All moved forward, and the beam moved, and Nature smiled, proud of those who do not fail her and endure her trials.
Kostya stood next to Gora, out of breath. His face was badly twisted from exertion, but happiness peeked out through the rest. His voice was quiet, but confident and satisfied: "Now they won't fight, my friend. Now they know what friendship means."
And then he remembered that Hora had gone out of the block that night, and before that he had ordered a change of posts in the mining sector. He'd been gone for hours, and he'd come back out of breath. And now his eyes looked special, as if no one could know what he now knew.
You couldn't mistake that look for anything else… Calculating, purposeful, intelligent....
Gora smiled slightly with the tips of his lips and, with a nod to Kostya, headed for the
exit of the sector.
It's been another half a month.
Today Masha got up earlier than her grandparents and sat down on the bench by the porch.
Everything was green in the neighborhood, and the sun was about to come out. There was a slight breeze, and for a moment it seemed that everything was fine and there was nothing to grieve about, but I didn't want to think so, because it wasn't.
She put her hand on her stomach, feeling what was left of her husband. She had thought many times about what to name the child, but they couldn't come to a single decision, she wanted him, Rafael, to like it.
"If it's a girl, it's Christina. – thought Masha. – He liked that name. But if it's a boy… He never told me what his favorite boys' names were. He never told me anything, not even his own. So what do I do with that?"
She closed her eyes and remembered how she'd met him, how she'd first seen his eyes, how she'd breathed in his scent. Her heart had beaten like never before, and the air had felt not just different, but like nothing she'd ever experienced before.
She remembered the first time she had said "goodbye" to him, smiled and went to her soma… It felt as if the Lord, the Virgin Mary and Jesus were all looking at her, at her reactions and feelings. And she didn't want to think about it, she just wanted to believe. Believe that this is love, the love that will be with her for the rest of her life.
And the first time they kissed. "It's good that he didn't see my face," Masha thought, because she felt herself blushing then, and so she pressed herself against him at once, close to him. And that warmth, which went round and round, rattled like a native. Then she realized that this was it, her happiness, it had come not just once, to stay for life.