In the hours before the night rituals of Timkat, processions move like a slow, breathing river through the streets — priests carrying tabots beneath embroidered canopies, drums pulsing in steady cadence, incense drifting in thin blue threads.

Worshipers walk alongside, singing ancient hymns that rise and fall with the crowd’s sway. In the midst of this movement, her face holds a quiet intensity — devotion illuminated, the echo of centuries reflected in her gaze.