She continued her flight along the mountainside and soon knew—in her bones—that this was no ordinary mountain. That knowing in her recognized it as a presence, not merely a place. Its slopes held entire climates, each region breathing at its own pace, each governed by its own quiet intelligence. As she climbed, the mountain seemed to watch her progress.
Higher still, the air thinned, and breathing became an act of attention. This was not cruelty but discernment. The mountain asked a question of all who came this far: Are you fully present? Many turned back here, humbled by the simple effort of drawing breath. She did not. She was more directly braided into the Earth’s deeper currents, and the mountain felt that kinship. It did not ease itself for her, but it allowed her to pass.
At the summit, she settled the broom and laid out her small sitting mat where the sun still touched stone. The mountain received her weight, steady and unyielding, as if acknowledging her presence. When she sat, she felt a slow, immense rhythm beneath her—older than weather, older than memory—moving through the rock and into her bones.
She closed her eyes. The silence there was—attentive. A faint wind moved across the peak like a breath drawn and released, deepening the quiet. The mountain listened as she listened. Her awareness began to widen, feeling into the immeasurable age held in stone. At the same time, an equal vastness unfolded within her, answering the mountain’s immensity with its own. The boundary between them softened. She pulled on her wool sweater, though she remained warm in the cutting cold. Salt in a witch’s blood teaches water endurance, keeps it fluid when it would otherwise surrender to ice, and the mountain seemed to approve of this quiet defiance.
She let her eyes close again and allowed herself to be taken into the mountain’s awareness. When she finally returned, time had loosened its grip. She felt utterly still, fully joined to the Earth, yet floating above it, balanced between stone and sky.
A cup of hot tea appeared to float before her. She took the hint and decided to fly back down and get one more hot tea before heading home. She packed up, hopped on the broom, thanked the mountain for welcoming her, and started down the mountainside. She didn’t encounter any obstacles, and she arrived at one of the tea shops that populate the base of the mountain. Using the same spell she had used in Kathmandu, she made herself appear as a normal-sized human and got another cup of that amazing spice tea called chai.
She sat dreamily, drinking her chai with her eyes half closed, and slipped into an altered state—partially from the effect of this amazing mountain, and partially because of the change in the amount of oxygen in the air over the last three hours. When she opened her eyes, she saw a clock on the wall, and when she allowed what she was seeing to actually penetrate her consciousness, she put the chai down and started running. She was late. Really late. Where had the time gone?
She did what she normally wouldn’t do, which was simply break the spell without looking to see who could observe her. She didn’t have time now. She jumped on the broom, checked to make sure everything was tied down, checked for her wand, shouted, “AWAY!”, and turned the dial up to 10. She hoped the sweater would stay on.
She streaked across the sky like a meteor. She enjoyed a challenge, but she had let this situation go too far. Still, this inner space of bliss that she had experienced on that mountaintop … well, she wouldn’t trade that for anything. She gained a bit more altitude, and in 10 or 15 seconds was a good 5 miles above the Earth’s surface. She never really pushed the broom to its limit because the Earth’s atmosphere was so full of debris that kind of speed was quite dangerous. But she just turned her intuitive sensing up as high as possible and hoped for the best. Pedal to the metal.
The genius of the CTC power system for brooms is that the faster a witch flies, the more thrill she feels. The more thrill she feels, the more power the CTC motor generates, enabling her to fly even faster… and so it goes. She wasn’t thinking about those details now, though; she just needed to get home before the sun went down on her flower.