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Prologue
Sometimes the silence in the attic is the loudest. It doesn't oppress with the absence of sound, but is filled with the whispers of the past: the creaking of floorboards, the rustling of yellowed paper, the measured chime of a clock that has long since stopped. This is the silence that greeted Anna as she climbed the rickety stairs in the house of her recently deceased grandmother, Vera.
Sorting out things after the funeral was hard, but necessary. Anna's mother, always practical and closed in on her grief, entrusted her with this task, saying briefly: "Keep what's valuable, we'll throw the rest away." The phrase "throw away" cut Anna to the quick. Throw away life? Throw away memory?
Among the dusty frames, trunks of winter clothes, and bundles of old letters, her gaze fell on a large cardboard suitcase with cracked leather and dull brass fittings. It had been shoved into the farthest corner, as if it were to be forgotten forever. Anna unfastened the rusty locks. Inside, neatly folded and interspersed with tissue paper, lay a dress. Not just any dress. A polka-dot dress.
The fabric was of the finest ivory silk, and cheerful, almost coquettish polka dots were scattered across it – bright scarlet, like drops of fresh blood or ripe strawberries. The style was old-fashioned but elegant: a full skirt, a thin waist, elegant lace cuffs. It smelled not of mothballs, but of Red Moscow perfume and time.
Anna carefully touched the fabric. And then pulled her hand back. She felt a slight tingling, as if from static electricity, and in her ears she heard distant laughter, as if from under water - young, carefree and happy.

Part 1: Legacy
Anna brought the suitcase to her small Moscow apartment. She didn't hang the dress in the closet, but laid it out on the sofa, and it seemed to fill the entire space, becoming the main character of the room. She asked her mother about the dress.
- Oh, it's old... - the mother waved her hand over the phone. - Grandma Vera took care of it, but never wore it. She said it was a memory. About some friend, I think. I don't know, Anna, now is not the time to ask questions.
But Anna needed to know. She felt a strange connection with that dress. In the evenings, she would sit next to it and look through the old albums. In most of the photographs, Grandma Vera was already the same as Anna knew her: stern, with her grey hair pulled back into a tight bun, wearing practical dark dresses. But one, yellowed and angular, showed two girls. They were standing, hugging, against the backdrop of the Volga. One was the recognizable young Vera, with a serious look. And the other... The other was the embodiment of joy. Loose wavy hair, an unbridled smile from ear to ear, and she was wearing that very polka-dot dress. On the back of the photo was written in careful handwriting: “Vera and Lida. Summer 1941.”
1941. The last peaceful summer.
Anna immersed herself in investigatio. She reread all the letters from the front that her grandmother had kept. Most of them were from her grandfather, but in one of the envelopes, dated autumn 1942, she found a tiny, crumpled piece of paper.
"Verunchik, my dear! I'm alive and well, fighting as best I can. I found a wonderful seamstress here, and she fixed my polka-dot dress! Can you imagine? I wore it at a concert for the wounded. They say it raises morale. Victory is coming soon, and you and I will put on our dresses again and go dancing! Hugs. Yours, Lida."
There was no more mention of Lida. Not in letters, not in documents. She disappeared.
One evening, feeling a little silly, Anna put on a dress. It fit her perfectly, as if it had been made for her. She went to the mirror. And the reflection swam. The room disappeared, and in its place Anna saw another face – the same one from the photograph. Lida. She was laughing, spinning, and around her she could hear the sounds of a gramophone and voices. Anna’s heart began to pound. She threw off the dress as if scalded. The vision was gone.
The dress wasn't just an artifact. It was a portal.

Part 2: Lida's Shadow
From that day on, Anna began to see dreams in reality. Every touch of the dress gave birth to flashes of alien, but such a bright life in her consciousness.
She saw Lida and Vera, two young employees of the archive in Kuibyshev (where their institute was evacuated), running from work to a date by the river. How they shared their dreams. Lida wanted to go on stage, she loved to sing. Vera was more down-to-earth, dreaming of a family, of quiet happiness. They bought fabric at a flea market and sewed two identical polka-dot dresses – their secret sign of friendship, a challenge to harsh reality.
Anna saw how the war was beginning. How Vera, more cautious, remained in the rear, working twelve hours a day. And Lida, burning with rage and a desire to protect, went to the front as a volunteer. Not as a nurse, but as a signaler. "I will connect lives," she told Vera then as they parted.
And Anna saw fragments of war through Lida's eyes: the roar of guns, the whistle of bullets, the dirt of the trenches and... incredible moments of beauty. Lida sang for girls like her in the dugout, accompanying herself on a captured accordion. She wore her polka-dot dress, hidden in her duffel bag, like a talisman, like a piece of her former, peaceful life. It was her armor against horror.
But one day the flash became dark and abrupt. Night. Forest. An order to urgently restore communication. Lida, crawling with a cable reel on the damp earth. Flashes of rockets in the sky. Sharp pain. Silence. And a feeling of icy cold.
Vera received a death notice. "Missing in action." But the dress was returned to her. It was brought by Lida's fellow soldier, who found it in her backpack. "She took such good care of it..." - and that's all.
For Vera, “missing in action” didn’t mean “dead.” It meant “out there.” And she kept the dress, the last thread connecting her to the brightest part of her youth, to the friend whose smile could light up any sky.

Part 3: The Hook
Anna couldn't stop. She knew she had to find out the truth. For Grandma Vera. For Lida. For herself.
She contacted the Ministry of Defense archive, search teams. The names Vera and Lida were too common, there was a catastrophic lack of data. Dead end.
Desperate, she put the dress back on. This time, she wasn't just waiting for visions. She was asking the question in her mind, looking at her reflection: "Lida, where are you? Show me."
And images swam before my eyes. Not a forest, but a field. An old, half-ruined church with a bell tower. Large drops of rain running down a stone with a date carved in it – “185...” And a feeling of hopeless melancholy.
Anna drew everything she saw. She spent days on the Internet, comparing old maps of the area where Lida's unit supposedly fought with modern satellite images. It was a needle in a haystack.
Chance helped. In one of the local history blogs about the Smolensk region, she found a photo. That very church. That very bell tower. The caption read: "Zaozerye village, Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, built in 1854. It was badly damaged during the fighting in the winter of 1942."
Anna's heart sank. She had found this place.

Part 4: Zaozerye
The trip to Zaozerye was more like a pilgrimage. The village was almost abandoned. The church stood, as in the vision, sad and majestic in its desolation.
A local old-timer, Grandfather Ignat, pointed her to a field behind the church. "Our guys died all around here. And Germans, too. The whole earth is covered in iron and bones. Every spring, detachments come and pick them up."
Anna walked across the field, and the dress in her bag seemed to become heavier. She felt it as if it were a living being.
She got into a conversation with the leader of the search team "Memory", who was working nearby. She showed a photo and told a story.
— Lydia? A signalwoman? In the winter of '42? — The searcher, a man of about fifty with a tired and wise face, thought about it. — You know, last year we found the remains of a soldier not far from here, in the forest by the old communication line. He had a spool, a mess tin and… — he paused, looking at Anna — and a button. Porcelain, white, with red polka dots. Nothing else. It was unclear what kind of curiosity it was. It is kept in our field museum.
Anna went cold. Her hands began to tremble. She opened her bag and carefully took out the dress. The searcher gasped.
“Yes,” he whispered. “The peas are exactly the same.”
They walked silently to the place where the button had been found. It was a small clearing on the edge of the forest. Anna recognized it now. The very forest from her vision.
The searcher walked away, leaving her alone.
Anna spread the dress on the ground, on the fresh grass, already free of snow. The scarlet polka dots were cheerfully and absurdly colorful against the background of last year's foliage.
- Lida, - Anna said quietly. - We found you. You're home. Thank you. For everything.
She did not cry. She felt not grief, but a huge, universal relief. The air seemed to tremble, and Anna thought she heard that same carefree, youthful laughter again. Only now there was no pain in it. There was only joy and freedom.

Epilogue
At the memorial cemetery where the remains of Lidiya Smirnova (as the archives revealed, that was Lida's full name) were reburied, there now lies a modest stone. And next to it, in a special capsule, is the very same porcelain polka-dot button.
Anna did not put the dress in her suitcase. She restored it and hung it in her room in a frame under glass. It no longer gave her electric shocks or visions. It had fulfilled its mission.
Sometimes, on particularly sunny days, Anna puts on a simple, modern dress with a polka-dot pattern. She goes outside, and the wind blows the hem. She walks through the modern, noisy city, and it seems to her that two shadows are walking next to her - the strict but kind Vera and the restless, laughing Lida.
They are finally together. And they are young again. And the polka dot dress is no longer a relic of grief, but an eternal symbol of their friendship, love and life, which is stronger than any war.
And Anna knows that memory is not the burden of the past. It is the wings that allow us to remember who we are and where we come from. And to fly further.