Since childhood, everyone knows very well about such representatives of the bestiary as the Brownie, Kikimora (these two, by the way, husband and wife), as well as Goblin, Vodyanoy, Vodyanitsa, Bolotnitsy and other forest and swamp vermin.
There are many fairy tales and legends about this company, and only when you become an adult do you understand that these representatives do not exist in nature (is that so?), But you also intellectually understand that there is some truth in every fairy tale. Moreover, the mouth of a baby speaks the truth. But only children who grow up, forget what they saw, could tell about the same Leshem or Kikimore overnight.
If we practically do not see the inhabitants of the forest and marshes, then the Brownie has become completely insolent for the last twenty years and we just want to appear to us in all its glory, but this creature will be discussed in another post.
And now we have my childhood and my visions of various forest evil spirits.
As far as I can remember, my childhood was spent on good emotions, good mood and dreams.
Most of all, of course, I remember my dreams, which almost all came true.
I do not know where our family comes from, but I only know what I heard in snatches from my grandmother, then my mother told me a little later as an adult.
My great-grandmother did not say anything at all, and I never knew relatives on her side, except for her six children who survived after the war.
And my great-grandmother was from a noble family, very rich, but who pulled her to marry a farm laborer? So she lost her inheritance, and her name, and relatives.
The war destroyed everything and my great-grandmother, after wandering with 9 children and her husband-shoemaker around the world, returned to the Pskov region alone. The husband found himself another on the way.
After the war, my grandmother returned from the front and lived with her family in Kaliningrad, and then when she was widowed, she came to her mother. She built a house there and brought me there from Ukraine.
Twenty years passed, the village was empty, our house was left alone and the ruins of the village. What was burnt down, what was taken out, and everything was overgrown with plums and cherries.
Such a great training ground for games, fun and dreams.
My grandmother was not afraid to let me go alone, although I found myself a lot of adventures.
But I dreamed, and sometimes I could dream so that my grandmother found me in a complete stupor.
Because I could imagine something that then I was just afraid to move, so as not to frighten off the forest evil.
And things were like this.
I really liked the huge barn that was used to thresh the flax. And when everyone was taken away from there, I came to this huge room and dreamed.
I imagined that this was my castle and that I was decorating it. I saw it so clearly that the day passed behind dreams.
But sometimes I could stop my gaze on some object - a twig, stump or heap of leaves, I instantly imagined some creature and I was frightened for a moment and froze.
When my grandmother took me with her to the forest, and that was all the time, I always looked closely at various kinds of inversions, roots, again stumps or dead wood.
In all this, I very often saw the outlines of people, perhaps mythical, fabulous. Sometimes it seemed to me that they even moved and I tried to clearly look into the object and catch the slightest vibration in the air.
I almost always froze and waited for my grandmother to come up to me, and then pointed to that object and asked what it was. Grandmother answered that it was a stump, but I did not agree. Then she suggested that I go and see.
Believe it or not, it was very scary, but I slowly moved forward and constantly turned around, looking for support in my grandmother's gaze.
When I approached the object of my stupor, I actually saw that it was just an inverted stump or a branch that had fallen from a tree.
I was delighted not only with the fact that it was actually an inanimate object, but also with the fact that I conquered my fear and approached and even touched it with my hands. I started dancing and shouting to the whole forest that I was invincible and nothing could scare me.
But every time we came to the forest again and I was left alone with my thoughts and downcast eyes into the forest thicket, I again saw the outlines of terrible creatures.
This went on for quite a long time. I grew up and also constantly went to the forest with my grandmother. And when I had a free minute from picking berries, I sat down near a tree and looked into the distance, into the depths of the forest, and looked for what was looking at me. I just felt someone's eyes on me.
By the way, such feelings remain to this day. And although I am in the forest, like a fish in water, but sometimes I get so scared that I try to get away from that place as soon as possible.
The swamp was a separate kind of my entertainment.
It was a scary place and it was called Narino. There was a bottomless lake in the swamp and, by the way, such bottomless lakes accompany me in my life.
When my grandmother and I came to pick cranberries or blueberries on the islets in the swamp, I did not walk along specially trodden paths, but jumped from bump to bump and shouted that neither Vodyanoy nor Kikimora would catch me.
And as now I remember my grandmother's words "Do not play around, otherwise we will come home and I will complain to Domovoy that you teased his wife."
Well, no matter what a fairy tale, but I still have goosebumps. I clicked so much trouble in my childhood on my butt.
But as I understand now, I had a childhood. There were games, there were dreams, there were castles in the air.
And what do children have now that they will remember? Who bought the first bitcoin when he was a child?
Thank you all for your attention and see you again in the mystical stories section.
By the way, what do you think, is there a Leshy and all his brothers in reality ???