At first, it seemed to me—
— too high, too flimsy for living creatures. But I don’t mind rabbits whose steps sink into the snow deeper than the foundations of our houses.
Silence comes in many forms. The kind that arrives with them isn’t empty. In it, you can hear snowflakes landing on concrete.
— Hey, did you… see it? They say they’re back again. — The nomads? I saw them. They were at the construction site—dismantling some old market. Suddenly, silence… A silence that makes your ears pop. They emerged from the snow.
— Rabbits with them? Iron, strange? — With them. The earth trembles, every step— is like a beating heart. Only slowly, with effort. — What do they need?
We suspected that winter was eternal. We didn’t know that eternity had taken form and now walked among us. They say they are here to finish what we could not save. Or to save what we were afraid to finish.
— No one knows everything. Some say — the time to stop. Others, conversely, to start over. I once met a nomad, who lived in the city with the nomads. He told me: when they open the tent— you know, the huge one, made of metallic spikes—everything freezes. You can’t think, food won’t taste right…
… And sometimes I even block the armories. It’s not blood, of course. The connections between homes, people, stations—in short, everything around. Samarik used to say: I take the soul out. The caravan leaves, the building is still mine, but inside—it’s empty. Like a shell.
— This is Zhumko. Why rabbits, anyway? Where do they come from?
Time is not a flowing river. Time is an infinite canvas, closed within itself. Every step of the hare sends a vibration across the canvas, rocking it into a supple wave, eventually damping the oscillations into a gentle equilibrium. The canvas breathes—and with it, the world.
— Have you seen the pattern on the ornaments? Three hares
run in a circle. Each one has a neighbor’s ear.
Time is constantly working: one hare was, another
is, and one will be. But they run together.
We never stop. And they are huge,
as are we. We rhyme.
While I walk—the world breathes.
When we stop—everything freezes until the next milestone.
— How often do they come? — Who knows. Look at the shifts over there. Do you see how the bison have become unkempt? They have seen much: nomads, hares, zones, Crimea. We are like them too… We wander, but we don’t fall. That’s all. — How long do we have? — Until our steps cease. For us, there is either an end or a beginning. What difference does it make.
But memories remain. Even when time fades—the sound remains. Muffled, prolonged. We—we are what makes the canvas vibrate, what keeps it in place.