#champaca writes

For someone who grew up in the perpetual steam bath of Kuala Lumpur, Maya was profoundly unprepared for the knife-edge cold of Taipei winter. Stepping out of Taoyuan Airport, the air did not just feel chilly, but it felt like a physical shock. As if a thin, sharp blade had slid through her cotton light jacket and stolen the breath from her lungs. It was a complete and utter betrayal of her body’s expectations. Back home, the air was a thick, fragrant blanket of a heavy blend of flowers from the Indian stalls, exhaust fumes, and the distant, greasy scent of satay from a night market. Here, the air was thin, sterile, and carried only a faint, metallic tang of impending rain. It held no warmth, no familiar spices and no life to her.

She pulled the jacket tighter, a futile gesture against an invasion. This was the cold she had only ever seen in movies, the kind that made actors’ breath bloom into ghostly clouds. Seeing her own faint mist breath in the gloomy airport lights felt alien and deeply unsettling. Her skin, which was accustomed to a warm, damp climate, prickled with alarm at the unfamiliar cold, making her feel like a shocked tropical plant. This raw, wild chill was a stark contrast to the safe, manufactured cold that she knew back in Kuala Lumpur.

Her quest, which had felt so urgent and mystical under the equatorial sun, now seemed like a foolish delusion conjured by an entity completely out of her element. Yet, the conviction that had propelled her here was born from a certainty that had cut through her everyday life in Kuala Lumpur.

Two weeks prior, the dreams of the misty, sulphurous mountain had become a nightly torment. Frustrated and yearning for clarity, Maya had done something that felt both hypocritical and instinctive. In the silence of her apartment, surrounded by imported crystals and sage that she sold to others, she closed her eyes. This time, it was not to channel universal energy but to send a specific, desperate plea into the void. “Please show me,” she whispered, not to any god she knew, but to the ancient, nameless ancestor who haunted her sleep. “Please continue to talk to me. Guide me. Show me the path to know you better.”

The universe, it seemed, had a sense of irony. Later that week, a regular client, an elderly Chinese woman, had come for a tarot reading. When it was over, instead of cash, the woman pressed a small, cool object into Maya’s palm. “This is for you, my dear. It has energy that doesn’t belong to me anymore,” she said, with her knowing eyes. It was an antique jade pendant, its surface worn smooth by time, carved with a pattern that looked like swirling winds. It felt oddly familiar in her hands, as if recognising its own shape in her grip.

“Will you be available next week, my dear?” The lady pressed her hand on Maya’s palm, as nurturing as she has always been around Maya.

“No, I’ll be in Taiwan by then,” Maya smiled, not sure if she was excited or nervous about her trip.

“Ah, wonderful. You don’t want to miss your chance to visit Yangmingshan, then.” The lady smiled discreetly, with a face carved with wisdom, before she took her leave.

The client’s words hung in the air long after the door had clicked shut. Maya stood still with the woman’s discreet smile replaying in her mind. It was not a casual tourist suggestion; it felt like a pinpointed recommendation, delivered with a knowing certainty that kept nudging her heart.

Yangmingshan.

The name landed like a key sliding into a lock. It lit something in her. A cold shiver that was not of the room’s temperature, traced its way down her spine. This was no coincidence. The universe, which usually communicated in vague symbols and intuitive nudges, had just spoken with startling clarity. This was definitely a sign from the universe.

Driven by a sudden, electric urgency, she crossed the room to her laptop. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, typing the name of the place. The screen was filled with images of rolling green hills, hiking trails wreathed in mist, and most strikingly, plumes of white steam rising from cracked, grey earth—sulphur vents. Her breath paused. The landscape was a perfect mirror of her dreams. This was a mist-shrouded mountain. This was the source of the sulphurous scent that felt so unnervingly familiar.

The voice, sharp and concerned, sliced through the veil of her thoughts. “Maya! Are you alright?”

Maya blinked, the world snapped back into a harsh, hyper-real focus. Mr Wen, their earnest tour guide, was peering at her, his brow furrowed against the biting wind. Behind him, the rest of the small hiking group was a mix of eager tourists from the Philippines, Korea, and a few couples from Japan. Some were shuffling their feet, eager to continue towards the warmth of the Visitor Centre.

“I’m…I’m fine,” Maya managed, her voice a thin wisp stolen by the mountain air. “Just…catching my breath.” It was a pathetic lie. Her breath was not lost, but it had been taken, replaced by the overwhelming, silent weight of the revelation pressing down on her.

The name of the place had been mystical in her mind, yet the reality was both grander and more imposing than what she had thought. The landscape was a study of contradictions. Lush, green valleys rolled away below, but here, on the higher trails, the vegetation was stunted and hardy, clinging to life in the sulphurous air. Trails of steam, the breath of the living earth, hissed from fumaroles, painting the cold air with rotten-egg scent of geothermal activity. As a place, it was raw and primal, a world away from the curated spiritual aesthetic of her Kuala Lumpur practice.

The hike to the Visitor Centre had been a physical ordeal.

Each step on the rough path was a battle against a cold that seeped through her inadequate layers, a cold that felt personal, as if an ancient guardian was testing her resolve. Mr Wen’s cheerful commentary about the park’s unique ecology and volcanic geology had faded into a distant hum. Maya’s entire being was focused on the internal pull, a stretched string in her chest drawing her forward, towards something that she could not name but desperately needed to find.

The Visitor Centre was a modern haven of warmth. While the others flocked to the coffee machine or the café for food to fill their stomach, Maya found herself gravitating towards the history of the mountain. From the formation of the volcanoes, and there, she found it.

“The Ketagalan People.”

The first aborigines of the Taipei basin. A black-and-white photograph showed faces that were proud and strong, their features holding a familiar echo that made Maya’s heart clench. She read the plaques, her fingers trailing over the glass as if she could touch the words and absorb them through her skin. They were a plains tribe, skilled hunters and farmers, their culture was rich in animist beliefs, and deeply connected to this very land, to its spirits and its seasons. And then, the final devastating line: their language was now extinct. Assimilated, displaced, forgotten by the relentless march of history.

A profound, inexplicable grief welled up in her, so sudden and sharp that it brought tears to her eyes. This was not a detached sadness of reading a lost civilisation in a textbook; this was a personal, aching loss. It was a feeling of arriving at a grand feast, only to find the chairs were empty and the food had turned to dust. The name Ketagalan echoed in her soul, a bulb that lit up in her chest she never knew she possessed. This was it. The ancient ancestors that kept haunting her in her dream, that she kept praying to connect with, that whenever she tried to get some clues from other tarot readers, these ancient ancestors refused to open up to others. This was a part of her that she had never been taught to name; she finally found that it belonged to them.

The descent began as the group retraced their steps along the ridgeline trail. But for Maya, the return journey was an entirely different world. The mountain was no longer just a geological wonder; it was a graveyard, a temple, a hometown. Every steaming vent was no longer a tourist attraction but the breath of her ancestor. The wind whistling through the Silver grass was not just wind; it was the whisper of a language she would never hear, carrying stories she would never know.

The air grew colder still. A faint, wet drizzle began, and the group hurried their pace, pulling hoods tight. But Maya lagged behind, as her feet felt heavy and rooted. The drizzle turned to sleet, stinging her cheeks. The cold began to bite deeper, with sharpness that made her eyes water. And then, a new sensation, a soft, silent kiss on her cheek. Then another on her outstretched hand. She looked up, her breath catching in her throat.

Snow.

Tiny, perfect flakes drifted from the heavy sky, meandering on the still air. They were the quietest thing she had ever witnessed. It was a gentle, silent miracle. She stopped walking, mesmerised by the view, and the outside noise was finally, completely shut out. This was the silence from her dream.

And in the heart of the swirling white, the air itself seemed to coalesce. The mist and snow drew together, weaving a form from the fabric of the mountain. A figure materialised, translucent yet undeniable, a few yards down the path.

It was the woman from her dream.

She stood proud and serene with features possessing a familiar elegance that made Maya’s heart ache. She was wearing the magnificent cloak, no longer a dream-image but a vision woven from the mist, snow, and ancient memory. The patterns swirled with a life of their own, telling stories of wind and river, of mountains and harvest that they had in their past lives.

The woman did not speak.

 Her presence washed over Maya as a homecoming. It was a feeling of having been cloaked your whole life, and finally it was lifted up, silently open for your vision. It was a reconnection of a thread severed by centuries, now tied back together with the gentlest knots.

The figure held out her hand, palm up, not to touch Maya, but to gesture. Her movement was fluid, a slow sweep that encompassed everything. She pointed her graceful fingers towards the snowflakes settling on Maya’s hair, then towards the trails of steam rising from the sulphurous vents below—the meeting of fire and ice. Finally, she gestured towards Maya herself, her hand pausing over her own heart.

The message was not heard, but felt, and imparted directly into Maya’s soul.

“This. All of this. The heat that rises from the core of the earth, the cold that falls from the heavens. The silence that exists between them. This land. This is not a place you simply visit. This is a place you remember. This is your heritage. You are the mountain’s breath, and the winter’s quiet. You are a child of the forgotten tribe—Ketagalan—and here was your homeland.”

Warm tears against her cold skin poured down Maya’s cheeks. They were not tears of sadness, but of a profound and overwhelming sense of acceptance and belonging. The hollow space within her, the one she had tried to fill with New Age spirituality, was suddenly and completely occupied. She had found her ancestor. And in doing so, she had found a part of herself she never knew was lost. She stood there, a woman from the eternal summer, being cloaked in the silent, sacred snow of her ancestors.