He rose.
Flight, he realized, was not about escaping the ground. It was about trusting what you could not see. The condor had not fought the air. It had surrendered to it. It had found the invisible column of warmth and let itself be carried, not up, but through .
“You did not see a condor today, mijo,” he said softly.
Only the wind. Only the waiting. Only the eternal, patient hunger for the rising sun.
The old man listened, eyes half-closed, face weathered like the canyon walls. When Mateo finished, he was quiet for a long time. Then he smiled—a rare, cracked thing.