Peter Joins the Hashashin, Drinks The Secret Sauce That Turns Him Into The Old Man Of The Mountain

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Peter didn’t know what he was getting into.
He thought maybe it was going to be like joining a book club,
except with fewer muffins
and more robes.

The Hashashin stood near him like two tall question marks
who had finally agreed to stop asking questions.
One of them poured the “secret sauce”
into a funnel that looked like something
a medieval coffee shop would use
if they ever got sentimental.

Steam curled up out of it—
the kind of steam that smells like old libraries
and mildly forbidden ideas.

Peter smiled.
He always smiled when he was nervous
or when he felt his life heading toward
a chapter he didn’t remember writing.

They said the sauce would make him
the Old Man of the Mountain.

Peter didn’t know what that meant,
but he figured mountains probably needed
an old man now and then—
somebody to listen to the rocks complain
about erosion
and the weather’s bad attitude.

So he sat there,
waiting for the transformation
to do whatever transformations do
on slow afternoons.

And the Hashashin watched him gently—
the way you watch a caterpillar
who’s about to realize
it’s been a pilot this whole time.