Vika was looking for her love. No, do not try to meet someone. Really search. Looking for a missing person, her first love.

On the eve of Vika, the grandmother called and said that they had a misfortune in the village - Kostik Gromov disappeared. I went hunting in the forest and did not return home. The third day they are looking for him all over the village, they have caught up with the volunteers, but they cannot find them anywhere. Vika immediately threw everything and went to the village. She knew she must try to find him. She felt she could find him! Required.

Here is a village with crooked huts, such a grandmother of the porches, so beloved by the heart. And Baba Glasha runs out to meet, knotting a scarf on the go. Kisses on the cheeks, lips, presses to the heart - and so warmer in the soul, as if there is no reason to be sad.

- Grandma, well, let's go to the house, if you freeze it, - Vika is carefully chosen from her grandmother's embrace. - It's the end of October, it's cold, and you ran out in one jacket.

- Oh, yes, yes, and you are freezing, Vikus! - agrees baba Glasha, throwing up her hands. - Come on, come on, I baked cakes for your arrival. Tomorrow, I suppose, you will dwell on the search for Kostik, so at least you will take a snack with you.

- Bab, is it too late today? I would go today ...

“What are you talking about?” Grandma frowns. “No, girl, it's getting dark early now, and already it's two o'clock, soon the sun will set.” No forest in the dark! The forest does not like night guests ...

Vika sighed heavily, but did not argue with her grandmother. Of course she is right.

- And who gathers people to search?

- Our neighbor, Vasily Petrovich. They are friendly with the Gromovs, here they are with Kostya's father and lead the search. Everyone gathers near the church at five in the morning. Until the forest go, dawn ...

- Well, I understood, it means at five around the church. Did a lot of people connect?

- On the first day, in general, all the surrounding villages came running, everyone was looking. Now they come less and less, I can not believe, probably already that this Kostik will be found ...

- Bab, do not say that! - Vika frowns. - So, like the third day just looking for? We will find!

Baba Glasha sadly smiled at her granddaughter, bustling around her.

- I understand, Vikul, I want to believe. After all, you still love, probably ...

Vika looked into her grandmother's kind eyes and quickly looked away.

- Yes, maybe. I do not know, bab ... I have Anton.

- Would not love, not rushed for so many miles! - Granny waved her hand. - And Anton is yours ...

“Well, bab, don't,” Vika frowned.

She knew that nobody liked her young man from her relatives. And she herself, to be honest, did not really understand what she found in him. But they had met for a year, and something still kept her close to him, that she could not part. They were very different, perhaps comfortable for each other. Yes, and again to remain alone did not want. She is already 30, and, as Grandma says about her personal life, “neither horse nor carriage”.

- Ok, ok, as you know! Eat, come on, otherwise it has become very thin, only with big eyes.

With this, Vika did not argue. Granny did not accept any diets and it was useless to argue about this. Better to eat. Therefore, Vika silently proceeded to black cabbage soup with meat and crackers, then potatoes, baked in sour cream, and finished the meal with herbal tea with jam and pies. The grandmother sat beside her and with a smile looked at her beloved granddaughter eating her food, sometimes asking how she lived in the city, about her work, her superiors, her friends, if she had a new boyfriend ...

During the conversations they did not notice how it was dark outside, the grandmother turned on the light.

- You see, it is getting dark early, and you gathered in the woods ... By the way, you took warm clothes, otherwise I will find you something to wear ...

“No, granny,” Vika smiled, imagining herself in an old drape coat with the curly fur of an unknown animal on the collar, it seems, once a former popular one, and a feather scarf on his head. Although the scarf, perhaps, will not be superfluous. - You better tell me how an experienced hunter could disappear in the forest ?! Was it in the village?

- Well, you never know what could happen on the hunt. Still, wild beasts in the forest, he is alone with his gun ... Although it seems to be an experienced hunter, from childhood I used to go hunting with a daddy, - Grandma suddenly thought. - Although in my youth there was one strange case of missing a person ...

- Which one? Why strange? - Vick became alert.

- Yes, even a strange man who disappeared, they searched for him for a long time, and they did not find him. He was my age-mate, Kolka Churov, I was still studying at a technical school. And when they stopped looking and even sang a prayer for him, one of them suddenly showed up in the village ... a man, gray, over fifty, and he says that he is Kolya Churov, that he was wandering through the forest, he met a girl, He did not want to let him go to some kind of shack in the forest and loved there for three days and three nights. So he ran away from her and now he returned ...

- Grandma, are you telling me children's horror stories ?! - Vick smiled, although the cold on the skin passed from such a story.

- Yes that I, absolutely survived out of my mind, to tell you the horror stories? ... Although I’m in vain, you have to go to the forest tomorrow, and you still have to bother ...

- Yes, that's it! I'm not out of fear. Well, okay, so what happened with that Kolka then?

- He left the village, could not stand the human distrust and suspicion. After all, he was in the same clothes, in which the guy disappeared. They began to suspect him that he had killed the boy somewhere in the forest, and he himself tells such tales ...

- Why would he glow like that ?! - Vika frowned, already almost believing in this story.

- That's it! We decided that he was the man who had moved, and the police retreated from him. And he left. And his family too.

- N-yes, granny, you know how to tell horror stories! Well, horror ...

- Well, okay, you do not want, do not believe, - the old woman smiled somehow sadly, thoughtfully. “Now go to sleep better, get up so early tomorrow!”

The dream did not go. Experiences plagued that somewhere now Kostik is bad, he is cold in the woods or worse. I didn’t want to think about bad things, but black thoughts sneaked into my head. Yes, this terrible story of granny about the return of an old guy ... Brr! Like Halloween tales read a lot.

But the clean air, the pacifying silence that can only be in the village, and the measured snuffling of the grandmother behind the wooden partition calmed Vika's inflamed thoughts, and she fell asleep. Without dreams, as if dived into the depths and woke up vigorous and ready for a long journey.

Baba Glasha has already flooded the stove, but still the house was still cool. Only the desire to find Kostik more quickly pushed Vika out from under a warm blanket. Granny was already collecting for her a backpack with food and tea.

“Bab, I wonder at you — how to get up so early!” - Vika smiled, smacked her grandmother on the cheek and went to wash. - And when do you still have time ?!

- It's you, the city, spoiled, - she laughed, - and we have been brought up since childhood.

And you can not argue.

Vika quickly washed her face, dressed warmly (she knew where she was going, so she took warm things with her so that she could be outside all day). Grandmother did not release her without a shawl tied around her neck. Winter boots, warm trousers, a jacket, a hat - even the mountain peaks are ready to conquer. A backpack with food and a thermos of hot tea behind her back — woman Glasha kissed her granddaughter and sent them with God, secretly wiping away tears.

- Be careful, girl! Hope you find Kostya. Good guy he is.

- Thank you, granny!

About fifteen people gathered around the church. Vika was familiar with many since childhood, some she saw for the first time. She greeted everyone and approached two men standing in the center of the crowd.

- Hello, Uncle Vasya, Uncle Zhen ...

- Oh, hello, Vikus! You arrived?! - Tears welled in the eyes of Uncle Zhenya, the father of Kostik. He hugged her like his own daughter, she patted him soothingly on the back.

“We will definitely find him,” she said firmly, and he looked at her with such hope that she almost had a heart attack from pain. She just has to find him!

- Vick, when did you arrive? ...