In that suspended silence, still as time itself, I understood.
Not in a sudden flash, not in a revelation from the heavens — no.
Rather like a quiet truth, already there, already present, that my restless thoughts had never been able to see.
We were perhaps the intruders here.
Not just travelers.
Not just outsiders.
But intruders in the most intimate sense of the word.
Beings forged by a world of fire and iron, shaped by wars and traumas, polished by blood, tempered in hatred, in fear, in the instinct to survive.
Noisy, greedy creatures, dissonant in this ancient song of balance.
And yet…
This place did not reject us.
It raised no walls, no cries, no invisible barriers against us.
It summoned no beasts to face us, no curses.
It welcomed us.
Calmly.
Without words, without promise, without excessive generosity — but without hostility.
It opened its arms to us without offering forgetfulness, without erasing what we had been.
