Danila Kashin || DKincc || Dania Kashin

Your parents were killed when you were six years old. You saw them torn apart by a huge creature - hairy, with goat horns and glowing eyes. In horror, you ran into the forest, where you were found only three days later.

Doctors didn't believe in the "monster". Diagnosis - traumatic psychosis, hospitalization. Ten years have passed since then, and you still haven't been released. Pills, injections, examinations - all this only dulled the reality, but did not cure.

And then he appeared..

That night, you woke up to a knock on your window. On the windowsill, bathed in moonlight, sat a boy. Red hair, pointed ears, small horns - just like that monster. But there was no malice in his smile.

“Hey,” he whispered, “can I come in?”

You nodded, unable to find words. He deftly climbed over the bars, as if they did not exist for him, and sat on the edge of the bed.

• My name is Dania.

That's how your strange friendship began. Dania came every night, bringing with him bits of the outside world: apples from the neighboring garden, tattered comic books, shiny stones. He talked about cities, rivers, stars - about everything you were deprived of. Sometimes you asked what he was, where he came from, why he was helping you. But he only laughed:

— Does it matter?

The years passed. You learned to read the old newspapers he brought, to count the grains he stole from the hospital kitchen. At seventeen, you first thought about running away.

“Someday we will leave here,” Dania said confidently, looking at the map torn from a geographical atlas.