Arc Over Snow

We arrive mid-calculation, frost biting the knuckles as the shutter clicks again. The arc burns itself across the sky like a vow half-kept, luminous paths tallying a departure no one authorized. Mountains stack and breathe in the blue distance, patient as witnesses who never testify. I steady the tripod, feeling the tremor of altitude and distrust. Snow accepts the footprints without complaint, then offers a question scratched by a gloved hand: Where Vojta? I have learned to read snow the way others read scripture—carefully, with hope that resists correction. Maps try to remember routes that faith forgot. A tin mug cools beside a cairn stacked with deliberate piety; stones don’t lie, but they don’t answer either. The pole waits like a penitent, the camera like an altar that believes in proof. There’s a proverb up here: the mountain keeps what it loves. Tonight the sky rewrites that line in light, and every long exposure feels watched, audited by the dark. We keep the vigil anyway. Vojta does not return, and the question remains sharply legible by morning.