She settled herself in, grateful for its softness and suddenly remembering how tired she was, and was still adjusting the pillows when she met the young man’s gaze again. She felt absolutely ridiculous sitting there, buried in a mountain of pillows and floral motifs for no particular reason at all.

“I’m touched you found your way to comfort, that’s exactly why I teach this class, to encourage people to settle into their comfort zones.” The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Taylor, but since she had made the first socially unacceptable move by walking into another person’s room uninvited, she ground her teeth and didn’t retort. She regained her composure and asked the obvious question.

“What class?”

“Welcome to WAI 106.67 - Introduction to Wayfinding Systems. It’s an introductory class,” he pointed out the obvious, and Taylor wondered what remedial Wayfinding Systems class she had missed to justify the additional explanation.

“An introductory class in what?” she pushed back.

“Wayfinding,” he pointed out, looking at her as if to assess whether she had the required level of intelligence to attend the class. Taylor sat back in her cozy chair, still trying to figure out who was pulling a prank on her and why, and amazed by the lengths that someone went to in order to generate this level of detail. The doors alone, for one. So she decided to play along and asked.

“Where do the doors lead?” knowing full well after the exploration trip she had taken around the building the day before that they couldn’t possibly lead anywhere.

“We’ll get to each door when its turn comes, but I need to give you the disclaimer about door number eight, it’s university policy, safety training, release of liability, that sort of thing. You get the idea. In short, don’t go through door number eight.”

“Sure,” Taylor replied, with a hint of sarcasm that didn’t escape her conversation partner, “But all the other ones should be safe, right? Or do I have to review the door handle operation manuals before I go through?”

The young man rolled his eyes, clearly irritated, and scrunched his face a bit to adjust the glasses on the bridge of his nose. He spoke sharply.

“God, I hate freshman class, and for some evil reason I always get stuck with it, every single year, at least once! You all think you know everything, this gets so tedious after a couple of decades!”

“How old are you, exactly!?” she thought, shocked, and then remembered she was playing along in a prank, and decided to let go of the question, to see what tall tale he was going to make up next.

He didn’t look more than twenty anyway; in fact, if she had to venture a guess he looked exactly her age, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to run into him in one of the courses she had enrolled in.

She looked at him carefully, to figure out if she had seen him around campus. He looked very familiar, she didn’t know why, there was something about his facial expressions, his hand gestures, the way he sat in the chair, that she was certain she had seen before, although she simply couldn’t remember where.

He was relatively tall, with an athletic, but slender build, dressed in a solid dark t-shirt and jeans. He could have been any of the hundreds of students she passed by as she walked across the courtyard to go from one class to the next. Finding no answer, she shook her head and gave up, and tried to wrap up this charming interlude to go veg out in her room.

“You do know this is a mandatory class for your study major, right?” he asked, even more displeased than before, and the furrow between his eyebrows deepened.

“Of course it is,” she said, and got up to leave. He didn’t try to stop her, so she headed, very sure of herself, in the direction from which she had come, only to notice, in disbelief, that there were only eight doors on the walls, none of which led back to her room.

“No doubt you counted the doors when you came in,” he commented on her bewildered expression. “How many were there?”

“Eight,” she mumbled, still in shock.

“And there you go. There are still eight doors.”

“But...” she protested, really terrified this time.

“Stop fretting, the door will be there when class ends. Sit down, you’re wasting instruction time, you’re not my only pupil, you know.”

She sat down, waiting for him to speak, but he didn’t, he just looked at her, expectantly. They sat in silence for a while, staring at each other, until eventually he looked at his watch and restarted the conversation.

“So, are there any questions you would like me to answer before we begin?”

“Where do I even start?” she thought, simultaneously wondering if the class they were talking about was still forty eight minutes long and glancing furtively at the wall to see if the door was back yet. Her instructor was staring her down, waiting for a question, so she wrecked her brains to come up with one that wouldn’t sound completely idiotic.

“Don’t worry, there is no such thing as a stupid question,” he encouraged, doing his best to contain a restless streak. She obliged.

“Why eight doors?” was the first thought that came to mind and straight out the mouth it went, unsifted.

“Because the curriculum didn’t allow enough time for nine, and seven would have been too few,” he shed light on the issue.

“What happened to room number eight?” she blurted, almost against her will.

“Oh, now we really do have a good question here, but you need to pass this class to understand the explanation. The short answer is, room number eight is where it has always been.”

“Is the class about these doors?”

“Yes. When you’ve successfully walked through them, the class ends. We’ll meet every day for an hour, just like today,” he said in a voice that started to sound more amenable.

“So, this course is only eight days long?” she asked, still skeptic.

“First, what makes you think you’ll be able to successfully walk through the doors on the first try, and second, what did I say about door number eight?”

“Don’t go through it?” she asked, tentatively.

“That’s right,” he responded. “We’re going through the doors in their order of difficulty, starting tomorrow with door number one.”

“You are coming too?”

“Oh, definitely. I’m responsible for your welfare for the duration of the class, I don’t even want to picture the bureaucratic nightmare that would ensue if you got lost!”

“Got lost where??!” she panicked.

“Don’t worry, as I said, I’m coming with.”

“What do you mean by ‘successfully go through them’. What’s so hard about walking through a door?”

“You can’t walk through it if it isn’t there,” he smiled, and from the corner of her eye she noticed the door leading back to her room, wide open as she had left it, staring her down from across the room as plain as the nose on her face. He turned his head.

“Well, it looks like the class just ended. See you tomorrow,” he dismissed her.

She hesitated, not knowing whether it was OK to leave and troubled by a thought.

“So,” she finally uttered, “what if I decide not to come back here?”

“It’s your education, not mine. If you do, however, decide to return, class starts promptly at four. Don’t be late, I loathe that.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” she mumbled confused.

“Go to your other classes, of course.”

Heeding her grandmother’s advice she went out into the garden to enjoy nature and stopped almost without thinking to sit under her oak tree. She unfolded memories inside her mind like one spreads photographs on a table, grouping them together, singling them out, looking for patterns and organizing structures in their jumbled mess.

There were too many those special moments she had greedily accumulated, and they had too many connections between them, made without rhyme or reason. Like the brain of a three year old gobbles up reality with no discernment and creates extraneous neural pathways it has to sort out and discard later, so did Claire’s insight get weighed down by an unseemly amount of irrelevant details.

Hidden in that foggy maze were her pivotal moments, the events that had charted her life’s path. She was surprised to notice that many of them were eminently forgettable, like for instance the day when it started raining and she sought shelter in the cafe where she ended up working for two years; that’s where she made the friend who introduced her to the local art community and a way of life which had unfolded right under her nose for years and yet she knew nothing about.

She’d spent some time in their world and dedicated herself to her painting, for which she ended up deciding she had no talent, but which gave her a reason to remain immersed in this different atmosphere she tried so hard to understand. Eventually she realized there was nothing to understand, not with one’s mind, anyway.

It was more like singing the song of one’s soul loud enough for the world to hear. Her inexplicable devotion to the artistic milieu threw her into the unlikely job of art curator, which required writing reviews and got her tangled in the publishing world, from which she got side tracked into travel writing and culinary reviews.

Listen to the audiobook

As she looked back at her life she was amazed at the amount of living she had managed to stuff in such a short period of time and even though she was slightly disappointed that her loved ones couldn’t see her footprints on the world, criss-crossing its shifting sands like openwork embroidery, she didn’t resent them for it. How could they experience her point of view while standing in a different spot?

Despite the fact that her family deplored her lack of focus nobody accumulates this amount of life experience so young by planning for it. The complex patterns of life are so much richer than one’s ability to process them and so filled with information and details they can only be experienced in part and in context, a single layer of an infinitely thick set.

It’s been mentioned so many times that our lives are unique that the meaning of the words got dulled by cliche, but it is true: no two of us see the same reality, we all have our own worlds to live in, coexisting with the others’ and impossible to peel apart. Claire had experienced her own existence in motion since she was five years old and she had seen the shadow for the first time. The shadow had called out to her ever since, trying to entice her back to the uncharted place she knew existed but kept ignoring in order to stay the course.

It is interesting how life has ways to return one to their fated path when it deems it necessary, almost surgical in the way it eliminates anything that stands in its way. There is nothing it won’t reshuffle, add or remove in order to achieve this goal. Nothing.

This lengthy session of navel gazing did yield a useful conclusion: most of her life’s defining moments were not of her doing. She shrugged the irritating thought and got up to get back into the house, since the sun had already set and the violet shadows of the night were getting thicker. As she passed through the front doors she got a glimpse of herself in the mirrors, donning a garden hat and the same unnerving smile.

This time Claire didn’t cave. She stared right back at the stranger in the mirror, to get to the bottom of this crazy reflection well, but there was no bottom, just an infinite number of hers fading into the vanishing point. She gasped when she realized there were subtle differences between all of these reflections, not so pronounced that a careless glance would find them jarring, but inescapable to the attentive eye.

Behind the surface of the mirror dwelt relaxed hers, and thoughtful hers, and tense hers, and excited hers, and sad hers and absentminded hers, but there was one thing they all had in common: the garden hat. Claire wasn’t wearing a hat.

“How on earth is this even possible!” Claire thought to herself, more fascinated by the fact that the hat that didn’t belong in the reflection seemed designed to draw so much of one’s attention one wouldn’t have enough of it left to focus on the much subtler differences the Claires had between them.

She looked behind her to make sure her grandmother wasn’t around to give her a piece of her mind about standing in the doorway again, and when she looked back at the mirrors she noticed the hat was gone. She got mad at herself for not taking a picture of this strange phenomenon before it was gone and promised herself that the next time the mirrors decided to go all alternate reality on her she’d snap up some evidence for posterity.

The grandfather clock struck eight and Claire headed to the dining room, where the table was already set for dinner. There were only two place settings.

“Your grandfather’s business in town took longer than anticipated. He called to let me know he’ll be staying overnight. It’s just the two of us this evening,” her grandmother smiled. Claire sat down, bewitched by the comforting aroma of baked macaroni and cheese that was filling the house. Her grandmother appeared, carrying the hot casserole from which thin wisps of steam managed to escape, even though it had the lid on.

“Did you have a pleasant day outside?” the latter started the conversation while dishing generous heaps of gooey goodness onto the plates.

“Yes, it was very relaxing,” Claire replied, eyeing her favorite dish while her mouth watered. While she dug in, gleeful with anticipation, she realized she had no idea what her grandmother did on a regular day. “How was your day, maman?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” her grandmother gave her a vague response. “I had a few things to attend to, there is always something that needs done in this house.”

Claire wanted to ask for more detail, but her grandmother didn’t leave her time to do so.

“Speaking of things that need done, I found a hat for you to wear when you go outside. I know you spent too much time up north to remember, but in our neck of the woods it’s too hot to stay outside all day without a hat, you’re going to get yourself sunstroke. And don’t you tell me you’re going to keep in the shade. You’ve been using that excuse since you were this tall,” she held her hand slightly above the table top, “and it didn’t fly with me then either. You can get yourself a different one if you don’t like it, but in the meantime...”

Claire didn’t comment, nor did she wonder what the hat looked like. She had a vague idea.

I was always tense and frowning back then, (I still have the eleven lines to prove it), but ambition feels so pointless in the presence of the dead, and I guess I learned to listen to them then, one of the few things I learned to do well at that age, I learned to listen and understand the things that really matter are always unexpected gifts, and to see the fleeting nature of our so-called fate, and laugh at the silliness of the important and the urgent, because nothing that doesn’t outlast the season can be that important in this transient existence in which after a few short years you no longer recognize the person you used to be.

I listened to those departed strangers, whose lives and names I never knew, when they told me to live. You can always trust the departed. They have no hidden motives when they tell you to look past the pointless grind of daily chores and live, live, if you’re lucky to be alive, live!

One shouldn't take luck lightly, she always thought. If luck ever found her, she knew what she wanted to do with it. She would always keep her blessings close to her heart, because luck follows good cheer like a little pup. This way she would always have it with her at every step, and weave it into love, the health of her family, the work of her hands, her children's fortune, their children's future, her home. It would keep her safe and grant her long life and teach her joy.

I listened to those departed strangers, whose lives and names I never knew, when they told me to live. You can always trust the departed. They have no hidden motives when they tell you to look past the pointless grind of daily chores and live, live, if you’re lucky to be alive, live!

Luck is not winning the lottery, luck is being here with the sun in your face and the scent of crocuses in your lungs in early spring, and having the sense to wonder what bird is singing so sweet in the tree nearby, that’s luck, you hapless young woman trying to be everything to everybody at all times!

I listened to the departed, always dutiful and polite, eager not to offend as I was at that age, lest someone might not like me, and passed the grave stones with quiet reverence, and only five minutes later forgot their request, because very important paperwork had to be processed, there were no clean clothes left and the boss had asked for that project to be done ASAP, we all know that ASAP project, there is no other kind, but the next day I passed by the graveyard again, and heard the wiser voices of the past scold me for being such an klutz I couldn’t hold a simple concept like that steady in my head.

I welcomed the sight of the old stones on my way home; they made me feel like I was chatting with a wise old friend, one who knows better and never gives you bad advice; no matter how my day had been, they comforted me, always there to remind me of what really matters, and whose life I’m supposed to live. You don’t live your life most of the time, have you figured that out yet? You manage expectations, balance priorities, execute plans. The dead were there to teach me how to live.

You can’t share this kind of story with your friends, because you know who lingers around graveyards?

Vampires and crazy people.

Normal people buy things and then brag to their friends about what they bought, and secretly rejoice when they learn their friends haven’t bought those things yet. They bellyache over career moves, neighborhood resale values, the size of their heinie.

That’s what normal people do at twenty-eight, when society imposes an unwritten obligation on you to feel insecure, and want things that are always just slightly out of your reach, but which you could have gotten if only you were a little better, just like other people always seem to be, something your betters never forget to point out to you.

You can’t share this kind of story with your parents, who question where they went wrong in your upbringing and ask offended how can you be so morbid, after all the hardships they endured on your behalf, just so you’d make something of yourself, for God’s sake, not give them more things to worry about with your creepy death obsession. Death is not to be discussed with your elders.

Ever.

But the departed smiled kindly at my pointless fretting, and I smiled too and kept our conversation secret, like all the important talks in life must be. You don’t share the wisdom that you want to keep.

There is a special aura around the days that matter.

However long a time has passed, or however many things have happened since, you vividly recall exactly how the tree blossoms smelled that afternoon in early spring, so important it etched every one of its details in your memory.

Live, you goose, the departed asked me. Live, because you’ll wake up one morning an old woman, if you’re lucky, and wonder what happened with your life! Live now! Live tomorrow! Live every day! LIVE!

“But what about the grant application?” I asked, making clear, to their dismay, that I didn’t get the message. One doesn’t, not at that age, not for anything.

How sad is it we all have to repeat the older generations’ mistakes ad infinitum, like a printing error message that keeps replicating automatically in hundreds of copies, wasting the ink and the paper?

One day I stopped passing by that graveyard, because, as the departed had already explained to me, life gets reshaped constantly and the surroundings always change, and you’re always too busy to notice.

One thing about graveyards, though, you can pretty much find one anywhere.

World building creates a believable world and society for readers, so they can suspend disbelief and make themselves comfortable to follow the story.

Make-believe worlds have names; they exist in a specific place and time, have their own economy, architecture, language, education, art, history, traditions, religion, and laws.

Their denizens have bodies that can be described; they have names, a heritage, lifespans, minds and emotions, and pride themselves in their own creations or convictions, which must live inside the context you provided, and therefore be true to it, in order to make sense.

They have beliefs regarding the afterlife, origin myths, ethics, and morality.

A well-crafted world creates a rich context that explains characters’ behavior, enabling readers to empathize, even in an unfamiliar setting.

All stories need this living environment as much as they need characters.

It provides a scaffolding on which the narrative is slowly built, narrative which wouldn’t make sense without it, because its quiet background fills in the details for all the things the writer left unsaid.