Liora and Form Before Meaning

When Liora was asked what a symbol meant, she would always hesitate.

Meaning, she had learned, arrived late.

She remembered a time when she entered a room prepared for a ritual she did not understand. The objects were unfamiliar. The words opaque. But the spacing was exact. The pauses precise. The gestures slow and weighted.

Before she could think, her breathing changed.

Only afterward did meaning appear — tentative, incomplete — trying to catch up to what her body already knew.

Form had done the work first.

Meaning came not as instruction, but as accommodation.