Imprinting

After a few minutes of no movement, Blair kept walking.

Blair had a connection to the trees, felt a comfort amongst them. The environment, any environment, can be hostile and dangerous depending on your situation, knowledge, and familiarity with it. Blair thrived out here in Pine Forest. Throw her into an alleyway in Skyline City, she’d be lost. At least at first. Blair was a quick study. She held a deep intellect, robust intuition, insatiable curiosity, and elite observational skills. These are all things that her grandfather helped her develop, but there was one thing that no one knew about, something she kept to herself because it was confusing at times.

Imprinting.

Or at least that’s what she called it. Similar to a photographic memory, there were two key differences: the ability to map out and retain an environment spatially, and a sense of shifting her perspective.

First, her gift of environment spatiality. Whether it was a natural setting such as Pine Forest, or an urban area like a building or neighbourhood, Blair just needed to start walking around and she could put together the space around her like a puzzle. She was even able to take this one step further with her own work, and be able to train her brain in such a way that it filled in the blanks. So, when she started mind mapping, say, a forest, her brain continuously made connections, and could potentially map out parts of the forest she had not even reached yet. Once the forest was mapped out, it retained in her brain like a filing system that she could pull up at any moment.

Second, shifting of her perspective. This was a bit more unpredictable, confusing, and sometimes a bit scary. And she hadn’t total control over it. The mind mapping was easy to understand - she had a working idea of how the brain functioned, and understood neuroplasticity and the nervous system. But the shifting of perspective was more complicated and mysterious - it felt as though she was simultaneously inside of her body and outside of it. This shifting seemed to come at moments of fight or flight, slingshotting her view from inside to outside her body.

Imagine you were walking along through the woods. You come across a clearing and a situation where a large wolf stood in your way, barring teeth and salvia dripping from its jaw. If Blair came across this wolf, she would freeze, but in her mind’s eye, her perspective could shift above and around the wolf to see possible exits or other advantages that could be used to help her situation. At the same time, she remained still in her body taking in the scene and assessing the threat. Her perspective split, and she saw all the angles. But just as quick as it happened, like a boomerang, it ricocheted back and all the different angles and perspectives collapsed into her mind. Although she could not control it, at times like these, the perspective shift allowed her to gain crucial data that could be used to help her figure out her situation.

As she walked through Pine Forest, she could have been wearing a blindfold. She reached the spot where she met the woman and began trailing her. Blair found the exact spot the woman was standing when Blair came upon her. She turned to face the sun, took another big breath, as though she was listening, waiting for an internal compass to point her in the right direction. It never came as a sound or a thought, more of a feeling. This feeling was something her grandfather was helping her develop. He referred to it as they were honing her instinct, but she knew there was something more powerful at work.