The last steps to the summit leave the heart full and strong, breath rising in steady waves. I pause, turning to see the hill fall away, the valleys stretched wide in muted greens and grays, their edges softened by drifting cloud. The land feels endless, and for a moment I stand between earth and sky, the climb behind me, the cairn before me.
The summit opens slowly, as if unveiling itself. The great mound waits at the center, its stones dark with age, the three outlying cairns keeping watch at the edges, and the rings of upright slabs, each gap like a threshold for the unseen. Their presence is not silent; it hums, low and deep, just at the edge of hearing.
I step apart from the others scattered lightly across the dome. Their voices fade into the wind as I walk among the stones. My hand comes to rest on one, and the surface is cool, coarse, alive. It exhales into my palm, and the breath of the stone moves into me. It is not simply contact, it is a merging. The longer I remain, the more the boundary thins, until I feel the stone leaning back, meeting me.
Around me, the air stirs with its own rhythm. It does not come and go but circles, climbs, folds back on itself, weaving with the shape of the hill. A brush of coolness across my cheek carries with it the taste of mineral, as though the rock itself has risen into the air. My mouth waters, unexpected, as if drinking from some hidden spring. The breath of the cairn becomes my own, and within it, a memory flickers, of hands that placed these stones, of voices that once rose in chant, of firelit faces lifted to the sky.