Limbo

I've been thinking about doorways lately. Not the wooden ones with hinges and handles, but the invisible ones we pass through without realising—the spaces between what was and what will be, between who we were and who we're becoming.

There's a word for it that I learnt in one of Dad's old philosophy books: liminal. From the Latin limen, meaning threshold. The space of transition, of becoming, of neither-here-nor-there. I think I've been living in limbo for longer than I care to admit.

Tonight, as Selene shows her waxing crescent above the treeline, I find myself caught between memories again. Not the visceral horror of that kitchen—though that clings to me still like smoke in wool—but something more abstract. The skeleton's offer keeps returning to me, not as temptation but as a mirror reflecting something I hadn't noticed about myself.

I am a creature of thresholds, aren't I?

Human and wolf. Child and adult. Guilty and growing. The moon herself exists in constant transition—waxing, full, waning, new—never static, always becoming something else. Perhaps that's why I feel such kinship with her silver light. We're both caught in eternal flux, neither fully one thing nor another.

When I transform under her gaze, I exist in that moment between heartbeats where I am neither fully human nor fully wolf, but something in-between. The pain of change is always sharpest in that liminal second—not the agony of bones reshaping or muscles expanding, but the metaphysical vertigo of being suspended between two states of being.

I used to think this was a curse, this perpetual in-betweenness. That I was broken somehow, incomplete, forever caught in a doorway I could neither fully enter nor exit. The skeleton seemed to understand this when he offered me those puppet parents—a chance to step backwards through the threshold into a simpler version of myself, one who had never crossed over into the realm of the guilty.

But I've been wondering if I had it backwards all along.

What if the threshold isn't a place to escape from, but a place to inhabit? What if being liminal isn't a flaw but a feature—not brokenness but a different kind of wholeness?

There's power in existing between categories. The ability to see from multiple perspectives, to understand both the human fear of the wild and the wolf's bewilderment at civilisation's arbitrary rules. To know intimately both the comfort of hearth and home and the freedom of moonlit hunts through endless forests.

I think about the underground fight club, that moment when I lost control in front of everyone. In my shame, I focused on the exposure, the vulnerability, the way my careful boundaries had shattered. The way the crowd scattered like startled birds, leaving only the group—my group—in that vast arena.

But there was something else in that moment—something I'd forgotten until now.

The way they stayed. Not just stayed, but responded with such... normalcy. Some deadpan, some mildly surprised, Kelris in his panicked rush to cover me with his cape—fatherly protection I didn't deserve but desperately needed. They weren't horrified by what I became; they were concerned about me.

In that moment of transformation, surrounded by empty seats where strangers had fled, I realised I wasn't alone in the threshold. My group had seen me change from human to wolf and back again, and none of them had run. They'd simply... adapted. Accepted. Helped.

The Moon understands this, I think. She doesn't apologise for her phases, doesn't try to remain perpetually full to avoid the discomfort of darkness. She embraces the entire cycle—the growing, the culmination, the diminishing, the void. Each phase has its purpose, its beauty, its necessity.

Perhaps my guilt and growth aren't separate states but part of the same cycle. The darkness of what I've done creating the space for new light to emerge. The shadow of my past giving shape and meaning to my present choices.

I'm writing this from my bedroom window, watching Selene's crescent paint everything in gentle silver—the same silver fire from my dreams, but quieter now, less urgent. She seems to be waiting, patient as only the eternal can be patient. Growing slowly towards fullness, eleven days hence. Not waiting for me to choose between human and wolf, between guilt and forgiveness, between past and future.

Waiting for me to accept that I am the choice itself. The living embodiment of "both" rather than "either-or."

The skeleton called me "little wolf" with something that felt like fondness. Not mockery of my size or age, but recognition of what I am—small in the grand scheme of things, perhaps, but perfectly suited to the threshold I occupy. A guardian of doorways, a keeper of transitions, a reminder that categories are more fluid than most dare to imagine.

I may never fully understand what I am or what I'm meant to become. But maybe that's precisely the point. Maybe wisdom isn't about reaching a destination but about learning to dance in the spaces between destinations, to find balance while the ground shifts beneath your feet.

The Moon will be full in eleven days' time. When she calls, I won't run from her this time, won't try to hide from what I become in her light. Instead, I'll stand in my threshold and let myself be exactly what I am—neither fully human nor fully wolf, but something wonderfully, terrifyingly new.

Something liminal. Something whole in its very incompleteness.

Something that belongs precisely in the space between worlds.