up the wooden steps and settled on the floor. She
pulled a thin blanket out of her backpack, wrapped
herself up, put her headphones in her ears, and lost herself in thought.
Finally, the long-awaited freedom! Brief as it was,
it made her feel like the queen of the world.
She wanted to breathe in that freedom and feel like she was on her own.
strong and confident. She enjoyed the fresh
air, the gusts of wind, the sky that peeked
through a crack in the roof, the music that made you feel like you
could do anything, and her fantasies about how she
would go to the city after graduation, to a model casting, how
she would be noticed by leading fashion designers, and her life would change, everything
7
will it be cool or even cooler… Such average
dreams, but for Lina they were an outlet and the most favorite
pastime.
When it started to get dark, she dozed off. The music
was still playing in her headphones, but she couldn’t hear it anymore.
After sleeping for a few hours, she woke up
to another loud musical splash in her ears. Lina idly
scooped up the wireless headphones in her hand and emptied them
into the pocket of her backpack. She turned off the music and adjusted
her backpack under her head, making herself more comfortable so that she could sleep farther
away, but then through the cracks in the wall of the house she saw a light, some
lights about a hundred meters away, almost in the middle of a mown field.
Lina got up, crawled to the wall on her knees
,and peered through the crack. «Damn, is there a fire or something? The field is burning for ho-
do! «was her first thought. Then she looked closer
then she saw the man in black. She didn’t
even have time to get scared, it all happened so fast —
an incomprehensible creature crawled out of the burning pit and spoke to the stranger.
From this distance, she could barely hear them, and the language
seemed incomprehensible, some seething and hissing sounds,
unpleasant, blocking her ears, getting stuck in her head…
The girl stopped listening, but
she couldn’t take her eyes off it. I kept thinking, Am I dreaming? Is this movie being filmed
?The creature was half a meter taller,
thicker and more massive than a human, its tail was constantly hitting
the ground with small pellets, it was fascinating to look at, and Lina