You are listening to a Clark's World magazine podcast with your host and narrator, Kate Baker.

Greetings, Clark's road citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our second story for the month of February 2021 issue 173.

I hope you're holding up. I hope you're okay. I hope you're warm. I hope you're safe and healthy.

I want to thank you for the kind email messages that you sent my way. I also want to thank you for

your ongoing support at the magazine. Whether this is your first or your 550th short story you've heard

me narrate, thank you for always being here. If you can check us a few bucks, please visit patreon.com

for slash Clark's world. So our second story is titled Terra Rasa. It's by Anastasia Bukriyeva.

It's translated by Ray Naylor. Playwright and short story writer Anastasia Bukriyeva.

Graduated from the Russian State Institute of Stage Arts,

Theater Academy in 2016, with an MA in theatrical arts. She is the winner of many literary and theatrical

contests. Her plays have been performed in more than 25 productions since 2016 in cities across

Russia, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Her plays and stories have also been published in

several anthologies. Ms. Bukriyeva is a teacher and coordinator of drama laboratories for teenagers

and adults. A member of the union of writers as well as the union of theater workers of Moscow.

She currently lives in St. Petersburg. So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax,

and let me tell you a story. The train hurled along at such speed my ears kept popping.

We rushed through Voronezh. In minutes, more accurately, though, what was left of Voronezh.

Where there had been a river, there was an empty trough. The fire had burned away the flesh of

humanity here and retreated for a time. Back when trains went slower, I loved looking out the window

at the villages, the houses with their yellow windows, the forests and fields, boring, sure. This was my

country after all. I especially liked the railroad that ran along the foot of the Caucasus mountains,

...