Before a narrow passage in the rock,
the old one slows down.
He places each step with care
and moves forward
without looking back.
Some paths are not chosen.
They are followed.
The young one watches…
then follows the same path.
— Sënka_
The rock doesn’t move.
You do.
The old one moves forward
along the narrow path.
For a moment,
the young one lingers behind.
The path is narrow.
There is room for one.
Then, quietly,
he chooses to follow
the same trail.
— Sënka_
The most important choices
are made in silence.
The old buck senses a gaze on him.
He slowly stops eating
and turns his head.
He looks at him, for a moment,
with quiet interest.
The young buck tenses slightly.
Will he be aggressive?
Chase him away?
Or simply ignore him?
The moment stretches,
longer than it should.
Then the old buck steps closer,
close enough to catch his scent.
There is no threat.
Quite the opposite.
Something in his gaze shifts, softens—
as if something unseen
had just begun to connect them.
— Sënka_
Some encounters
don’t need to be understood.
Only felt.
It had been a long time
since he had seen a buck this old.
Something about him lingers.
He feels the urge to get closer.
To understand how he endures
those days when the body grows heavier.
So he moves forward.
Slowly. Carefully.
Little by little,
they stand side by side.
The old one turns his head.
Looks at him, just for a moment.
Then goes back to his meal.
The young one lowers his head too.
He eats.
Nothing is said.
But beside this old buck,
something in him softens.
— Sënka_
Some silences
are the most honest conversation.
At a bend in the path,
a small clearing edged with fir trees and red berries.
A faint smell catches him.
Hunger brings him back to himself.
He notices another ibex.
He does not recognize him.
Older.
His horns thick, marked with deep ridges.
His coat turning white.
He eats.
Calmly.
With a quiet kind of confidence.
The young ibex stops.
He does not dare.
And yet, hunger is there.
— Sënka_
Some presences don’t need words.
They just pull.
He walks on,
distracted by the strange weight within him.
The trail winds between rocks and snow.
Only after a while does he notice—
this is not the path he knows.
Without realizing it,
he has wandered somewhere new.
And he keeps walking.
— Sënka_
Not all detours are mistakes.
Some are the path.
The ibex keeps climbing
until he reaches a small lake.
He stops to drink,
then catches his reflection in the water.
He stares at it.
The sight unsettles him—
it’s been so long
since he last looked at himself.
Something stirs inside,
slow and formless.
The landscape stands unchanged,
but it no longer moves through him.
Something within has closed,
quietly.
He lingers there,
present… yet already slipping elsewhere.
Then he looks away.
— Sënka_
The water holds what
the eyes refuse to see.
He moves forward.
The path does not change.
Neither do his movements.
Further ahead, other ibex appear.
They move between the rocks,
brush past each other,
pause, then go on.
He sees them.
But his gaze does not hold.
Nothing catches him.
No reaction.
No inner movement.
Something in him has faded.
Quietly.
A heaviness.
Spreading through his body.
— Sënka_
Just… continuing.
He walks, as he always does.
It’s a path he knows by heart.
The same stones,
the same slopes,
the same effort.
Nothing has changed.
The wind moves the same way.
The light falls across the same ridges.
Even the silence feels familiar.
He knows this place.
Not only with his eyes…
but with his body.
And yet —
Something no longer fits.
Not in the landscape.
In him.
Something that doesn’t pass.
That stays…
and settles.
— Sënka_
It stays.
Long after you leave.