TRAUMA

"Months from now you will wake sore and bruised, as if your body cannot forget what happened, and this is the only way it can express the trauma."

—pages 396-397, Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer, as found in Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy

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"[A] wild hope: that everything beneath you will be inert, normal, even if at the outer boundary of what that word means."

—page 397, Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer, as found in Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy

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These quotes are from a novel of weird fiction, speculative fiction. What would have been called, in an earlier age, science fiction.

The quotes are about an encounter with monsters in the shadows, creatures of indeterminate origin and intent, many of which were encountered in the first book of the trilogy and are now being anticipated again in the third book.

But, ultimately, these lines could be about many things, about many encounters with what is unknown and therefore feared.