Thirteen contemporary writers writing in Russian have created thirteen short stories about the customs and traditions in their cultures: diverse, yet nevertheless based on the same phenomena and processes. Coming of age (for example, through a computer game, as in Dasha Blagova's story), choosing a profession (becoming a shepherd or a vlogger, as in Islam Khanipaev's text), marriage (between people of different traditions, as in Ekaterina Manoylo's story), as well as confronting death, experiencing dreams and reality, winter and summer – overcoming these and other complex, sometimes pivotal, but ordinary events and phenomena becomes our grounding, a point of support and a source of strength for living through times of catastrophe.