Context fills in the voids in our understanding, so we have no conscious perception of the things we don’t know, but the instinctive, deeper portion of our psyche can feel the gaps in reality, in ways it finds difficult to express, the gaps which reveal themselves to physical perception when dramatic, life changing events the kind we also can’t explain, fall on us apparently out of the blue.
These gaps in reality are like a sieve through which you can see the things beyond it. Not everything that’s forbidden is evil. Not everything that is hidden is wrong.
Without even knowing it, Claire had caught a glimpse through that sieve and saw a reality that wasn’t supposed to exist. Doubting what is right in front of you is learned human behavior, no self respecting animal would question whether the food in front of their nose is real just because they have no explanation of how it got there. Claire’s shadow, much like that animal, did not understand bias and allowed her to see what was actually there as opposed to what she was taught to believe she had to see.
Once you are made aware that you do not know the first thing about reality life becomes a lot harder, but also a lot brighter, more interesting and more surprising too. You suddenly start seeing the colors you couldn’t notice before, the details you used to toss aside because they didn’t make sense, you start seeing things just the way they are, without explanation or reason. Not everything has to make sense, not to our limited understanding, anyway; only our over inflated sense of self importance makes us willing to throw away half of reality just because our minds can’t make heads or tails of it.
Claire instinctively knew this other world would always be there for her from the moment she first caught a glimpse of its existence. It was there for her in the sunrise, in the rustling of the oak leaves, in her dreams, in the mirror reflections, in the clouds obscuring the sun, in the scent of the overheated dill, in every conversation, in every melody, in the pulse of her blood, in the wind brushing against her skin, in every breath she took, in her very life.
Like a child lost in the wilderness, Claire had to learn this other world for herself and trust it to reveal itself to her in ways that she could understand, and trust that it won’t hurt her. She was smitten and dazzled by its surprising ways, and if someone were to ask her to put into words how she knew what she knew she wouldn’t have been able to, because its patterns ran deeper, underneath concepts and words, in a much older recess of the mind where things simply made sense without rules or organizing principles - in the consciousness before thought.
From the moment this other reality had called out to her, Claire had been living in two worlds, equally important and equally real.
