When Dara later showed Yavor the invitation, his reaction was calm. He was much calmer than she had expected.

"God ..." he said. "I envy you terribly ... You know it. But I'm also so happy for you. And proud to have friends like this. You should be proud too. You can even get as conceited as you want. This is just the right moment for it.”

Proud… Dara got up from her favourite old sofa by the window and started stooging around the small living room of their apartment. What else was there? "Bad people you’ll meet and a bad disease is waiting for you…" She shook her head. She completed her walk and stopped in front of Yavor, who was relaxing in a chair next to the sofa. He was smiling broadly at her. He even looked a bit too happy.

"Come, sit on me." She perched on his knees and stuck her nose in his shoulder. "Hey, I know what you're thinking. That Boyan is a genius, right? Nothing new. But who is the smartest one? Who is the best ever? You are. That’s what you always instilled in our heads." Dara nodded her head without looking up, and Yavor laughed. "See?"

"Silly, what do you know?"

"Well, yes, I don’t know how we got here. I always thought that you would be a painter. I never knew that you would be competing with Boyan so much.

"You're the one in competition with him, not me," Dara muttered. "I don't even work at the institute anymore."

"Oh, you don't need that pokey institute. If I were you, I would be jumping with joy, but as you can see, I am quite invitationless. But it's for the better because it would have given me a heart attack. Then you would be left alone. And what would you do, all smart yet lonely? Nah, I am better off by your side.

She buried her fingers in his dark hair and pressed closer to him.

"Were you surprised when Boyan received the invitation?"

"My dear girl." Yavor turned her face to his and moved her hair behind her ears. "Firstly, of course, I was surprised. Our minds were just blown, weren't they? You know very well that we never really expected it. It could easily have remained just a game for us. Boyan was shocked too, I am sure of it, even if he acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world. But that he is a genius, that he is our golden boy, everyone acknowledges it and he deserves it. Secondly… - He hugged her tightly and rocked her like a small child. "Someone far far away, (not in another galaxy, just overseas), has sensed what a quick and brilliant mind there is inside this beautiful little head. Someone very smart, like everyone in Kolver. Yet, regardless of how smart that person is, he wouldn’t be able to see in you what I see and for this, I am so grateful. Remember, darling, I am the only one who does not like you because of your mind or character, but because of your smile, because of your hair, which is the blackest and longest hair I’ve ever seen. Because of your giant eyes, which see and understand more than they should. Because of those fingers and those eyebrows." Yavor kissed her on the eyes and forehead. "Believe me, Boyan does not have any of these things. He is lanky, blondish, has a weirdly variegated beard and his eyes are so small. Of course, the eyes of all normal human beings are small compared to yours. But what I'm saying is – why compare yourself to a random physicist? And he's not even a proper physicist, but a hybrid of some kind." She laughed and got more relaxed.

"You are such a great support, Yavor. When I’m in a need of encouragement, you tell me they've chosen me for my black eyes."

"Always there for you, dear." Yavor paused for a moment, still swinging her in his arms. "Remember when…," he asked, "remember when we first heard about Kolver University?"?

Of course, she remembered.

"It was on my twelfth birthday."

"Wasn't it on the thirteenth?"

"On my twelfth birthday, when you got me that raven. I will never forget how you literally lied to me about it. All these promises that I could teach it to say 'ass' and to sing obscene songs. Guess the raven you gave me was quite incompetent."

"You were the incompetent one, darling! That's why you released it, to hide the fact that you couldn’t handle it right."

"Nope, I didn't let it go. It ran away on its own, in the meanest way, because that’s the way it was and you picked a raven like that, on purpose. And it’s your fault I didn’t get to see Grandma’s face if she heard those special songs.

"You then asked her what she did on her thirteenth birthday."

"Oh, that's right. On the twelfth though. – She corrected him again - And she said there was a war, yet her parents still took her to a famous, for the time, restaurant and gave her an expensive watch as a present. The restaurant was called Kolver."

Dara had then noted that the name seemed strange to her, foreign. And her grandmother had explained that the name was an ancient one, that it existed in these lands long before Bulgaria was created. But, now only a few remember it. Instead, she had added with her finger raised - "now in America, a city has been built. The ideal city." The children had their ears pricked up. "And you know the name of this ideal city? It’s Kolver," she had finished with a solemn tone. "What is so ideal about it," Boyan had asked her a bit contemptuously, "how can a city be perfect, in general?..." Her grandmother had then made a long pause, after which she told them that all the houses were beautiful and large like palaces, and none of them was like the other. The sole energy source of the city was the Sun, it rained only when necessary, and the heat was regulated so that everything would bloom and bear fruit throughout the year. The food was all gourmet food, and in that, it was healthy, too. But nobody would really get sick, anyway. But since they were a band of rascals, they wouldn't end up there even in their dreams.

"She didn’t get it at all - Dara said, leaning her back against Yavor's chest. "We were a mob of geniuses, not rascals." To this, Yavor laughed.

"Just you and Boyan though. Well, now it’s official that your Grandma wasn’t at all right about us. Even if all I can do is let the reflected glory of you all shine on me… - She poked him hard in the ribs, but he took her hand in his and continued seriously. "I do wonder, though, what did your Grandma really know about Kolver? Leaving out all the nonsense."

"Who knows, it was more like a fairytale ... but apparently, there’s a lot she didn’t tell us. Rather, I wonder why she stopped mentioning it once we grew up.” - She hugged Yavor tightly. "I miss her so much." He hugged her back and they fell silent.

Dara’s grandmother was the most interesting and important person in her life. Her name was Edwina and she was as strange and mysterious as her name. She was born at the turn of the century into a wealthy family. Her family loved her unconditionally and gave her all the means for a good start in life, but also a certain confidence that she wasn’t just another girl who was expected to marry a fine man and nothing more. Edwina was her own person, one who could freely choose her destiny. She got a Chemistry degree in Vienna, but also travelled to various other places, to study a bit of this and a bit of that. She studied in Paris, in Rome, in London, in Prague. She could speak more than seven languages fluently and she hardly put up with Dara's inability to learn at least English at a tolerable level. It’s not that Dara didn't do well. It was just never good enough to meet her grandmother’s criteria of “tolerable”.

Edwina talked of her youth in a peculiar way - fragmentally, never as a complete story and left it to Dara and her friends’ imagination to fill the gaps between the events, some of which were rather bizarre. They didn’t complain about the omissions – the fact that Edwina was a person not only from another time but also from a different world was enough to satisfy them. The fact that when she was young she travelled constantly and met celebrities (even though most of their names were unfamiliar) has always fascinated them and they never doubted her words. Sometimes she would brag a little, like when she casually suggested that at those old times in which riding a bicycle as a woman was revolutionary, she could fly a plane. She was always on the top of her class at university and had been so “nice-looking” two of her suitors killed each other in a duel. And she spoke of such things without remorse or guilt, for those were simply the facts. Dara loved to imagine her antics as a movie – how she once dressed as a boy, how she participated in car races in France, how once, under disguise she discovered that her narcissistic professor who often put her down just because she was a woman, was, in fact, homosexual. She had nothing against homosexuals and a lot against hypocrites. Edwina didn’t find it necessary to explain that any further. That incident, though, almost cost her her studies. She told them she had tried everything and by that, she meant everything but left it to their fantasy to fill the rest. Her sparkling eyes though, hinted that Dara could use all of her imagination and still wouldn’t possibly guess what her Grandma really did.

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Despite Edwina's vows to never marry, she did marry, even if at a quite late age, to a merchant after a stormy love affair. Dara knew little about her grandfather, who died three years after the birth of their daughter. It was hard for Dara to imagine that her grandfather had been a merchant, she had always thought that Edwina's husband would be a scientist or a writer. After getting widowed, her grandmother was left alone with a little child. She had but a small income to rely on – and she couldn’t even think of starting a job, much less as a chemist, and for the first time in her life, she went through difficult times. Then World War II broke off, the communists took the power, and only after that could her friends manage to get her a job at the National Library. Edwina worked there until her retirement and that provided an invaluable advantage for Dara and her friends, especially as they entered university, for Edwina always had immediate access to the forbidden catalogues and books of the time.

Her grandmother always used to say that the worst misfortunes come to the strongest people because only they have the power to overcome them. As banal as it seems, this saying was painfully valid for Edwina, because after losing her family and her husband, she finally lost her own child too. Her daughter, Dara’s mother had died together with her husband due to unclear circumstances. Edwina had taken custody of their little girl and so Dara became her only family. But that family was soon joined by Yavor and Boyan.

It may have been a coincidence — unhappy or happy (that, nobody could say) - that the three children were all born in the same year, lived on the same street, and were orphans. They became friends as early as in the kindergarten, and Edwina took them all under her wing before they even learned how to read.

Yavor's mother had died during childbirth, and his father took to drink. He had tried to marry again, unsuccessfully so, and then gave up all attempts and took off to Siberia to work. He left the child to its grandmother, who was very old and ill at that time, so the boy had to take care of her and the house, all at the tender age of seven. Dara remembered that his father sent them money, which was quite the feat, but he just never returned to Bulgaria. The last thing they heard, he had married some Russian woman. Yavor avoided talking about his father.

At four years of age, Boyan miraculously survived the car accident that unfortunately brought death to his parents. He had only vague memories of them, and he couldn’t help but wonder if these memories were even real, or just a combination of tales and lots of black-and-white photos. At least he knew for sure that his parents had been obsessed with taking pictures.

Boyan was thereafter left on the mercy of his fairly overworked aunt. She was well-meaning, but working shifts at the local brewery in addition to having two more children to take care of was driving her to her limits. His uncle was almost constantly absent from home, taking private jobs after work to earn some additional coin - that included glueing tiles and making plaster ornaments on people's homes. The aunt always complained that he never had time for their home; and who would guess he was an artisan when his own house looked as if it was going to collapse this very moment? Not that they were arguing all the time, but they weren’t doing well either. The aunt and uncle just never had time for Boyan. It was mainly his older sisters that provided to him, ultimately. But for some reason, he still couldn’t form lasting bonds with them. Space was too little for everyone to live comfortably; Boyan eventually recognized the need of having a separate room, as he had to live with two girls. That’s why, at every opportunity, he stayed at Dara’s. Her house was way more spacious and only Dara and Edwina lived in it. The house was old, the rooms were not very big, but at least they were more than enough in number. For him, the chance for Edwina and Dara to sleep separately, and for Yavor and him to have a bedroom to themselves too for when they stood up late, was an unusual luxury.

The house had another invaluable trait – it had the most spacious attic, where Edwina stored everything unnecessary. The children had found countless treasures there: an old colonial cork helmet, dusty and faded, but fully preserved; a lacquered and finely painted mandolin with torn strings; many old books, some of which rather strange and in unknown languages; torn and scratched piano sheet music, faded photos of strangers in unusual clothes and with startled faces; a porcelain doll with a lavish, though ruined by moths, dress and black hair which was sadly tousled. The doll looked so real that as a child Dara was scared of it and hated it a lot. One of the most valuable things there was a large greyish-blue mattress the children immediately fell in love with and so it became the centre of their lives. There they would have their most intimate conversations, would cry away all the sorrows and bitterness, and there Dara and Yavor later made love for the first time.

Another priceless item was an old and rather ugly-looking Telefunken radio, which Boyan repaired himself for the three young adolescents to secretly listen to the "black" stations “Radio Free Europe” and “The Voice of America”.

The third thing was especially important to Dara - a watercolour portrait of her grandmother in her youth, standing at full height. It was created in Paris, on one of the bridges of Seine: dapped light shined down on a slim and very elegant girl through the branches of a large tree. Her face was a soft pink, her lips were curved playfully, her dark hair was daringly tied with just a loose blue ribbon, hair long enough to reach below her waist, her dress was of unusual straight cut and with ornaments that looked like they could have come out of a Klimt mosaic; in her hands, there was a small umbrella stuck into the ground. But there was also something unsettling about this drawing – at first glance, it was a basic portrait of a very beautiful girl, but there was a shadow next to her as if she was not alone, but with someone who was erased afterwards or perhaps got thinned through the years to invisibility. Something like in Dorian Gray – this someone’s life got more and more thrilling, while all life got extracted from his image on the canvas – and what was left was but a vague stain. A memory of a man casually leaning towards her grandmother...

Dara asked Edwina about it, but her grandmother dismissively waved her hand, saying that the portrait was in the attic for a reason. It was, as it turned out, of no value, the artist was too young and he was also not very talented. He did an acceptable job, probably because he adored her, but he failed to paint her boyfriend - he kept erasing it, correcting it, kept starting over until the picture was left like that – half done with an ugly stain instead of a person. And that’s why Edwina never liked it.

Dara probably wouldn't have doubted Edwina’s story if she hadn't seen this picture a month after her death. She only went to the attic to clean it up a bit and got stunned when she saw that her grandmother's image had become the same shadowy silhouette as the ghostly thin man beside her. At first, she couldn't believe her eyes. She took the portrait downstairs to take a good look at it, and yes, her grandmother had indeed disappeared. Dara’s only comfort was the many copies of the painting she had made herself. Because despite her grandmother's complete disregard of it, to Dara this watercolour was dear. She liked to look at it, she liked to look for resemblances with Edwina, and liked imagining what things could have possibly been done in Paris by her grandmother... Or she would simply enjoy her grandmother’s beauty.

Even when very old, Edwina remained a remarkably beautiful woman. She died at the age of 98 and even then her face had almost no wrinkles, her hair was perfectly white, but that, paradoxically, made her look youthful, even. She remained energetic, she was slim, very elegant and too perceptive for her own good.

When she was gone, Dara mourned her perfume, the gentle sound of her clothes rustling, and she missed those little things her grandmother always did for her — the traditional bowl of fragrant yellow apples and the yoghurt with fruit and honey after dinner. Dara assumed that’s what it was like have a mother - to her Edwina was a mother, a friend, a confessor and basically support in every situation.

They often argued, but never fought for real, so she was surprised when the first and last conflict between them that happened – it was when Dara and Yavor decided to get married. Edwina loved the boys as her own and yet disapproved of Dara's relationship with Yavor. She had shown it in many ways over the years, but never really confronted Dara about it. Rather, it was a positional war with one side prevailing over the other and vice versa. Dara didn’t see any real reason for such an outright opposition to the wedding. Besides, she thought Edwina had eventually come to terms with the situation since for so many years Dara had never given up on Yavor. Nor did she understand Edwina’s demeanour, who was otherwise sharp-witted, with a no-nonsense attitude; for her to give only hints and allusions about this sensitive matter – this irritated Dara even more. Banalities such as how Yavor isn’t suited for her, how she’s making a big mistake, how sorry she’ll be later, how she doesn’t know what she’s doing at all, how she could at least wait just a little more and maybe try other possibilities – those were not at all convincing and weren’t even normal for her grandmother. Most often she went on and on about how Dara just shouldn’t be in such a hurry for it was almost certain that her future was bound to be completely different and Yavor was just not part of her destiny. In short, the rational and pragmatic Edwina suddenly turned dramatic, speaking of things like fate, as if she was not Edwina, but one of their superstitious neighbours who liked going to fortune-tellers and receiving coffee cup readings.

Anyway, as someone brought up by her grandmother, Dara stood up for herself and did not give up on the wedding. However, this seemed to take away the pith and marrow from that woman. She closed off, then started languishing, her skin turned transparent, and one morning she just didn’t wake up. And the last thing she told Dara when they talked the night before was "Don't rush it with Yavor."

Dara didn't cry that day and long after that. It was as if her grief had clogged her soul somehow, together with hurt and anger over the lost possibility to talk to Edwina again, to try to only explain... to make her accept her decision.

But it was all over, and Dara would never be able to see those strange slanted eyes again, to hear her swear at politicians, or hear her make fun of a particularly poor or syrupy novel.

And Dara missed Edwina most in the most important moments of her life. Like now, when hers, Boyan's and Yavor's dream, sown within their souls by Edwina herself, finally came true. If only her grandmother was here, she would probably smile... And admit that she was very happy, but also quite scared. And that she was sad that she may not be able to go with them...