Chapter Text
It was cold outside.
Alexei said that tomorrow would be snowy.
Ilya liked that, the silence the snow produced, like the snowflakes trapped all the sounds.
Ilya and Alexei shared a glass of milk and some cookies before going to sleep. Alexei was talking to their mom about something his friend, Sergei, had said in class. Mama looked distracted and tried to smile at Alexei. Ilya stole a couple of cookies from his brother's plate and looked outside, hoping for Papa to come.
It was too late; he should be home already.
The boy played for a while and then went to sleep. The next thing he knew was that Papa was putting them in the back of the car. Mama was carrying some bags.
“Do you have everything?” Papa asked.
“Yeah, all the important documents at least.”
“Good. Now let’s go, they are waiting.”
“What’s wrong, papa?” Asked Alexei, rubbing his eyes.
“Nothing. Everything is alright.” Ilya was too tired to ask anything and went back to sleep.
He had very few memories of that night. There were flashes of light and then a plane. He got scared then, but his papa hugged them and kissed their foreheads. Ilya felt a little weird about that. Papa wasn’t that kind of man. Alexei also thought that it was weird. Papa stopped kissing him a couple of years ago.
“What’s happening?” He asked.
“You are going to go on a vacation with Mama. I have some work to do, so I’ll be joining in a few days.”
“I don’t want to.” Said Ilya, hugging his dad. “It’s snowing tomorrow. I want to see the snow.”
“There is snow there too.” Said his mama. “Come on. Ilya. Let Papa go.”
Ilya did, but cried a little. He was too sleepy.
“You have to be good. Both of you.” Said Papa. “You can’t cause any problems. You understand, Ilya?” The little boy nodded. “Alex, you have to take care of Ilya and Mama while I’m not with you.” The older brother nodded too, rubbing his ice, awakening himself.
Their parent’s didn’t kiss, because that’s not how they are. They nodded at each other and then hugged.
Then they went on the plane with some other families.
Ilya had never been in a plane before. At the beginning, he was scared; then, as the hours passed, he was annoyed, and then he was done. He decided he hated planes.
Other kids cried, so he did too. He didn’t like the idea of those vacations. He wanted to go home.
Instead, they arrived in some other place.
That wasn’t home.
It was so strange.
The place was huge, but he didn’t understand what the people there were saying. Mama and the rest of the families in the plane went to speak with a woman. Ilya smiled. The woman had small eyes, like two cracks small kind of thing, just like people in Siberia. Maybe they were in Siberia, that was nice, he had cousins there. But then his mom spoke in that language, in a broken way, of course, it wasn’t perfect.
And then they were there for hours. It was so boring. And he just wanted to go home.
So much happened after that, and he has no good memories of that either. He was six.
They started living in a small apartment, in a building filled with a bunch of people, few of whom spoke Russian. But he didn’t know he was going to live there. He thought they were on a vacation.
A few days passed. The snow came.
Alexei and Ilya looked at it while the first snowflakes fell.
“Alex,”
“Huhmm…”
“When is Papa coming?”
“I don’t know… Mama says that he is coming soon. Maybe he has a lot of work. He is a police officer, you know? They have to arrest the bad guys. There is a bunch of bad guys around.”
Ilya nodded and looked at the snowflakes.
A couple of days later, there were two feet of snow outside.
They both waited there.
Waited for a long time. So long, the snow melted.
They never went back home; those vacations weren’t vacations.
Some days, even after years, when it was cold outside, Ilya looked through the window, hoping one day Papa would come for them.