On the threshold between September and October, a word rose through the mist.

The world itself feels strange this year. The air sharp with static, nostaglia thinned, everything too plastic, too surface. Misdirection everywhere, very much like the fog. We are living in the upside down.

The word was Liminance.

What is Liminance?

Liminance (noun): the dim glow carried through liminal spaces. Not a light that banishes the dark, but one that shows only the steps meant for you.

It is the lantern you hold when the path is fogged, a faint shimmer that carries you forward, not with certainty, but never without aim.

The Two Faces of Liminance

Seasonal ~ Most keenly felt on October evenings and November nights, lanterns on porches, fog curling low, footsteps crunching on damp leaves.  Liminance is that in-between light ~ not full day, not full night, just enough glow to guide a wytch through the thresholds of the season.

Emotional ~ Liminance also belongs to the soul. It names that survival state when grief, change or neurodivergence leaves you raw. Not enough fire to light the World, but enough to take the next step. A fragile glow that proves you are still moving, never aimless.

October Whisper

The season does not soften for me,

nor do i for it,

We meet in silence,

Shadow to shadow.

October does not ask for smiles,

I move like a ghost in her fog,

A dim lantern in hand, 

its light enough to find

the echo of footsteps from the past

or trace of those i choose to follow.

This is my October Liminance,

A glow that does not banish the dark,

but guides me through it.

Keeper's Note

I half blame Liadan ~ Poet, Ancestor, Guide, for slipping this word into my mouth. Or perhaps it was October itself, breathing through the dark. Either way, the word stayed.

Now it is here. Not as an old word, but as one found in the fog.

Closing Whisper

Liminance is not mine to hoard. If it speaks to you, take it. Write it into your pages. Whisper it when the fog is heavy. It belongs to the thresholds, not to me. 

First spoken into being at The Hallowed Nook, October Eve 2025