Jerusalem is a city of fire. Tzfat is the city of air, and it is the place where we go when we can no longer breathe
When Eliyahu stands at a distance, just beyond the stream, and closes his eyes slightly, he sees the mountain as a great face. The craggy rock that juts out just above his cave is the nose, the drooping grass is a beard surrounding the small, puckered mouth that is the entrance to his cave.
Small and round, the entrance is barely noticeable from the outside; all that time ago, he only discovered it because he was desperate, frozen by rain, eyes trained for any kind of shelter. He had crouched down, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled. “Shemaaaaa!”
He listened.
An echo came back to him, faint but true. Shema, shema, shema.
SomeOne, then, was listening to his prayers, and had carved a new home for him in the mountainside.
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