Of course. Here’s the fully rewritten and modified version of the story in fluent, human, and unique English:
“Who’s crying out there?” I asked, standing in the doorway, my heart already uneasy.
“Probably the wind,” Stepan replied without lifting his eyes. “Who’d be crying on a night like this?”
But I wasn’t convinced. Something in the sound—thin, tremulous—pulled at me. I rushed out onto the porch, barefoot, the cold rain slicing my skin like tiny blades. That sound came again—low, muffled, undeniably human.
At the bottom of the steps, wrapped in a threadbare scarf, was a child. A boy, maybe three years old, pale and silent, with eyes wide open but empty. When I reached for him, he didn’t blink.
Stepan came out behind me, said nothing, just scooped the boy into his arms and carried him inside. As he set the kettle to boil, he looked at me and said simply, “It’s fate. We’ll keep him.”
We took him to the hospital the next morning. The doctor, Semyon Palych, sighed as he examined the boy. “He’s blind. Likely since birth. Doesn’t speak, but he hears. Development’s delayed… It’s hard to say. There are many children like this in institutions, you know…”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly, meeting his eyes. “And I don’t want to.”
With the help of a distant cousin at the village council, we completed the adoption. We named him Ilya, after Stepan’s grandfather.
“Do you think we can handle this?” Stepan asked that evening as we stepped back into the house.
“We’ll learn,” I said, not sure if I believed it myself.
I quit my job at the school. Ilya needed care every moment. He didn’t see danger—edges of porches, the fire in the stove. Stepan worked long days in the woods, but at night, he crafted rails along the walls, ropes across the garden, handholds everywhere.
“Look,” he whispered one evening, holding his hand out as the boy gripped it with a smile. “He knows me. He feels my hands.”
The village had its opinions. Some supported us—sent food, offered help. Others gossiped.
“They could’ve had their own children. Why take in one like that?”
Stepan shrugged. “They don’t know. Neither did we. Not until he came into our lives.”
By winter, Ilya had spoken his first word.
“Mama.”
I froze with a spoonful of porridge in my hand. In that moment, something inside me shifted, like a river finding a new path. I had never considered myself a mother—only a teacher, a wife. But now… I was something else.
At night, I read old textbooks by the stove, trying to figure out how to teach a blind child. We learned through sound, texture, temperature. I guided his hands over every surface, named every sound, every object.
“You’ll see,” said old Dunya as she brought us milk one day. “He’ll surprise you. Blind children often see more than we do—just not with their eyes.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted.
“You love him,” she said. “That’s enough.”
By spring, he followed me everywhere, gripping my apron, reaching out when he heard Stepan’s boots on the path. When the neighbor kids came around, he laughed for the first time, just listening to their voices.
Stepan pulled me into a quiet hug. “He didn’t find us by accident,” he said. “He chose us.”
Years passed. Ilya grew fast. By seven, he knew every corner of our home better than we did. He walked from porch to shed without faltering. Recognized trees by their bark. Sorted potatoes by scent and sound.
“This one’s bad,” he’d say, tapping it. “The sound’s off.”
Stepan built him a whole map of ropes and wooden markers, guiding him through the yard. I made letters out of wood, raised symbols with wire and nails.
When Ilya read his first word, Stepan brought home a thick pine board and made him a desk with ledges so the books wouldn’t slide.
At eight, the education board came knocking.
“You’re breaking the law,” said a stern woman. “He must attend school.”
“He’s learning,” I said, showing her our handmade letters, his notebooks.
“But not from professionals,” she argued. “He’d be better off in a boarding school. You’re not even his real parents.”
“He is ours,” I said, standing tall. “And he’ll live—not just survive.”
Stepan didn’t say a word for two days, then started building an extra room.
“For Ilya’s books,” he told me, hammering the first nail.
I was allowed back to teaching part-time, and given permission to educate Ilya at home. Other teachers came to help. One day, our principal looked at me and said, “Do you know your son is brilliant?”
“I do,” I smiled.
“I mean it,” he insisted. “His vocabulary, memory, speech—it’s incredible.”
We read every night. Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov. Anna Pavlovna at the library recorded books on tape just for him. He listened. Memorized. Repeated.
Soon, even the village kids listened. They gathered around him, asking for stories.
He told fairy tales—some I had read to him, many of his own invention. He sat on a stump near the fence, the children all around him. Even adults stopped to listen.
“He sees with his heart,” Stepan said once, watching him.
At seventeen, Ilya turned to me one evening. “Mom,” he said softly, “I want to write. To show the world how we see.”
I blinked. “Write? You mean… become an author?”
“Yes. About us. About what it’s like. About you and Dad.”
I squeezed his hand. “I’ll write down every word.”
Years passed. His first story was published when he was twenty-two. “Listening to the World.” It captured the attention of readers everywhere.
Technology came. Talking computers, voice software. Ilya adapted with ease. We built him a studio. He kept writing—novels, short stories, essays. People came from all over just to hear him speak.
Journalists often asked him, “What changed your life?”
“Not the technology,” he always said. “The people who listened.”
He started a small foundation to help blind children. And when he was invited to become a representative for an international disability alliance, he turned to us and said, “Only if you come with me. I’m nothing without you.”
We’re older now. The porch is wide and warm. I sit between Stepan and Ilya, listening to the wind and the sound of the garden waking up.
“Remember that night?” Stepan says. “When we found him?”
“We didn’t find him,” Ilya answers. “I found you.”
And I smile, because he’s right. We thought we were giving him a home, a life. But in truth, he gave us something far greater—purpose, love, and the kind of light that can only be felt, not seen.
If that night came again, I’d run out barefoot into the rain all over again. I’d say yes again. To that child. To that life.
Because it gave us everything.