Take the leap

The army reaches the southern shore and stops. A hundred yojanas of open water, and nobody among them who can cross it. Hanuman sits with the rest. He has crossed impossible ground before and none of it is available to him, because a curse taken in childhood carried off the memory of what he is.

It is Jambavan, the old bear king, who turns to him. He does not give Hanuman anything. He adds nothing. He simply recites the man back to himself — whose son he is, what he did as a child, what he has always been able to do. The power was never the missing piece. The memory of it was.

That is the whole moment. Hanuman stands, and grows, and the mountain sinks under his feet, and he goes. Everything he is remembered for happens on the far side of that jump.

The tee renders the launch itself: the ground blown out in a ring of dust and rock, the figure already gone, the trail of it still hanging in the air. Always remember you have all the powers, Hanuman. Just trust, and take the leap.