You notice it only because
the bells fall out of rhythm.
Too slow.
Too sharp.
As if something in the valley
is learning how to breathe.
The snow hangs in the air.
Not falling.
Not drifting.
Just waiting.
The villagers say
the Rauhnächte aren’t over yet.
That something slipped through the last bell-ring
and never went back.
You walk the Harder trail,
where the cliffs stare down like judges
and the pines creak in warning.
Then you hear it.
A dry, hollow clack.
The sound of wood
splitting bone.
You turn.
Something stands on the path.
Tall.
White.
Too thin to be human.
A neck that bends like a broken pole,
draped in rags that move
without wind.
A beak.
Long.
Carved.
Opening and closing
in slow, deliberate rhythm.
The snow around it
melts in long vertical lines
as if the creature is so cold
it burns.
Old stories whisper its name:
Schnabelgeiss.
The eater of silence.
The one that snaps
the words out of your mouth.
You step back.
It steps closer.
And from above you,
on the cliff face,
a groan of stone
shifts.
The Hardermannli’s shadow—
the monk who chased sin up this mountain
and became its prisoner—
leans forward.
Not carved.
Not frozen.
Listening.
The beak tilts toward the cliff.
The cliff tilts back.
And for one impossible heartbeat,
you understand:
One devours sound.
The other devours confession.
Together,
they have come to measure
what part of you
still belongs to winter.
The beak opens.
The cliff face cracks.
And the air folds inward
like a verdict
finally spoken.
Tonight, the Schnabelgeiss walks.
And the Hardermannli watches.
And both remember
every sin
you thought the snow had buried.
This time it is real.
❓ If a beaked shadow waited outside your door—
would you run, or dare to ask what it remembers of you?
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