Virusomahia

Few days have passed. During the day, Perun cleaned the territory of the skete, and in the evenings he kept his Internet diary. A girl from China with the nickname Tang responded to several of his publications, and he went to her page. Tang was in search of means from psychovirus in China and went to Buddhist hermits. While reading how she lived in a Buddhist monastery, Perun did not notice that the bell rang for Vespers. A knock on the door interrupted his reading.

"To prayer", the doorkeeper said as he entered. "What a wind today, you’d better bring your coat".

Perun threw his cloak over his shoulders and went out into the courtyard. The wind bent the branches here and there. Along with the wind came a faint sweet and sour smell of Passion. Just a whiff of it made anyone feel irritated and angry. "How can I go to the house of God with such thoughts? " He thought and turned to the cell of the elder Savva (that was the name of that friendly old man). At the entrance stood, leaning on a stick, Savva himself deeply in thought.

"Here comes young Perun to the elder for advice", he said without turning around. Then he added, " And I have some advice for you". First of all, separate yourself from your thoughts. You are a joyous, kind soul, loving and beautiful, a creation of God and His image. And thoughts brought from outside are just the wind: wait and it will calm down. A tree remains a tree, no matter what winds bend it. And your soul", he finally raised his eyes to Perun "there it is, smiling like a little boy and wanting no harm".

Their conversation was interrupted by a terrible scream and crash. Angry men ran out of the church, armed with sticks, smashing everything around them and fighting with each other. Savva led Perun into his cell and locked the door:

"Go, you have a lot to learn, I have a secret passage here", he opened the basement and, blessing, pushed Perun there.

"What about you?" The young man didn't want to leave.

"My days are numbered, don't waste your strength on me. Go, and find a solution to this problem", the elder closed the lid of the cellar behind Perun.

Perun went down the stairs, then along a dark corridor, and finally came out into the forest, to the well and a small hut. Here the elder went into seclusion, disappearing from the skete for several days. In the hut were crackers, turnips, and herb tea. Perun carefully packed all this in a bundle made from the raincoat, charged his tablet and added a new entry to the virtual diary: "Today I left the skete. The enraged monks made a rout, the wind blew harder and bent the tops of the trees, but they held out".

Tang wrote a comment: "And we had a strong wind. While everyone is asleep my head is overcoming with dirty thoughts".

"Go away from there, hide from people and take an example from the trees", Perun replied, put the notebook in the bundle and went into the depths of the forest.

One on one with nature

The wind was blowing stronger and ominous thoughts came: first Perun mentally repeated "I'm a tree, I don't care", but nasty thoughts as large hail knocked in his mind. "What kind of monastery is this where the monks have committed a strike? And what is God who allowed this to happen?" Turning with malice to the heavens, Perun remembered Them his mother's death, his childhood in the subway, and the rain lashed his cheeks, shoulders, and penetrated to the last thread. From the top of the hill he looked back at the skete, and saw how the downpour had cooled the hatred of the brethren, and, hiding from it, they went to their cells. Under a sprawling century-old oak, Perun threw off his clothes and squeezed out water, lit a fire with difficulty and began to dry everything that got wet. His hand touched the flame, and the pain cooled the rush of anger. He woke up as if from a dream, pulled his hand back, and began to blow on the burn. "Do not blow the fire of passion, but spit to extinguish it", he recalled the words he had read in the Hermitage. Then he drew a circle around himself, imagining that all the discontent, grumbling, and anger had accumulated here, inside the outlined space, and then he stepped out of it, and immediately he felt relief, as if the evil thoughts were actually held by a closed line. The rain had stopped falling, and from the top he could see that the monks had come out of their cells and began to repair all that they had destroyed… "Well, thank God", he automatically repeated aunt Vera's favorite phrase, and smiled to himself. "Not to blaspheme, but to glorify – that is what creates my soul. I should write in my diary". He opened the notebook and came across Tang's words. "Evil people set fire to our hermitage. I left on Per's advice, but the others died in the fire. May their souls rest in the abodes of the righteous, among their ancestors and forefathers". "What are you going to do now?" Asked her Perun. He described everything that had happened in the skete, and Savva's last words. "I will go to you", Tang replied. "We will continue the search together".

"Then I'm coming to meet you. I go, swim, and fly whatever, but in the end, we will definitely meet." And Perun turned to the South-East, went down the hill and walked along the country road, leaving it whenever a passer-by or a car appeared.

Overnight in an Inn

Crackers supported Perun for several days. But the more he went on, the more he wanted to eat properly, and even the soup that was served in the Skete did not seem so bad. "Everything is learned in comparison, and even the taste of food can be felt differently depending on the mood and degree of hunger…" he decided to write this down on his notebook, and saw Tang's message – she was already near the border with Mongolia. The news from the Internet were not good at all: yesterday's storm caused a malfunction in the work of vaccinated employees. Despite their tranquilizers and inoculations, the strong sweet-and-sour wind made them as irritable as the others. In anger they destroyed offices and left in different directions. The borders were unguarded, and anything could be expected from armed deserters. The authorities did not even try to restore order, as the anger affected everyone without exception. "How are aunt Vera and Lubava with her husband?" Perun thought, putting away the tablet, "it is worth speeding up my search". With a hungry growl in his stomach, he went into a roadside Inn.

"Hello, come in", the innkeeper greeted him affably, but at the same time sternly and carefully examined Perun from head to foot. "Make yourself comfortable, what will you order? "

Perun sat in the corner by the window.

"Don't be afraid. If anyone unhealthy come, I'll put them down with a stun gun", the owner said, pointing to a heavy gun hanging from his belt.

"And if you behave inadequately? " Objected with a smile Perun.

"My wife can cool me worse than a gun", the owner also answered with a smile. Perun sighed with relief, ordered potatoes and borscht, and began to study the news. The sun sank below the horizon, and with the twilight came the cold. Perun paid for the night's lodging and went up to a small room with one bed and a bedside table. Through the wooden wall he could hear the neighbors talking.

"We must drive day and night to reach Gorno-Altaisk in two days", said one.

"I'm ready to do whatever I can, but you will help if I feel sleepy", said another.

"Altai is very close to Mongolia. I must go with them". He slept for some time, then went outside and saw a big truck. The body was covered with a piece of material, Perun jumped inside. The car was full of plastic bottles. There was a hole in them, as if in a haystack, and Perun settled down there and fell asleep again.

Road to the Mongolian border

When Perun awoke, he realized that he was driving at high speed in the back of the truck among the plastic. He turned on the notebook and found his location. The drivers were really in a hurry, and a third part of the way was already behind them. A message came from Tang that she had successfully crossed the border and was now moving cautiously through Mongolia towards the Altai. The Mongolian steppes are full of free-grazing horses. Tang managed to negotiate with the shepherd, and he saddled a good horse for her, with the agreement that when she finished her journey, she would let her go home. The shepherd helped the Tang to get on a horse and waved to the wanderer by the hand. "It is strange," she wrote to Per, "that this shepherd is not at all inclined to violence, as if the voluptuous wind does not get him". Per read the news from Tang and thought: he had already met the innkeeper, the elder Savva, grandfather Afanas and aunt Vera herself, who were not harmed by the psychovirus. Now there's this shepherd. What unites them all and allows them to resist evil? But after all, he, Perun, was subjected to an influx of anger on the night of the strike in the skete. This was his first experience of fighting with passions, and fortunately for him, he won this fight. But how much more acid wind the future will blow, and whether he will be able to withstand further. Hours passed in thinking about this, and straight roads gave way to winding roads with serpentines, and the truck sped along the mountain Altai.

"Hello, Hello, Ochumai, we're almost there, meet us", one of the truck drivers shouted into the phone.

To avoid conflict, Perun made his way to the exit and began to wait for the car to stop to jump out. At that moment the car stopped abruptly: a black car blocked the path. The cries of a showdown between drivers grew, and Perun ran off the road into the bushes.

"This is my territory, pay your fare", the owner of a black foreign car shouted at the drivers.

It would have come to a fight, but then a gray-haired old man with a long beard and strange clothes sewn with ribbons rode up on a black stallion.

"Who dares to put up an obstacle?" He said loudly.

The owner of the foreign car bowed to the old man at the feet.

"I wouldn't have dared, Shaman, if I'd known they were your people."

The truck drivers came to greet the old man.

Perun was going to leave there, but the loud Shaman’s voice called out to him:

"And the young man who rode with you, where is he?"

The drivers looked at each other. Perun's heart sank for a second, but then the fear receded and he was sure that this acquaintance would be good for him. With a firm step, Perun came out of the bushes and approached the old shaman.

Introduction to the shaman

"I'm a shaman", introduced Ochumai.

"I don't believe in shamanism", Perun wanted to say, but instead held out his hand: "and I am Perun".

"The God of the ancient Slavs?" Said in surprise Ochumai.

"Well, my mother liked the name," Perun shrugged.

"Help us unload the bottles, lad, and I'll help you on your journey," said the man.

While they were unloading plastic on the side of the road, the shaman said that he had invent a way to protect their loved ones from the psychovirus: cut out protection from the plastic bottle on nose and mouth, and put inside the healing and aromatic herbs of Altai, so that they drowned out the psychotropic smell of the virus.

"Does it help?" Thrilled with the idea asked the Perun.

"Here, my drivers thanks to this masks were able to get to the capital and return without hindrance".

"Aren't there any bottles nearer than that?" The young man asked.

"Our relatives are all over Russia and abroad. Well, any person is close to someone, at least to his parents, whether they are on earth or already in heaven. They bring protective masks, and on the way back take more bottles for new masks.

The car was unloaded, and the drivers went to rest, as Ochumai phoned for help and masked men from the nearest village came to take the bottles. They filled sacks with bottles and loaded them onto horses. One horse Ochumai brought to Perun.

"Well, boy, ride this way", he said, pointing South. "You'll probably make it to Mongolia before nightfall. Take some aromatic herbs with you, if there is any danger from the possessed, scatter these herbs around you. And you'll be safe yourself also.