Author, Olga Ianaeva offers this short tale with the title ‘The Other Shore’. The story of a young woman living on the outskirts of a huge city, where reality begins to change and reflect her inner transformation. It’s a story about difficult choices and the delicate moment when a person enters their own life.

Suitable for all ages.

The Other Shore

We move into a two-room apartment in a newly formed district of a vast metropolis. The city absorbs untouched land with groves and fields the way the ocean takes the shore — quietly, inevitably.

From our balcony on the twenty-third floor, an untouched landscape opens up.

For centuries, a marshy pond lived its slow life below. Once it had been a lake, then a pond — and even that grew old. It was drained. And its bed revealed itself in all its strange, alien beauty. You could shoot films here.

It looks like a small desert somewhere on Mars. Yellow-red earth, cracked and endless, stretches toward what used to be called “the other shore” of the pond. Now a new building stands there — a twin of ours — and its residents, like us, can admire this otherworldly view.

Up here, on the twenty-third floor, gravity feels weaker.

I feel as if I’m floating above this unfamiliar desert…

— So… did we end up renting a place on Mars or Venus? — I ask my boyfriend.

He fires back immediately:
— In my business, it’s nothing but alien wars.

We’ve been together for two years. My boyfriend doesn’t get jealous — he doesn’t have the time or energy for it. He is completely absorbed in his small, capricious business. Sometimes it feels like he hired me to be his girlfriend. He values me like a piece of real estate that hasn’t quite been registered yet.

I study biology by correspondence. Three evenings a week, I work in an aquarium shop called “Poplavok”. I feed the fish — astronotus. They recognize their caretaker. When I arrive, they swim toward me, restless.

At night, I take care of the filters, the water temperature, and keep watch over the shop. The fish mesmerize me. In my imagination, I swim with them. Here, on this small island of quiet, I guard a tiny oasis where the world can catch its breath.

My boyfriend is always tense.
His overwrought thoughts are visible — like the strain on a weightlifter’s face when the bar is already above his head.
But the athlete lowers the bar.
My boyfriend never does.

Our building trembles. He says it’s just natural settling.

But I know why it trembles.

It has just come into existence, grown up to the twenty-third floor, and somehow believed it mattered — all by itself. The smell of paint and plaster still lingers. But people are moving in. Soon it will absorb their voices, their lives, their smells — and become, essentially, a large communal home.

At last — living souls.

Down below, in the field, a girl is sunbathing. Her striped deck chair and bright violet umbrella look strangely out of place — as if she were the first astronaut on an unnamed planet.

I hurry down to meet her.

— Hello, do you live here too? — I ask, pointing up at my building.

She turns — and I freeze.

It’s a world-famous actress. Everyone knows her face.

— Don’t worry, — the world-famous actress says gently, calming me. — I’m not her. I just look like her.

I can’t quite accept it. I shake my head, waiting for a trick. My expression must be too obvious — she suddenly laughs.

— I’m used to it. It happens all the time. I travel around the world to look-alike contests. But I live here. I just moved in yesterday. Really.

I let out a quiet breath and sit down beside her.

— You see, each of us has a real double. A kind of backup. And not just one. But I’m talking about the closest one.
My actress — she has a successful, quite happy life. For that to happen, I had to give up everything — my talent, recognition — and pass it on to her.
And I took on her difficulties, her troubles. And another country. That’s how it works.

— So… somewhere on Earth there’s a girl exactly like me. But is happier?

My unusual acquaintance hesitates, thinking.

— Not exactly, — she says softly. — You don’t really know… perhaps your life is better than your double’s.

I’m shaken by this.

I’ve been living like a complete egoist. I need to rethink everything in my life.

She suddenly gets up.

— See you around, neighbor!

The next day, a new figure appears in the field: a little ballerina, about eight years old.

She’s wearing a light chiffon dress, ballet-like shoes with satin ribbons. She dances with complete abandon.

I go down to meet her.

But I can’t find a single word.

She doesn’t include me in her world at all. Right now she is the prima ballerina of her imagined theater.

In front of her sits a large black Labrador, holding an artificial rose in its teeth.

The imaginary music fades.

The little ballerina makes a graceful curtsey, with all the dignity of a prima. She sweeps her arm across the invisible hall — she hasn’t forgotten anyone: not the front rows, not the balconies, not the gallery.

At a silent cue from her young mistress, the Labrador brings her the rose.

She presses it to her chest, as if it were a great bouquet.

She runs aside. The dog barks.

She returns — and bows again, for an encore.

She is rehearsing success.
Taming her future.

The little ballerina and the black Labrador walk away.

She never once looks at me.

A quiet sadness fills me.

My nose stings. Tears are ready to spill — but I press my eyes shut with my hands…

As a child, I dreamed of becoming a ballerina.

I never doubted I would be a famous prima.

I used to dance behind the house, on the laundry platform.

When did I forget that dream?
I need to remember.

I remember only the feeling — happiness.

Boundless.

I was filled with it to the very top of my head, and as I danced, I scattered that joy as high as I could.

Maybe that’s what matters — that I remembered.

Happiness…

— Could you help me, please? — a woman’s voice calls out. Low, warm.

A woman in her fifties. She looks younger — slim and tanned. Elegant from within, not just on the surface. An impeccable outfit: light, modern shoes, bracelets matching her sleeveless dress — an intricate shade of olive with a hint of rose. Natural, flawless makeup…

I take a folding chair and a beach bag from her.

We walk toward an old spreading willow, its branches reaching down toward what used to be the bottom of the pond.

The woman settles into the shade.

I sit nearby, on a piece of driftwood.

— That’s lovely… what will it be? A shawl? A sweater?
Such a deep blue — it matches your eyes perfectly, — I say, politely.

— And yours, too, — the woman says gently. — Though we should be honest… our eyes aren’t entirely blue, are they?

She turns toward me.

Her left eye is green. Just like mine.

— Rare, isn’t it? — she asks, with a quiet hint of playfulness.

— Yes… — I say, slightly unsettled. — It doesn’t happen often.

The woman studies me with interest.

— How are you? — she asks, with genuine warmth.

I sigh. I hesitate.

— Are you happy? — she adds softly.

I could avoid the question.

But under the gaze of her blue-green eyes — now painfully familiar — I don’t want to.

— Right now… here, in the field — I am.
But otherwise… I just live.

The woman sets her knitting aside and looks at me more intently.

I understand her silent question.

Yes… I’ve grown used to having a roof over my head. A kind of home. A familiar life.

But what really connects me to my boyfriend?

We’re not just different planets — we’re planets that can’t communicate.

His enormous planet has aggressively swallowed my much smaller one.

And I, like a powerless satellite, follow someone else’s orbit.

— I should go, — the woman says.

Then, looking straight into my eyes:

— Please… be happy.

She says it slowly. With weight.

And I suddenly understand — something depends on me.

— I’ll try, — I whisper.

She hands me a small bag. Inside: knitting needles, yarn, scissors — and something unfinished — a shawl… or something else.

— You must finish it, — she says.

And then she is gone.

I sit on the balcony, knitting.

Of course, I remember everything.

I used to knit a lot.

This blue sweater… I was making it so that my first love — the best boy in the world — would look at me and smile.

We would walk in the park, and he would be proud of me — so beautiful, in my new, lovely sweater.

But on my fifteenth birthday, I learned he had betrayed me.

And the world — once a beautiful castle — turned into a shed.

And then crashed down on me.

The sweater was left unfinished, and spent years in quiet captivity somewhere in a closet.

But now I will finish it.

It will no longer lie in the closet — torn, wounded.

It will become whole. Bright. Alive.

Tomorrow, I will wear it.

The blue sweater looks stunning on me.

It brings out my eyes — one blue, one emerald.

— What’s that clown doing under our building with some ridiculous yacht? — my boyfriend mutters irritably, not even turning around.

As usual, he’s at his computer.

Lately, I’ve only seen his back.

I’ve forgotten what his eyes look like.

My bag is packed.

I open the door.

My ex-boyfriend doesn’t turn around.

His back tightens. His neck flushes dark red. I can almost hear the strain in his spine.

But he doesn’t slow down.

Not even now.

The elevator of my former home carries me gently down, like a courteous partner in a ballet.

My yachtsman raises the sail, smiling.

The wind is warm and strong today.

And the yacht carries us — lightly, obediently — toward the other shore.

Text and Image © Olga Ianaeva 2026

Olga Ianaeva

Olga Ianaeva is a writer, director and screenwriter from Ukraine, currently living in Georgia.

When I write, I often recall Leonardo da Vinci’s sense of mystery—a quiet depth that reveals itself gradually. I try to bring the same light, almost transparent depth to my stories, where a person’s inner life becomes visible through small details.