One morning,
The mountains resigned.
They handed in their notice
to the sky and said,
"We are tired of standing still."
The rivers laughed.
The trees thought it was a joke.
The clouds,
who never trusted mountains anyway,
simply drifted by.
But at dawn the next day,
the mountains were gone.
One was seen
walking across a desert,
carrying snow on its shoulders.
Another sat beside the sea,
listening to waves
it had spent millions of years
watching from afar.
A small mountain
climbed a larger one
just to see
what the view was like.
The world panicked.
Maps became fiction.
Compasses lost confidence.
Geography teachers
had nervous breakdowns.
But the mountains?
They had never been happier.
For ages,
everyone admired their strength.
No one asked
whether they wished to go somewhere.
And isn't that strange?
How often we praise things
for enduring.
For remaining.
For staying exactly where they are.
As if movement
were a kind of failure.
As if roots
were more noble than wings.
Years later,
when the mountains finally returned,
they were different.
Their cliffs carried stories.
Their valleys held laughter.
Their stones smelled faintly
of oceans and distant forests.
And when people asked
Why had they left,
The mountains replied:
"Because even giants deserve
to discover what lies
beyond the horizon."
Then they stood still again
not because they had to,
but because they had chosen to.