In the morning, I left the village with a full backpack of food—Hadji-Murat insisted, despite all my protests.
"You'll return it someday," the old man said in farewell. "If not—no big deal. Main thing—get there alive. And remember: grain doesn't sprout right away. But it definitely sprouts."
The road was long. Fatigue took its toll, and I fell asleep in a fellow traveler's cart, and in sleep thoughts intertwined with dreams of the world that could be.
I woke when the wheels creaked on ancient stone. The road was paved with slabs with half-erased symbols—signs of old magic that glowed dimly in the twilight.
The old tract led to the heart of what remained of Dagla—once a great city, now a ghost of itself. The place where the marshal would hear my report and decide what to do with the empire's fragments.
Looking at the towers rising to the sky like stone prayers, I recalled Hadji-Murat's words about grain and stubbornness.
Maybe it's not about saving the world. Maybe it's about planting one grain and believing it will sprout.
Dagla. Capital of what remains.
Ahead—uncertainty, the faithful companion of those who dare to change history's course. But now I go to it not empty-handed.
I carry in me the memory of beauty. And that, perhaps, is the strongest weapon of all I have.
From a letter to myself, written many years later:
"Do you remember, Scholn, that evening in the village? When the old man taught you to distinguish grains and weeds in your own soul? Now, when gray touches my temples, I understand: Hadji-Murat gave me more than shelter and food. He gave me understanding that heroism isn't always a feat. Sometimes it's just stubbornness. Stubborn faith that beauty is stronger than destruction, that kindness is more contagious than evil.
Dagla has risen. Not immediately, not completely. But risen. In new workshops where apprentices learn to make bowls that make you want to cry. In gardens where children play among roses again. In markets where traders sell not only goods, but dreams.
The grain sprouted, old man. As you promised."