A hush drapes the slopes of Mulanje as snow-soft silence muffles each step, where distant footfalls echo like whispered prayers. The wind carries a breath from the tea fields, threading through bamboo groves while chimes flicker like frost on windowpanes. Overhead, morning birds stitch silver threads into the gray, their calls barely rising above the organ drone of the earth. This is the stillness that settles the heart when the world grows too loud, a quiet that unwraps slowly, as aching joints