The city lights still flickered beneath the window when Lilla woke up. It wasn’t the alarm that pulled her from sleep, but that empty, weightless moment before dawn when the body still longs to rest, yet the mind has already begun to wander. The cold blue reflections of the billboards dissolved across the ceiling like ink dropped into water. The phone blinked again. New messages. New deadlines.

She sat up and touched her feet to the floor. The coolness of the wood sobered her—the only natural surface in the apartment, the only thing reminding her that once, this place too had been forest; trees had breathed here, roots had clung to the earth.  

The coffee maker clicked, and the hiss of water briefly covered the silence that was not silence at all, but noise—the noise of thoughts, of unspoken words, of the rest that was always postponed.  

At the office, she had long since learned how to write a message that could convince anyone.  

But life, she thought, came with no brief.  

Lilla let out a soft laugh at her own cynical thought and poured coffee into her mug.  

The bitter aroma, which had saved so many of her mornings, now felt darker than usual—like a deep well from which no bucket could be pulled back up.

The phone buzzed again: “Today 11:00 – pitch meeting for the orange juice campaign.”  

Orange. A word that once meant sunlight. Now just a shade in a brand guideline.

She adjusted her blazer in front of the mirror.  

A determined woman looked back at her—precise eyeliner, controlled smile.  

And yet her eyes wandered, as if searching for something behind the reflection.  

“It’s going to be fine,” she said aloud, giving her thought a body, and left, closing the door behind her.

In the subway, a poster hung above her: “Feel the Power of Nature!”—a single droplet surrounded by flowers. Lilla smiled.  

A year ago, she had worked on a campaign just like that.  

The power of nature, she thought—thank you, I’m doing just fine without it.  

Nature looked good on screens, in slides, between colors.  

In reality, it was just insects, pollen, and mud.

The day moved forward with sharp precision.  

Meetings orbited each other like planets, drawn by predictable gravity.  

By afternoon, a familiar knot had settled into her shoulder—part old injury, part new tension.  

When the elevator doors closed and she was finally alone in the mirrored steel, she sighed.  

Her own voice sounded foreign in that box—like a message recorded on the wrong frequency.

By the time she headed home, the city had changed faces.  

The lights were deeper, the echo of footsteps softer.  

Her phone buzzed. Not work this time.  

“Lilla, please come home. Grandma is unwell.”  

One sentence. One call.  

A whole life folding into a small piece of paper, crumpled and tucked into a pocket.

The image of the village train station came to her—wooden benches, golden letters faded on the signs, the faint scent of wild raspberries at the platform’s edge.  

She stared at the screen—departures, delays, schedules. Everything in its place, yet as if seen through a thin veil.  

She bought a ticket for the next train, and in the drafty silence of the waiting hall, she thought of Grandma’s garden: lavender and rosemary, and that strange deep-green glow of late afternoons, when the air itself seemed to pause and everything grew quieter than thought.

On the platform, the wind lifted her hair.  

She breathed in the cool air, and for a fleeting moment, it was as if warmth drifted toward her from another time—a kitchen’s gentle heat, the hiss of a teapot, the slow ribbon of honey.  

“Basil isn’t just for pasta, my dear,” Grandma’s voice whispered, opening a world with a single phrase.  

Lilla shook her head.  

She didn’t want to remember.  

Memory was dangerous—it made her miss things that no coffee, no project, no new phone could replace.

Outside the window, the city receded like a rewound film: gray blocks turned into fields, fields into forests, forests into the outline of mountains in the dark.  

Reaching into her coat pocket to find the ticket, her fingers brushed something small and familiar—an old brown bottle she must have received long ago, maybe as part of a gift set.  

The label’s corner was worn.  

“Lavender.”  

She exhaled softly.  

“What a coincidence.”

Across from her, an old man read the newspaper, his glasses sliding down his nose.  

A mother rocked a child whose head rested against her shoulder.  

Lilla gazed at the little bottle.  

She knew it meant nothing—and yet it felt like a crack in logic, a small fracture in the bridge of her carefully built day.  

She didn’t open it. Not yet.

In the village, the air had a sound.  

It didn’t hum—it breathed.  

Stepping off the train, she immediately noticed the stars—stars she had long stopped looking for in the city.  

Along the path to the house, the gravel crunched softly beneath her feet.  

The door creaked—the same sound from her childhood.  

That sameness felt like safety, as though the house couldn’t change until she returned.

The kitchen was half-lit.  

A kettle puffed gently on the stove.  

Grandma sat at the table, hands wrapped around a teacup.  

Her eyes smiled, though her hands trembled.  

“You’re here, my dear.”  

Her voice hadn’t broken—only thinned, like fresh ice on a stream.  

Lilla dropped her bag and embraced her.  

The memory of her scent rushed back instantly: lavender and bread crust, sun-warmed tablecloths, orange peels drying on the radiator.  

“I made you tea,” Grandma said, reaching for the small brown bottles on the shelf.  

“Lemon balm, a drop of orange, a little lavender. Not much—just enough to tame the evening.”

“Grandma, you know these… well, they don’t really heal,” Lilla said gently, trying to place her voice somewhere between kindness and firmness.  

Grandma laughed.  

“Of course not. Scents don’t fix your life for you. They just remind you.”

“Remind me of what?”  

“That living is good. Breathing is good. Moving slowly is good. The same light that’s in the plants is also in you.”  

She stirred the tea.  

“And if sometimes you forget, a drop helps you notice what was already there.”

Lilla leaned over the cup.  

The first sip surprised her—not the taste, but the time.  

As if the sip lasted longer than a second, spreading warmth that wasn’t euphoria or relief, just… space.  

“It’s good,” she said, surprised by her own honesty.  

Grandma looked out the window, where the garden blended into dusk.  

“Tomorrow we’ll go out,” she said.  

“The earth is still asleep, but if you walk softly, you can hear what the rosemary dreams.”

“Grandma, rosemary doesn’t dream.”

“You’re right,” Grandma nodded, serious now.  

“You do. And what’s born in you comes alive out there. That’s how the world works—from within, outward.”

That night, Lilla didn’t wake before the alarm.  

She woke between dreams, as if standing in a hallway between two rooms.  

The dark wasn’t frightening; it was deep, like a lake where moss hands sway at the bottom.  

And in the darkness, there was scent—not of the kitchen or the tea, but of forest: mist and pine, dew and something oily, foreign, yet familiar warmth.  

The wind whispered—not in words, but in something older than words.  

Lilla reached for it—and woke up.

This dawn was different.  

The air felt textured, alive.  

On the dresser lay the small bottle from her coat.  

She picked it up and turned it in the light.  

The lavender letters shimmered.  

Finally, she opened it.  

The scent didn’t rush at her; it waited, like a friend at the door.

“One drop helps you notice what’s already there,” Grandma’s voice echoed from the past.  

Lilla touched the cap’s rim to her wrist—one faint dot, a mark on her skin.  

She breathed deeply.  

Nothing happened.  

No lightning. No revelation.  

She made coffee.  

The morning looked the same—except the knot in her shoulder didn’t settle so quickly this time.  

It had gotten lost somewhere between her collarbone and her heart.

“Let’s go to the garden,” Grandma said later.  

The grass was still wet; dew clung to the leaves as if someone had written tiny messages on them.  

The rosemary stood in dark green silence, lavender still asleep, marigolds swaying in the wind.  

Lilla bent down, rubbed a rosemary leaf between her fingers.  

The scent turned warm and clean—like a thought so simple it made complexity unnecessary.

“Do you feel it?” Grandma asked.

“What?”

“That it isn’t outside.”

Lilla didn’t answer.  

A rooster cried in the distance; the village slowly joined the morning.  

Grandma led her among the beds and pulled from the earth an old wooden chest—worn, scratched, but alive.  

Inside were bottles, jars, yellowed papers, and recipes.  

The sight was so intimate that Lilla almost felt dizzy.

“I’ll leave this to you, when the time is right,” Grandma said softly.  

“Not so you’ll believe what I believed, but so you’ll find what you already know.”

Lilla patted the box gently, as if it were breathing.  

The wood hummed faintly beneath her fingers.  

Somewhere deep inside, something stirred—a tiny, invisible motion, like a root choosing a new direction underground.

And though she was still the same woman who smiled at the poster in the subway, and the same professional who polished her presentations to perfection, that small movement was enough.  

The day no longer unfolded the same way.  

The light fell differently; the noise seemed farther away.  

And in the air—like a fragile bridge between two shores—something hovered, something for which she still had no name.

The train schedule back to the city was the same.  

Tomorrow would come as usual.  

But Lilla suddenly knew she was in no rush.  

The thought wasn’t a choice—just a drop.  

And as her grandmother had said, sometimes a single drop is enough to remember:  

what you seek was always within you.

The train did not hurry.

This was unusual. Lilla was accustomed to things hurrying — the underground, deadlines, coffee that was always too hot and yet cooled too quickly. But this train, which had left a nameless rural station in the afternoon, moved through the hills as though it knew there was nowhere it needed to be. As though the journey itself wished to rest.

She took her seat by the window.

Bag on the rack, journal in her lap, the linen pouch at her feet — inside it, Éva's parting gifts: basil, rose, bergamot, vetiver. The bottles clinked softly against one another with the rhythm of the carriage, and Lilla listened to this sound. A small, glassy chime. Like a sentence spoken without words.

* * *

Beyond the window, the country changed slowly.

First only the hills grew taller, the trees more dense. Then the villages thinned — whiter walls, deeper verandas, a different shape to the window frames. Small things. Barely noticeable. But the skin feels what the eye does not see: the air had changed.

Heavier.

But not oppressive — rather full. As though the air here did not pass through the landscape but had soaked into it. As though the mountains had drawn in the centuries and were breathing them back out, slowly, patiently, the way only those breathe who have the time.

Lilla pressed her forehead to the glass.

The cold was good.

* * *

The train stopped at the border.

Not for long — a few minutes, a uniformed man walking the corridor, pausing at a few compartments, nodding. But in those few minutes something happened that Lilla could not have explained: the stillness was different from that of stations. Not waiting — crossing. As though the train itself knew it was passing through something, and needed a moment's silence for this.

She looked out.

Beyond the border, a white horse stood in a field, motionless, at the edge of the mist. It was not looking at the train — it simply stood, the mist surrounding it as though this were its natural frame, the one it had been born into.

Lilla did not know why, but she reached for her journal.

She did not write anything. She opened it, looked at the empty page, then closed it.

It was enough to know: this is where it begins.

* * *

Transylvania does not welcome a person.

It absorbs them.

This was not frightening — only different from what Lilla knew. In the city, everything welcomes and repels at once: advertisements, noise, faces passing one another without touching. Space there is full, yet a person feels empty within it. Here it was the reverse. The landscape was sparse, quiet, almost uninhabited — and yet something in it was full, something Lilla had no name for, though her chest knew it.

Mist sat in the valleys.

Not the morning mist that lifts when the sun arrives — but the kind that belongs. That does not want to leave, that stays because it knows it is at home here. Above it, the firs stood dark and still, like those who have been watching for a long time but do not ask questions.

Lilla breathed in.

The air held resin and wet stone and something else — something she had no word for. Perhaps the scent of silence. Perhaps of time, which here did not hurry.

* * *

In the compartment, beside her, sat an elderly man, bent over his newspaper. He was not reading — he held it before him like a shield against the world. His boots carried mud, his coat the dust of the mountains. He was local — Lilla felt this immediately, not from his clothes but from the way he sat: not stiff, not relaxed, but the way a tree stands in the wind. Rooted.

He looked up once.

Saw Lilla, her bag, the journal in her lap.

'First time in these parts? he asked. Not curiously — more as one states the weather.'

'Yes, said Lilla.'

The man nodded, as though this confirmed something he had already known.

'The mountains notice, he said. First-timers, they look at them differently.'

'How do they look at them?'

The man was quiet for a moment. Or not quiet — waiting, for the words to arrive in their own time.

'More carefully, he said at last. The familiar ones do not need watching so closely.'

Then he raised his newspaper again.

The conversation was over — but something of it remained in the air, the way a scent remains when its source has gone.

* * *

By the time the train pulled into the station, dusk had fallen.

Few people on the platform. A woman with a basket, a boy with a bicycle, two soldiers sharing a cigarette. The lamp posts burned yellow, and their light was not white like the city's — it was warm, as though the bulbs held not electricity but embers.

Lilla lifted her bag from the rack.

In the linen pouch the bottles clinked again — the same small glassy sound. But its meaning was different now. Not departure — arrival.

She stepped off the carriage.

The air struck her face — colder than she had expected, but not unpleasant. Sharp and clean, carrying what the city never taught her: the smell of a place as itself. Fir and wet stone and old timber and something sweet, perhaps wild raspberries, perhaps mountain clover — all at once, yet each distinct, like an orchestra in which every instrument can be heard.

She stopped.

Not because she did not know which way to go.

But because for a moment she simply wanted to stand — here, on this platform, in this air — and let the arrival be real. Not in thought, not in plan. In the body. Feet on stone, lungs in mountain air, skin in the cold.

The train behind her slowly moved off.

Lilla did not turn back.

* * *

From the station building, an old woman emerged selling walnuts in paper bags. She stopped before Lilla and looked at her — slowly, top to bottom, not impolitely, but with the simple attention of old people who are no longer afraid of being seen to look.

'You have come a long way, she said.'

'Yes, said Lilla.'

'From a garden, she added — because it was the truth, and here on this platform, the truth seemed simple.'

The woman studied her for a moment. Then she pressed a bag of walnuts into her hand and asked nothing for it.

'The first night, the silence is hard to get used to, she said. But then a person realises it was always what they wanted to hear.'

She turned back towards the building.

Lilla stood with the walnuts in her hand and watched until the woman disappeared through the door. Then she looked up.

The mountains above the town stood dark and silent, their outlines against the darkening sky sharp as handwriting set down long ago, which has not faded since.

Lilla read it.

She did not understand every word.

But she knew: this was where she needed to be.

* * *

That evening, in her room — simple, white-walled, a patchwork quilt on the bed, a geranium in the window — she opened her journal.

At the top of the page she wrote only this:

'Today I crossed a border. I don't yet know which one.'

Then she set down the pen and turned off the lamp.

Beyond the window the mountains stood in darkness.

But their darkness was not frightening — it was more like closed eyes: not empty, but turned inward. Full of something that does not show in the light.

Lilla breathed in.

Resin and wet stone and the night's own nameless scent.

She slept.

The mountains did not move.

But they were watching.

There are evenings when the house grows quiet. Marcsi has already put away the last of the essential oil vials—the tart calm of frankincense and the soft embrace of lavender still linger in the air—and I just sit in the twilight, thinking about the next chapter. It often occurs to me then: do we receive our souls as a finished gift, or is it something we must work for?

Many believe the soul is a constant, untouched light within us. But as I write more about the mountains and human fates, I realize the soul is more like a piece of art in progress. It is like metal, heated by the fire of our decisions and shaped by the hammer strikes of our experiences.

The Weight of Choice and the Echo

We often say, "from dust we came, and to dust we shall return." Our bodies are indeed fleeting, fragile vessels that crack over time. But what dwells within does not remain unchanged. Every single "yes" and every difficult "no" leaves a groove on this inner map.

There are no moments without consequence. Every action has an invisible echo that ripples through our lives. We might run from a bad decision or hide it from the world’s eyes, but the soul does not forget. It is that quiet accountant who records every debt and every moment of grace. Not as a punishment, but because these weights are what make us real.

The Spark We Kindle

When I look at my little girl—seeing her pure, untouched gaze and feeling the infinite love that surrounds her—I realize our greatest responsibility. We teach her how to forge her own spark. Not with our words, but by how we stand within the storms ourselves.

The soul’s authenticity begins where we stop making excuses and acknowledge: yes, this is my path, my decision, my burden, or my glory.

The Scent That Remains

Just as with essential oils, where the greatest pressure and the purest distillation bring forth the deepest scent, the human soul becomes mature through lived experiences. In the end, what will matter is not how perfect we were, but how much life, how many real decisions, and how many accepted consequences we condensed into this earthly existence.

Because the mountain won’t let go, and the scent of the soul does not evaporate without a trace. With every decision, you forge that inner spark—which is yours alone—a little brighter or perhaps a little darker.

Have you ever felt, after a hard decision, that something changed deep inside? Do you believe we shape the weight of our own souls, or is there something within us that time cannot touch?

Days at the Amazon warehouse. Noise, pace, expectations. The rhythm of the conveyor belt seeps into you—you don’t even notice, but your body is already adjusting to that tempo. You get home, and somewhere deep down, the belt is still moving.

Then, on Saturday, we went to a park. Marcsi and I. We sat on a bench.

We didn’t do anything. We just sat there.

The chirping of the birds didn’t intrude—it was just quietly there, like an old friend. The noise of the city remained somewhere far away. Marcsi was beside me. Nothing else was needed.

And then, almost imperceptibly, something let go. Or rather, I let something go.

For the first time in days.

It didn't require meditation; it didn't require a program. A bench, a woman, birdsong. That was all.

I often say that the soul is not loud. It doesn't demand itself. It waits in silence until we, too, become quiet enough to meet it. On that bench, my body finally understood what my mind had known for a long time.

When was the last time you had a moment like this?