I thought I heard your voice in the dim room whispering that you wanted to show me something. Something that was lost and I had been looking for.

I just returned home from my journey through the mountains. It was cold, high up there. The air was thin. I had followed the small snowy paths for weeks in a row.

Away from the living world my heart had begun to freeze. I was walking with a heart of ice. It became heavy with sharp edges.

Until she caught my eye. This wild animal’s soul.

She stood in front of me. Her spotted coat covered in fluffy snow flakes.

Her timid eyes as if she felt caught. Her attentive ears pricked up.

I was petrified and full of wonder at the same time.

She didn’t move and looked at me. Unafraid.

A mystical beauty.

I was glued to the ground, I couldn’t take another step.

She lived alone at altitude as she was hiding from the world below.

That world that hounded her, not only for who she was, but also for who she had become.

She needs her solitude like the fish need the seas.

Here in the cold mountains she was home.

I looked at her, the way she trod the rocky paths, weightless and calmly without hesitation, dauntless, without a single sound, and my heart became soft again. The sharp edges melted.

My skin felt cold in the icy air, but within little flames were burning.

I continued my path, carried her mysterious image in my heart, played it like a silent movie in the theatre of my mind and decided to go back.

I went back to the far world below, leaving her and her majestic mountains behind, the clean air and the solitude.

In the distance I hear your voice now.

Slowly I awaken. My eyes are looking around the room.

On the sidetable there’s a postcard.

A snow leopard with fiery eyes and soft skin looks at me.

It reads: “Soon I will be home again and bring you a bag full of stories and mysteries. With love from the mountains.”