Every time we read, a piece of the world we indulge in enters into our being.
We are like quantum mirrors, wired to shift through worlds, through realities. Each story we ingest is another set of coordinates unlocking another reality. When we are young it is obvious. We spend hours filling out our characters, continuing the stories our parents just finished. Children do not hide their imaginary play. But when we grow older, the reality shifts become more erratic, more embarrassing. We are not supposed to have imaginations over the age of 13, yet they still rage rampant. As we read, we lose ourselves into a different earth, a different reality, and our malleable body slips in with us. Like shapeshifters, only we are world shifters. We blend through worlds, consciousness streaming from Hogwarts to Middle Earth fluidly. The alarm goes off and it is time to wake up, to face the Capitol and eradicate their evil intentions, save the districts. And just as suddenly it is time to eat breakfast, to get to class.
World shifters are not rational. If they were, they would not choose to live in any of these worlds that are written about. Worlds where people face loss, pain, and impossible choices every day. Coddled readers would not choose these worlds if they thought about it. If they honestly looked at their capabilities in a mirror. But readers do not look into normal mirrors. They look into these quantum mirrors and see scars upon their faces, hair ragged because it was cut with a sword, eyes defiant because they are staring down an enemy, lips set in determination because it is time to live through another day of fighting.
The easy worlds never pull us in.
Life as a world shifter is hard, always that corner of the being that is being pulled somewhere else, somewhere that can never fully be. Always, the desire to reject shifting, to hate the other realities, to hate books and stories lies dormant, but once a world shifter has awakened her abilities there is no going back. Those worlds have laid claim to pieces of herself
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