"I don't know, Danek. It's crying by itself."

"Okay. You know, I came to say you're so funny in the mornings..."

"Why is it funny?" she looked up at him.

"I don't know. Maybe because you become a maker only when you finally waking up. And before that, while you asleep, you're no different from all them. Or maybe because your hair is tangled in the mornings. And your nose is freckled."

Aia wiped her wet eyes with the back of her hand and smiled through the tears:

"My nose is always freckled."

The light wind was gently going through the long green birch braids, somewhere nearby, in a thick rosehip bushes, the bluethroat-bird was singing its loud song, and the air smelled of blossoming sage and mint.

It's strange, thought Aia. The last summer, which she remembered, was dusty and multi-storey. No grass, no flowers, no singing birds in the mornings. Only the bare city: dry gray dust, forest of portal cranes, hot tarmac, stuffy glass flasks of skyscrapers and machines, - countless, endless machines...

However, by and large, there in the memory, which so obligingly prompted the nonexistent and weaved such magical dreams, was nothing strange at all, because Aia was a Maker.

All of them, who were living on Alpha, had the inner being that smoothly flowed into the outer, and memory flowed too: the blue summer sky could also be the sky of a young Lukasz, Robert or Josh. And the boy who comes to her...

And the boy was so real and independent that she didn't want to consider him as her dream or all the more someone's memories.

"Hey," he said, touching her shoulder. "Well, enough already ... I hate it when you cry. I just want to do something, but don't know what."

"I know." Aia rose, straightened the light citrine frock, and held out her hand. "Let's go somewhere."

They walked along a broad road in the midst of th light birch grove. On both sides of it densely and desperately the thistle thickets greened, in the pink curly valerian bushes the tiny spiders were busily crawling in the glittering web.

"You know," Danek said, "sometimes I come here alone. There is a big cherry orchard here. Do you like cherries? "

"I don't know," Aia smiled.

"And I definitely like."

His cherry orchard lined up in rows along the slope of the hill to a quiet shallow stream. Between the trees were flying, crawling and buzzing small live fliers, the bluegrass rippled, and the cherry trees themselves were carefully and neatly trimmed and were as tall as Aia, so that she could reach tree top up with her hands.

"Hold on," Danek shouted and ran between the trees, down to where the lush reeds grew very near the river.

He was already far below, when his desperate "ah!" blow up into her, and she suddenly saw everything as clearly as if she were there, next to him: how absurdly he waved his disobedient hands, how slowly he settled in the lush grass, and the long, black slippery muck that slipped away. Snake.

The peaceful blue sky suddenly collapsed and hit the peaceful cherry orchard, and Aia get panicked - just like in her childhood, when the reality lived its own separate incomprehensible life. Here, now, in a dream, she again became a lost little girl.

"Danek, Danek," she whispered, waddling down the hill on her trembling legs.

And he was lying in the grass, arms wide and smiling, a little boy in a snow-white shirt, and his blue eyes reflected the blue abyss hanging over him.

"Tell me now, were you afraid of losing me?"

Yes, she nodded, scared and impotently looking at him, very, very much afraid of losing.

"Never. Do you hear me? Never. Be. Afraid."

Okay, she nodded, dropping beside him helplessly, I won't.

"In this world, nothing disappears, you know it."

Yes, she nodded, barely taking the breath, strucked by horror, I know it.

He rolled over in the grass and leaned on his elbows, looking at the thin emerald veins of grass:

"Sorry for scaring you: you've not tasted the cherry. Next time I'll treat you to it after all. For some reason, you forgot that you are a maker - just as I thought. It should be because you're asleep."

"It should be because I'm asleep," agreed Aia. "Sometimes, when I'm asleep, I'm doing awfully stupid things."