A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
The path splits at midnight, and so do you.
Mist has poured off the hills since ten, smelling of peat smoke and bog myrtle. Your head torch carves a small white room out of it. Behind you the trance tent is a violet smudge. Ahead, a signpost leans out of the bracken: one arm left, down to the loch; one arm right, over the hill. Both say STANDING STONE.
Forty-five degrees. Sunrise at 7:02. On your back, in a hard case, are your pipes.
Nobody has heard you play them in eleven years. Not since a school games hall, when you were fifteen and the second part of a slow air simply left your fingers. You stood there with the drones roaring and two hundred faces waiting, then walked out the fire door, drones and all.
Tonight you'll play it through once, for the stone and nobody, before the sunrise set.
Your head torch flickers. Goes out.
In the dark, you step left.
In the dark, you step right.
Both are true. Follow both.
✦
LEFT · 12:20 a.m.
The shore path drops through birches to black water. Then the burn, roaring. The plank bridge is still there, but the water has risen to sheet across it, ankle-deep and loud, and halfway over, one hand on the rail, stands a woman in a hooded cloak with a laptop bag held over her head, laughing.
"Don't come out," she calls. "It's colder than it looks, and it looks very cold."
"What's in the bag?"
"A sunrise. Six hours of one. If it goes in the burn, a hundred and fifty people stand round a rock listening to sheep."
You step onto the planks anyway. The cold pours into your boots and every thought goes white. You take the bag; she keeps the rail and takes your wrist; you cross together, one plank at a time. On the far bank she wrings out the hem of her cloak, grey rings on black, and holds out a wet hand.
"Ailsa."
Your jaw chatters too hard to answer. High on the hill, something roars.
✦
RIGHT · 12:20 a.m.
The hill path climbs through heather so wet it soaks you to the thigh. Something bellows close by, long and hoarse. A stag. The rut has started.
Then the mist thins, and thins, and you step up out of it into the stars.
The glen below is full of cloud, level as a loch of milk, the trance tent glowing through it like a lamp under a sheet. Above you, the Milky Way, so thick it looks spilled.
On the cairn at the top of the pass sits a woman in a hooded cloak, a laptop bag on her knees, glaring at the sky.
"Please tell me the standing stone is down there."
"Somewhere in that."
"Then I'm coming with you. I took the scenic route. For an hour." Her torch beam swings down the slope and stops.
Fifty yards below, square in the middle of the only path down, a stag lifts his head. Antlers wide as a doorway. Breath smoking. Watching you both.
✦
LEFT · 2:40 a.m.
The bothy is four stone walls, a tin roof and a red door that sticks. Ailsa lights a candle stub in a jam jar. Your fingers are too numb to work the latches on your case.
"Right. Wet things off." She turns her back, unzips her cloak and holds it out behind her without looking. Underneath she's in a black thermal with a cropped tee pulled over it, the same grey mandalas as the cloak.
She nods at the case. "You play?"
"I carry them." Then, because the candle is the only light in the world, you tell her: the games hall, the slow air, the fire door.
Ailsa goes very still. The flame stands straight up between you.
"Play me the first part," she says quietly.
So you do, softly, on the practice chanter. Up to the turn. And there your fingers stop, the way they always do.
She reaches across and lays her palm flat on your breastbone.
"Breathe from here," she says. "Not from your fingers. And save the rest for the stone."
✦
RIGHT · 2:40 a.m.
The stag won't budge. You wait him out on the cairn, both inside Ailsa's cloak, because you're soaked to the thigh and she has decided that's that.
"When I was wee, my dad took me to a piping competition in a school games hall. A teenager played the most beautiful first part of a slow air I've ever heard, then stopped, stood a whole minute with the drones going, and walked out the fire door."
Your heart is hammering against her shoulder.
"I went home and asked for a practice chanter. It was the bravest thing I'd ever seen. Standing in front of everyone, not pretending. I put pipes in all my sets now. Recordings. I've never found a piper who'll play live at sunrise."
You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. Second time in your life.
Below, the stag roars once and walks off into the cloud.
✦
LEFT · 6:15 a.m.
The shore path runs out at the waterline. You scramble the weed-slick rocks, Ailsa with the laptop, you with the pipes. The mist is turning pearl. Her set starts at 6:30.
She slips. You catch the bag. She catches you.
"Forty-seven minutes to sunrise," she says. "Run."
✦
RIGHT · 6:15 a.m.
Her torch is dimming to amber, the slope pathless and white. You close your eyes and listen, the way you learned to tune drones at nine: for where a sound bends. There. Down and left, a generator's hum and a trance pad rolling off the water.
You take her hand. "This way."
✦
LEFT AND RIGHT · 6:31 a.m.
You come to the stone along the shore. You come to the stone down the hill. Either way, you step out of the same mist at the same moment, Ailsa's hand in yours.
The stone stands taller than two people, festoon lights strung from it to a pallet of speakers. A hundred and fifty dancers wait in blankets and cloaks. Tam, the sound man, throws up both arms. "Where've you been?"
"Both ways," Ailsa says, and plugs in.
She opens with a pad as wide as the loch, a slow arpeggio climbing through it, and at 138 the kick arrives. "Your drones sit near enough B-flat. So does this. There's a breakdown right on sunrise. It's yours if you want it."
You unzip the cloak to free your arms. Mist beads on the velvet of your tee like dew on a moth's wing. You fill the bag, strike in, three drones roar awake, and every head at the stone turns.
The first part goes out over the water. You feel the turn coming like the edge of a crag.
Behind the decks, Ailsa lays her palm flat on her own breastbone.
You breathe from there.
And your fingers keep going.
Into the second part, every note of it, while the kick drops back in and the trance lifts and the sun breaks through the mist in one long gold blade across the loch. Ailsa has stopped dancing. Both her hands are pressed over her mouth.
✦
Afterward the bag sighs empty with a long, comic groan. Tam takes over with something slow. Ailsa comes around the decks.
"The fire door," she says. "That was you."
"You told me," you say.
She tilts her head. "You told me."
Neither of you can say where.
She takes the cloak's zipper pull between two fingers, just holding it. "I've waited half my life to hear the end of that tune. Now I'd like to kiss the person who played it. Which way are you leaning?"
"Toward you," you say. "Yes."
She tastes of cold air and oatcakes. Her hands slide inside the cloak to your waist and draw you in until there's no mist between you at all.
Her tent is at the top of the field. There are two paths up to it. Later, neither of you can say which one you took.
✦
That afternoon you hang her cloak on the guy line to dry. The hem is stiff with burn water. And caught in the hood, though you're nearly sure you never climbed the hill, are three sprigs of purple heather.
From inside the tent, Ailsa calls you back. You leave the cloak to the wind, both paths in it, and go.
The cloak that walked both paths
Void Mandala is grey ring mandalas, large and small, tiled across a black field: quiet from across a misty field, endlessly detailed up close, and right at home at a trance sunrise. Ailsa's cloak, the one that came back from both paths, is the Void Mandala men's festival cloak ($250). Your one good shirt for the stone is the Void Mandala crushed velvet T-shirt ($60 in crushed velvet; $50 in poly jersey), and behind the decks Ailsa layers the Void Mandala cropped T-shirt ($40) over a long-sleeve thermal.
- Cloak: micro-mink poly outer · ultra-soft fluffy microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur · listed fabric weight 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL.
- Crushed velvet T-shirt: crushed velvet, 95% polyester / 5% spandex, 240 g/m² (also offered in 180 g/m² poly jersey and 190 g/m² cotton) · short sleeves · crew neck · regular fit, XS–5XL.
- Cropped T-shirt: microfiber, 95% polyester / 5% spandex, 180 g/m² · short raglan sleeves · bare-midriff crop · regular fit, XS–2XL.
Every piece is made to order, dye-sublimated so the mandalas stay crisp, and US shipping is free on orders of $70 or more. Find more for the glen in our men's cloaks · crushed velvet T-shirts · women's tops.
What should you wear to a festival in Scotland in September?
Dress for nights near 45°F, drifting mist and showers that come and go within the hour. Waterproof boots, a thermal base layer and a light top for dancing in the tent carry the evening, and a fleece-lined hooded cloak covers the walk between stages after midnight, when cold, damp air settles into the glen.
- The trance dress code, Highland edition: trance crowds love shimmer, flags and euphoric color. In a Scottish glen, keep the sparkle underneath and the warmth on top: crushed velvet catches the lasers, and monochrome mandala clothing reads sharp in mist and low light.
- Layer for wet, not just cold. Velvet or a cropped tee over a thermal for dancing, a rain shell in the daypack, a cloak for the 3 a.m. walk, and dry socks sealed in a zip bag.
- Treat the hill like a hill. Carry a head torch with spare batteries, stay on waymarked paths after dark, cross burns only at bridges, and give red deer stags a wide berth during the autumn rut.
Scotland's small glen gatherings aren't in our festival atlas yet, but two UK estate weekends share the cool, dewy nights: Houghton fills the forest and lake of Houghton Hall in Norfolk each early August, with nights of 50–55°F and heavy dew, and Gottwood brings a barn, forest and walled garden to Anglesey's Carreglwyd Estate in mid-June, with 48–52°F nights and sea wind; both lean house and techno.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cold in the Scottish Highlands in September?
Yes, especially after dark. September days in the Highlands often reach the low 60s°F, while clear nights in sheltered glens can fall into the 40s°F, and mist or drizzle makes the air feel colder still. Pack a thermal base layer, waterproof boots and a hooded, fleece-lined layer, and expect several seasons in one weekend.
When is midge season in Scotland?
Highland midge season runs from late May through September. These tiny biting flies swarm most at dawn and dusk on still, damp, cloudy days, and numbers usually drop as September nights turn colder, and a steady breeze keeps them away. Pack a midge head net, long sleeves and repellent, and pitch your tent somewhere breezy.
What is a bothy in Scotland?
A bothy is a simple shelter, often an old stone cottage, left unlocked for walkers to use free of charge. Many Scottish bothies are maintained by volunteers from the Mountain Bothies Association. Expect four walls, a roof and perhaps a fireplace and sleeping platform, but no beds, taps or electricity. Carry everything in, and carry everything out.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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