Trilogy of Dhana and the Earth. Book one. End of the world. Andrey Prudkovskii
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in our country? Snow and five degrees below zero.
And so I gave birth on a cloak from a seat, and on top a sheet for cleanliness. However, I was not cold. This work is so hard! In the intervals between contractions, I reviled him for nothing. But he didn’t pay attention, even helped me a bit, adopted a child, tied an umbilical cord, wiped it with snow. And immediately gave him that stupid name. It sounded somehow differently in his gibberish language, but it seemed to me like Radek.
Morning after childbirth. Sunrise over the road.
Then he drove us back in the car. I warmed up, calmed down, and thought that my Rashka was not too guilty. How could he know about our customs? He did as was customary for their tribe. And the fact that I trusted him was completely my own fault. Anyway, it all ended well. The baby is healthy, and so am I. Maybe in the hospital there are all kinds of harmful microbes, and even more of them than in the snow in the forest.
So everything is fine with us now. I rested a couple of weeks – and again to work. In the morning I feed, decant the remainder, and while I am not at home, he feeds the child once. At lunch I come to feed and decant again, and there it’s not far from the end of the working day!
But here is what I dream about! For a long time I, Masha, was not at home. I think now with a child I will definitely be given a great vacation in the summer, and I will come. And I’ll bring all my dear ones to meet you.
See you! Your happy little sister, Alexandra.
Raa’s Notes on Life in the Land of Demons
Mysterious are customs in the land of demons. Everyone, except children and the elderly, are obliged to go to some kind of “work” every day. I tried to understand why this “work” was so attractive, that for the sake of it you should leave a hungry crying baby, but I did understand – neither from my Alexandra’s explanations, nor from her thoughts. Maybe she herself did not understand this.
Without her, my son cried, but I knew what to do, because I saw how our women do it. It was necessary to introduce the baby to the four truths of the nutrition of a real person. My demoness was not a real person, and I had to do it myself. Kissing my son, every time I passed him a drop of my saliva. Of course, this was not a complete reproduction of the rite of transmitting the four TRUTHS to the child, since I was not a nursing mother, but in the end, I managed, and the boy stopped crying. After becoming acquainted with the four TRUTHS, a child can eat everything that is eatable.
Indeed, symbiotic bacteria that digest any food have been discovered in the organisms of the inhabitants of Dhana. These bacteria are close to those that live in the stomachs of our termites. Studies have shown that the transfer of bacteria should be carried out in childhood, otherwise the state of symbiosis of bacteria with humans does not occur.
So I was able to feed my son with the same that I ate, though I had to chew it beforehand, since he had no teeth.
I didn’t say anything about this to Alexandra – I was afraid that ignorantly I violated certain demonic laws. And I was right! Once I caught her thought that up to a year a baby should not be given any food other than mother’s milk or some special demonic foods.
But the main thing!!! My son and I were always mentally together. His thoughts, his dreams were mine, my thoughts and dreams were his. By the age of three months, he already knew some words of our native language of Dhana! And by five we already spoke – and not just mentally.
Alexandra came tired and was surprised that the child was quiet and joyful, never crying. And he had no time to cry, because he was constantly conducting a “quiet” conversation with his dad…
The heat has come. Alexandra changed her mind, stopped going to “work”, and we went by car to her sister. The sister lived in another place, far from our home. Alexandra sat in front – at the wheel, and behind – me with our son. It occurred then that the road demon caught us: I heard a whistle, the car stopped, and Alexandra said in fear:
“What shall we do now?”
“Nothing,” I say, “I’ll hide!”
One moment – and I turned into a cube. Alexandra went up to the road demon, so angry. I wandered how she will cope with him? He talked to her, then looked into the car and barked:
“Why your child is not attached, and even lies on a chair?!”
I immediately hugged my son and depicted rope with my hands. The demon looked again:
“Sorry, attached, but not by the rules! Kindly remove the child from the chair! Put him on the seat lower, then tie him already!”
Alexandra does not look at me.
“Now,” he says, “I will do everything.”
She laid her son on the seat, grabbed the ribbon, turned away from me. I saw that was hard for her to perceive me as a chair, no matter how I pretended, she restored my image from memory.
So our dangerous meeting with the road demon ended safely, and we drove on. And we arrived at the place where her sister Masha lived, but this sister was not her sister, but was herself. I looked outside —it was her, looked into her thoughts —everything was also similar, the same melody, the same color (apparently, there are no identical twins on Dhana). I asked who did this to them. Masha answered that their mother. I realized that their mother was a great sorceress, she wanted to have two daughters instead of one, so with witchcraft she divided her child into two, not knowing that she had done an involuntary evil by number two. Since then, no man could become the husband of any of her daughters. And only thanks to my commitment to the four truths I managed to remove the curse from one of them – from Alexandra, and to give her a son. And Masha remained childless.
I’m used to the fact that demons don’t know how to speak mentally, and then Masha’s neighbor, Valya, came with her five-year-old daughter and immediately began to mentally speak to my son right from the doorway, and he answered her. But when she realized that I could do it too, she was so surprised! I even mentally reassured her, apparently, mentally speaking rarely happen between demons! But not for long she stayed with us and left for her demonic affairs. But her daughter stayed. So we lived… We sawed and chopped wood for a demon hearth called a stove; everyone went to the forest for mushrooms, but non-volatile, and small and edible, and for berries.
I told Lyubochka about our country, as well as about our huge ants, and when she did not believe, I turned into an ant for a short while before her eyes. I thought she was scared, but she liked it. She knew about the transformations! Her mother told tales of people who know how to do it! And she dreamed of turning into a bird so that to fly in the sky and see everything. I did not know how to turn into a bird, but I showed her how I turn into a dog. My son was lying next to us in the grass, looked at us, smiled and, it seemed, even understood something. Now Lyubochka didn’t leave me and kept asking to teach her. I began to teach her the wisdom of the four TRUTHS, but I did not succeed – yet she was a child of demons, and therefore did not want to know about the four TRUTHS, but only wanted to transform…
“Okay, just don’t tell anyone about this,” I warned.
“Even mom? She asked.”
I thought it would be better if she told everything to her mother than she would be tormented by mystery.
“You can tell mom, but not anyone else!”
She read my mind and saw how I was transforming, now she herself tried to do the same. What was I supposed to do? I began to teach her transformations. After all, having turned in a wrong way, she could become a cripple, for example, a man with wings instead of arms. As a result, a month later Lyubochka walked with us through the forest in the form of a huge