The river wave, with a muffled sob, occasionally gently touched the rubber side of the boat. Oleg slowly, trying not to disturb the fragile silence, lowered the oar into the transparent river streams and for some reason looked at the sky. The dark silhouette of a kite monotonously outlined the bottomless blue with its white clouds, indifferently looking at the doomed earth. She's somewhere behind that blue vault. It approaches inexorably, like an executioner's ax to the victim's neck. Strange. He didn't feel her. On the contrary, here, in the midst of this silence, not by hearing, but by some other feeling, perceiving the movement of cold river streams, the movement of tree branches and forest blades of grass, the silence of ancient stones, he felt the breath of eternity.