In the morning fog, which stretches like a white blanket from the autumn river, I finally see the outline of the Mykolaiv bus station.

I stretch my legs after ten hours on the bus and put my face to the pale southern sun. After an overnight trip, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Well, like fresh Mykolaiv air – with the taste of gasoline, wet asphalt and acacia leaves.

Another two hours and the small express tour of Ukraine will end. But first, coffee: cheap, a little bitter from a bus station coffee machine.

Surprisingly, almost everything has stayed the same during these six months. Only the number of people has decreased, and intercity buses now run strictly according to the schedule. In pre-war times, this happened exclusively “by filling,” and you are lucky if you don’t have to sit for half a day with this glass of bitter cappuccino waiting for the last passenger. I jump into a car with a dusty sign indicating the final point of arrival. I always sit on the edge, because only here I won’t have to pull my knees to my chest.

The driver, as usual, collects 130 hryvnias from each passenger. The dust-clogged engine begins to growl – this is how begins the short journey from the City of Ships to the sleepy southern villages.

Rays of the October sun playfully shine through the dirty windows of the minibus. The fields on both sides of the road have been already ploughed. I guess it should be said that everything is as usual, but the changes in the front-line zone are making themselves felt: the usual chanson is not playing in the minibus anymore, and for the first time I am hearing news here… Yellow leaves are lying on both sides of the road… Covering the traces of missile explosions. People talk about, it seems, usual things – yesterday sappers defused an unexploded projectile in the garden, a neighbour’s garage was damaged by rocket fragments… The road itself has changed too: there were just delves here, now they are holes from artillery fire or air raids.

The feeling of reality is tight…You look at the dust hanging in the air and feel like the last scum: it’s nine o’clock, in Kyiv, and you’re already running to work, joining the lesson, or going down to the shelter, because an air raid siren has been announced. You just live your life. But here… Here, life seems to have paused, waiting for it to end or not…

The journey is still ongoing, just like the conflict between rear and frontline life.

Is it like the third block post? Yes, exactly the third… The sun, by the way, warmed up. In the meantime, I get my documents again and get off the bus. I go out and meet the look of faded blue eyes, which now have a hint of fatigue. It is unusual to see your former physical education teacher in military uniform. Under the camo, one hundred per cent must be an unchanging grey t-shirt with the Adidas logo. If you close your eyes, for a moment you can imagine yourself on the school playground, now it will be classic: “Let’s go 11-B, three distances around the stadium.” It just turns out that the stadium no longer exists, and neither is the gym. They managed to take only a basketball and a whistle, which we jokingly gave as a gift on March 8…

The path makes familiar turns, it’s eleven o’clock, so we’re almost here…

The sun’s rays still brazenly break through to the cabin from behind the horizon. It is short here in autumn, the horizon… It’s just a steppe here, a strip of forest and the sky… This year it is deep and pale, but somehow surprisingly powerful and at the same time tired, just like the people who live below it.