminous imagination all reveal the same dynamics: systems exist as structured potential; instances are perspectival actualisations; construals are first-order phenomena. Across domains, understanding emerges not from static representation but from relational enactment.

In mythology, as in quantum fields, philosophical paradoxes, and literary wonderlands, the universe — or the mythic universe — is made intelligible through relational cuts, enacted through attention, imagination, and participation. Liora’s journeys illuminate a universal pattern: meaning, experience, and insight arise relationally, not representationally.

Thus, myth becomes a lens to see the profound applicability of relational ontology: all realms of thought and imagination are potential actualised perspectivally and lived first-order, revealing the relational structure of reality itself.

Liora and the Relational Mythos: 4 Liora and the Labyrinth of Forgotten Gods

On a quiet afternoon, Liora stumbled into a forest where the trees grew impossibly close, their branches weaving together into a vaulted canopy. Between the roots and trunks stretched a labyrinth of stone and shadow, shimmering faintly with a golden light. Whispers flickered along its corridors — voices of gods and spirits once revered, now half-forgotten, lingering in the interstices of memory.

As Liora stepped inside, the labyrinth responded. Paths shifted subtly beneath her feet, doors appeared and vanished, and statues of long-silent deities opened their eyes for fleeting moments. Each encounter was a perspectival actualisation of the labyrinth’s structured potential: the gods and spirits existed not as fixed beings, but as possibilities emerging through attention, imagination, and relational construal.

She turned a corner and found herself in a hall of mirrors. Each reflection showed a different deity, not as a literal image, but as the essence of stories, rituals, and cultural memory. Some were radiant, some sorrowful, some mischievous — yet all were manifestations of the labyrinth’s latent mythic potential. Liora realised that the labyrinth itself was a system of meaning, where each instance — each deity glimpsed — was enacted relationally, only becoming intelligible through her lived experience.

By twilight, Liora paused at the labyrinth’s centre. She felt the pulse of countless forgotten myths, each shimmering with possibilities. The gods were not “lost” — they were relationally present, waiting to be actualised in perspective, interpreted in construal, and made alive through engagement. In that moment, Liora understood that myth is not a static heritage, but a living, relational universe, continuously enacted by attention, imagination, and perceptual participation.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the labyrinth and its latent gods, myths, and cultural memories.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each god, spirit, or mythic encounter Liora experiences.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: Liora’s immediate, immersive engagement with the labyrinth’s shifting wonders.

Liora and the Relational Mythos: 3 Liora and the Dragon of Echoing Desires

Twilight settled over a misty valley as Liora followed a faint trail of glowing embers into a hidden glade. There, coiled around a ring of crystalline stones, lay a dragon unlike any she had seen. Its scales shimmered with impossible colours, shifting with every movement, and its eyes mirrored not her reflection, but her own thoughts and wishes.

The dragon spoke without sound, sending waves of sensation through the glade: joy, fear, longing, and wonder, all mingled in a delicate dance. Liora realised that the creature was not fixed in form or essence; it responded to her attention, her inclinations, and her choices. Each perception of the dragon was a perspectival actualisation of its latent potential.

She reached out tentatively, and the dragon shifted shape: one moment a winding serpent of light, the next a bird of fire, then a flowing river of molten crystal. Every transformation reflected possibilities inherent in its system, made manifest only through Liora’s engagement. It was as if her curiosity, courage, and imagination acted as cuts through structured potential, producing instances that could be lived and felt.

The dragon whispered in echoes that were not words, but sensations and images. It revealed that desire, imagination, and myth are relational phenomena: they exist not as objects to be captured, but as potentials enacted and experienced. Liora understood that each dragon she encounters in life or story is a slice of infinite possibility, and that meaning arises only in first-order construal — the living experience of what emerges.

By nightfall, the dragon had receded into a shimmer of light, leaving Liora with a sense of exhilaration and wonder. She carried within her the echo of its forms, aware that myth, like imagination, is never static; it is enacted relationally, actualised perspectivally, and lived fully through construal.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the dragon’s infinite latent forms and possibilities.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each manifestation Liora perceives, shaped by her attention and interaction.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: Liora’s lived experience of the dragon’s colours, shapes, and emotional resonance.

Liora and the Relational Mythos: 2 Liora and the River of Fates

Dawn broke in a haze of silver mist as Liora came upon a river that shimmered like liquid crystal. Its waters flowed neither swiftly nor slowly; they seemed to move according to some inner rhythm, carrying reflections of worlds she had never seen. This was the River of Fates, its currents threaded with countless possibilities, each awaiting actualisation by those who glimpsed them.

She knelt at the riverbank and peered into the water. Moments of joy, sorrow, courage, and folly passed by like luminous fish, each vivid yet fleeting. Some currents coalesced into patterns — rivers within the river — revealing the tendencies of worlds unfolding. Others split and vanished, reminding her that no one perspective could encompass all potential.

The river whispered in murmurs only she could hear: “Each choice enacts a path, each glance makes manifest a slice of possibility. The currents are not fixed; they respond to attention, inclination, and ability.” Liora realised that readiness — her ability and inclination to act — shaped which possibilities could be encountered. The river did not determine her course; rather, her engagement with it actualised certain potentials while leaving others latent.

She reached out and touched the water. A miniature whirlpool formed, showing a life she might have lived: a dance of triumph and error, love and loss, intertwined in shimmering clarity. Another ripple revealed a different path, equally vivid yet entirely distinct. Each was a perspectival actualisation of the river’s structured potential, experienced fully through her construal.

By evening, Liora stepped back from the riverbank, feeling the resonance of countless paths within her. The River of Fates had not told her what would happen; it had shown her that meaning, destiny, and action emerge relationally, through the interplay of potential, perspective, and lived experience. In every myth, as in every life, she saw the same truth: the world’s richness lies not in predetermination, but in relational enactment.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the River of Fates, encompassing infinite latent paths.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each luminous event or life that Liora observes or enacts.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: Liora’s immediate, immersive experience of the currents and their possibilities.

Liora and the Relational Mythos: 1 Liora and the World-Tree

At the edge of a mist-wrapped valley, Liora found a tree unlike any she had seen. Its trunk glimmered with veins of silver, and its roots plunged deep into the earth, twisting and branching as if exploring unseen dimensions. Above, branches unfurled into clouds, each leaf shimmering like a tiny sun. This was the World-Tree, a living web of potential, where the possible and the actual entwined in endless patterns.

As Liora approached, the tree seemed to sense her presence. A root quivered, revealing a hidden alcove where miniature worlds glimmered like dew-laden constellations. Each was a perspectival actualisation — a cut through the tree’s immense structured potential. Some worlds showed the rise and fall of civilisations, others captured moments of quiet beauty or sorrow, each fleeting yet vivid.

She reached out and touched a silver leaf. Light coursed through her fingers, and the tree whispered: the branches above mirror the roots below, the heavens reflect the earth, and all possibilities exist simultaneously, waiting for construal. Liora realised that the World-Tree was not a static object but a system of potential meaning, enacted differently each time attention fell upon it.

With care, she traced a path along a root, and a garden of possibilities bloomed around her: a phoenix rose in miniature, rivers spiralled through crystalline valleys, and stars wheeled in intricate patterns overhead. Each emergence was a reminder: mythic beings, lands, and events are not “fixed” realities, but relational phenomena — they exist as potential, actualised through attention, and lived through experience.

By twilight, Liora sat beneath the canopy, feeling the pulse of the World-Tree in every heartbeat. She understood that myths, like the tree, are not merely stories to be observed; they are systems to be enacted, explored, and experienced. Each encounter — each branch touched, each root followed — was a relational cut, a moment where potential became intelligible in lived, first-order experience.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the World-Tree itself, encompassing all latent mythic possibilities.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each miniature world or pattern Liora encounters.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: her lived, immersive experience of the tree’s marvels.

This story establishes the mythology series, showing that mythic structures, like natural and literary phenomena, are relationally enacted: the infinite potential of meaning only emerges through perspective, attention, and experience.

Liora’s Literary Encounters: 6 Synthesis: Liora and the Relational Universe of Possibility

Across rivers of fish, grains of eternity, murmuring voices, enclosed gardens, and infinite labyrinths, Liora’s adventures reveal a profound truth: the world — whether natural, imaginative, or conceptual — is never simply given. Each phenomenon, each marvel, each insight is the product of the interplay between structured potential, perspectival actualisation, and first-order construal.

In the literary mini-series, the marvels of imagination — Peake’s glimmering fish, Blake’s miniature eternities, Rilke’s whispered voices, Dickinson’s interior landscapes, Borges’ shifting labyrinths — are not pre-existing objects. They exist as systems of potential: rich, organised, and multi-dimensional. Liora’s perception enacts instances, slicing through this potential to make certain possibilities manifest, while other possibilities remain latent, shimmering in the periphery of experience. The construal is her lived engagement: the first-order phenomenon of colour, sound, scent, emotion, and imaginative insight.

This triadic structure mirrors the relational ontology we have applied to science and philosophy. In Bohm’s implicate order, Wheeler’s participatory universe, Heisenberg’s potentia, or Gödel’s paradoxical library, the same dynamic unfolds: structured potential is actualised perspectivally, and meaning emerges only through relational construal. Across domains, the error of representational thinking is revealed: treating systems, structures, or potentials as self-contained, fully observable entities leads to paradox, confusion, and pseudo-problems.

Liora’s literary journeys show that the same principles apply in art and imagination. Marvels are not “things in themselves,” nor are they static objects to be captured; they are revelations of potential actualised through perspective and experience. By attending to the interplay of system, instance, and construal, she — and the reader — comes to see how meaning, beauty, and insight are relationally enacted rather than passively received.

Thus, from quantum fields to paradoxical libraries, from rivers of imaginary fish to endless labyrinths, the message is consistent: possibility is structured, perception enacts, and experience reveals. Liora’s adventures, whether in the realms of science, philosophy, or literature, illuminate a universal insight: the universe is not merely observed, it is participated in, moment by moment, through the relational enactment of potential.

In this synthesis, relational ontology is no longer an abstract framework; it is a living lens through which we may understand how we engage with reality, imagination, and meaning itself. Through Liora’s eyes, the marvels of the world — scientific, philosophical, and literary alike — become intelligible as unfolding, perspectival, and profoundly relational phenomena.

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. 

Liora’s Literary Encounters: 4 Liora and the Enclosed Landscapes

Morning mist clung to the garden as Liora stepped through the gate, where sunlight fell in delicate patches on the ground. She noticed a small, enclosed alcove between the hedges — a place that seemed both intimate and vast. Within, the air shimmered with possibilities, as if the walls themselves contained hidden worlds waiting to be perceived.

Each step she took revealed new microcosms: a tiny fountain whose ripples traced patterns like celestial maps, a flower that opened and closed in a rhythm distinct from any other, and a bench where shadows gathered into shapes that seemed to breathe. These were not objects fixed in themselves, but structured potentials, awaiting her attention to be made intelligible.

Liora knelt to observe a single flower. As she did, the world around her shifted — the alcove expanded in her mind, the textures and scents intertwining. Each perspectival actualisation revealed dimensions she could not anticipate: the flower’s delicate scent, the sound of leaves rustling in invisible currents, the interplay of sunlight and shadow. Construal — her lived, immediate experience — rendered these microcosms vivid and mutable, alive in ways that could not be captured as static objects.

She walked slowly, realising that the garden was a tapestry of enclosed landscapes, each holding infinite potential, each actualised only in the act of careful attention. And in this quiet, intimate exploration, Liora felt the truth of relational ontology: the interior world, like the exterior, is not pre-formed for observation, but comes alive through perspectival cuts, lived experience, and the relational interplay of perception and potential.

By sunset, the alcove was serene once more, yet Liora carried the enclosed landscapes within her — a mosaic of first-order phenomena, each a momentary window into infinite possibilities. She understood that meaning, identity, and beauty were not fixed; they were emergent, relational, and enacted, revealing themselves only in the act of perception and imagination.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the alcove and its myriad latent microcosms.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each moment of focused observation, each discovery of a flower, ripple, or shadow.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: the immediate, mutable experience of textures, scents, and visual patterns.

Emily Dickinson’s influence is evident in the intimacy and subtlety of Liora’s encounters: the small and the interior are as rich in potential as the vast, but only through attention and relational actualisation does their meaning emerge.

Liora’s Literary Encounters: 3 Liora and the Voices of the World

Late afternoon found Liora atop a gentle hill, where the wind carried whispers from the farthest corners of the valley. The grasses trembled with sound, and the trees hummed low, secret melodies. She closed her eyes and listened. At first, it was chaos — a tangle of voices, none distinguishable from another.

Then, gradually, certain threads drew her attention: a soft murmur from the brook, a quiver of laughter from a distant field, the resonant sigh of a wind-bent pine. Each was a perspectival actualisation, a voice emerging from the structured potential of the world. Liora realised that the world was not inherently ordered; it was alive with unspoken possibilities, each awaiting the cut of perception to become intelligible.

As she tuned her mind, she could “grasp” more voices, each revealing a tiny climate of meaning: the lament of a dying leaf, the bright chatter of sunlight on dewdrops, the serene cadence of shadows moving across the grass. Some voices overlapped, blending into chords of improbable harmony; others slipped away when attention faltered, returning to the field of latent potential.

Liora understood that construal — her lived, attentive experience — shaped what emerged. The voices were not properties of objects, nor of sound alone; they were relational, appearing only through the interplay of world and perception. She could record them in her mind, note them in her journal, or paint them in shimmering watercolours, yet even the act of translation could never fully exhaust their possibilities.

By twilight, the hill was quiet again, yet Liora carried a chorus of experiences within her. Each voice she had heard was a fleeting instantiation, a delicate actualisation of potential, reminding her that the world’s richness is not in fixed things, but in the relational dance of attention, perspective, and experience.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the multitude of latent voices and sounds in the environment.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each voice perceived as Liora focused her attention.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: the vivid, emotional, and cognitive experience of the sounds.

Through Rilke-inspired imagery, the story demonstrates that meaning and resonance are emergent relationally, dependent on engagement rather than representation. The world’s latent potential becomes alive only through perspectival cuts and lived experience, reinforcing the relational ontology insight: perception is always an enactment of potential, not passive reception of objects.

Liora’s Literary Encounters: 2 Liora and the Grain of Eternity

Dawn broke with a soft rose-gold glow, and Liora wandered through a quiet grove where every leaf seemed to hum with hidden life. Her eyes caught a tiny, glimmering grain of sand at the base of a mossy stone. It was ordinary in size, yet when she peered closer, she saw a universe contained within it: spinning constellations, flickering lights, and patterns that echoed endlessly in miniature.

“This is eternity,” Liora whispered, recalling a poet’s words. She held the grain delicately, marvelling that the vast could reside within the minuscule, and the particular could open onto infinity. Here, structured potential was condensed, waiting for her attention to actualise one of countless possible perspectives. Each swirl of light she followed, each pattern she traced with her finger, was an instance, a perspectival cut through boundless possibility.

As she explored, the grain revealed multiple “climates of the mind”: a tiny garden of impossibly fragrant flowers, a miniature storm with luminous raindrops, and a river winding through miniature mountains. None existed independently of her gaze — they shimmered into life only as she chose to notice, each instantiation fleeting, yet infinitely rich. Liora realised that the grain, like the river of fish before, held potential, but its marvels became experience only when engaged.

Finally, she placed the grain on her palm and breathed in the infinitesimal worlds. Each movement, each moment of focus, revealed new possibilities: she could track a butterfly flitting through tiny forests, or a star spinning above a crystal peak. Construal — the felt, lived experience — filled her senses, vibrant and mutable, richer than any static object. She understood, with luminous clarity, that the eternal and the particular were never separate; they were relational, entwined through the act of attention, perspective, and imagination.

As Liora continued her walk, the grove seemed alive with countless other grains, each holding its own miniature eternity, waiting for discovery. The lesson was clear: the infinite exists not as a pre-given totality, but as structured potential, revealed in perspectival actualisations and first-order experience. To behold it, to grasp it, was to participate in the ongoing creation of marvels.

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Relational Ontology in the Story:

• System / structured potential: the infinite possibilities within the grain.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: Liora’s selective attention bringing particular patterns into experience.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: the vivid, mutable experience of the miniature universes.

Blake’s vision of eternity in the small becomes tangible: the infinite is enacted, not merely observed, and relational ontology provides the lens to see how potential, actualisation, and experience interweave.

Liora’s Literary Encounters: 1 Liora and the Fish of the Imagination

The morning light spilled across the meadow like liquid gold, and Liora wandered along a silvered stream that whispered secrets she could almost hear. Dew-laden grass bent beneath her steps, sparkling with tiny constellations, each a hint of worlds unseen. She had come seeking nothing, yet she felt certain that the day would hold marvels beyond ordinary perception.

And there they were: fish, glimmering with impossible colours, darting just above the water’s surface. Not ordinary fish, mind you — these were fish of imagination, their scales reflecting forms that seemed to shimmer between possible shapes, as if the river itself were a mirror of potential. Each flick of a tail sent ripples that bent the light, twisting reality in playful, fleeting arcs.

Liora reached out, and the first fish — translucent, trembling with a subtle inner glow — slipped into her hands. For a moment, it felt solid, real, and yet it was more than a thing; it was a perspectival actualisation of potential. She saw not just one possibility but a myriad: a forest of luminous fins, a cascade of prismatic light, a song vibrating in her mind. She understood, with a thrill of clarity, that the fish had never existed outside her grasp, and yet was more vivid for being actualised.

Another fish leapt, ghastly yet exquisite, scales like shifting shadows and light. Liora hesitated, recalling the fleeting beauty of the first, but when she caught it, she felt the climate of its potential — a tiny world of structured possibilities, each waiting to be enacted through perspective. Some fish she could hold; others slipped into the stream, returning to the river of uninstantiated potential, leaving only a shimmer in the air and a sense of what might have been.

By sunset, Liora had collected a small shoal, placing them carefully in a crystal basin. Each fish was an instance, a momentary actualisation of potential; each shimmer, flicker, and sound was construal, the first-order phenomenon of experience. Watching them, she knew that the river would teem again tomorrow, new fish leaping, ready to be perceived, grasped, and translated into understanding.

In the hush of twilight, Liora realised the truth of her discovery: the world is not a fixed collection of objects, but a field of structured potentials, enlivened only through perspective, attention, and imagination. And in that interplay, life itself became luminous — an endless dance of seeing, grasping, and being present with the marvels of the possible.

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This story foregrounds:

• System / structured potential: the river and its teeming, possible fish.

• Instance / perspectival actualisation: each fish Liora grasps.

• Construal / first-order phenomenon: the lived experience, mutable and vivid, that emerges in her awareness.

It makes relational ontology tangible, showing how potential is enacted through perspective, rather than passively existing, and how meaning emerges relationally, not representationally.

4 From Peake to Liora: Experiencing Potential and Perspective

Mervyn Peake’s writing and Liora’s adventures share a striking insight: the world, whether visible or imagined, is structured potential actualised through perspective. By reading them together, we can see relational ontology operating across both literary reflection and narrative enactment.

1. Peake’s Marvels and Climates of the Mind

“As I see it, or as I want to see it, the marvels of the visible world are not things in themselves but revelations to stir the imagination — to conduct us to amazing climates of the mind, which climates it is for the artist to translate into paint or into words.”

Peake presents the world as structured potential, activated by attention and imagination. Artistic translation — painting or writing — is a second-order construal, communicating first-order phenomena without reducing them to static objects.

2. Peake’s Fish of the Imagination

“Life is an effort to grip… the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.”

Here, potentiality is temporal and perspectival: the “fish” exist in the system of imagination until grasped — instantiated — in attention and creative effort. Those not actualised remain dormant, yet part of the relational field of possibility.

3. Liora’s Encounter with the Fish

Liora’s adventure concretises these principles:

• The river teeming with fantastical fish = structured potential.

• Each fish grasped by Liora = instance / perspectival actualisation.

• The lived, mutable experience of each fish = construal / first-order phenomenon.

• Collecting and observing the fish = second-order construal, analogous to artistic translation.

The story adds a narrative, experiential dimension, showing how relational ontology is not only a lens for theory but also a guide for imaginative engagement.

4. Relational Continuity Across Literature and Narrative

Across Peake’s prose and Liora’s story:

1. System / potential underlies perception and imagination.

2. Instance / actualisation occurs through attention, grasp, or creative action.

3. Construal / phenomenon emerges as the lived experience, mutable and context-dependent.

4. Second-order construal allows communication, reflection, and artistic expression.

The insights of relational ontology — the dependence of experience on perspective, the dynamism of potential, and the relational nature of meaning — are made vivid, whether through Peake’s luminous metaphors or Liora’s playful adventures.

In essence: imagination, perception, and creativity are not about capturing pre-existing objects but about navigating, actualising, and experiencing the structured potential of the world. Peake and Liora together demonstrate how relational ontology illuminates not just thought and physics, but the very art of seeing and living.

3 Relational Ontology Encoded in Liora’s Fish of the Imagination

Liora’s encounter with the fish of the imagination is not just a whimsical adventure; it is a narrative enactment of relational ontology in action. Each element of the story illustrates core distinctions and dynamics fundamental to understanding phenomena, potential, and construal.

1. Structured Potential and Perspectival Actualisation

The river teems with fish that do not exist independently — they are structured potentials. Only when Liora reaches out and grasps them are they actualised as instances. This mirrors the relational ontology distinction between system (the potential field) and instance (perspectival actualisation).

2. Construal as First-Order Phenomenon

The shimmering forms, shifting colours, and mutable shapes of the fish are first-order phenomena — the lived, phenomenal experience that emerges from Liora’s interaction with potential. The story foregrounds construal: meaning arises in the dynamic interplay of perceiver and potential, not in the “fish” themselves as pre-existing objects.

3. Temporal and Perspectival Contingency

Some fish are held briefly; others slip away into the endless current. This illustrates that actualisation is temporal and perspectival: potential only becomes intelligible when engaged, and uninstantiated possibilities remain dormant, waiting for another perspective to actualise them.

4. Second-Order Construal and Translation

Liora’s act of collecting the fish into a crystal basin, observing their forms, and noting their climates of the mind is a second-order construal — akin to the artist translating perception into paint or words. Here, relational ontology demonstrates how experience can be communicated and reflected upon, without collapsing first-order phenomena into static representations.

5. Summary

The story dramatises three relational strata:

1. System / structured potential: the river teeming with fish, possibilities not yet actualised.

2. Instance / perspectival actualisation: each fish grasped by Liora, made intelligible in context.

3. Construal / first-order phenomenon: the lived, mutable experience that emerges in Liora’s mind, and can be translated, shared, or remembered.

Through this narrative, readers can viscerally apprehend what relational ontology articulates in abstract terms: reality is never a set of independent objects; it is a field of potential realised perspectivally, experienced phenomenally, and communicated relationally.

In short, the story makes concrete what relational ontology claims abstractly: the marvels of experience exist in the interplay of potential and perspective, not as pre-given entities waiting to be captured.