It happened in August, during an ordinary summer vacation. The Larin family was spending their holiday on the Black Sea — mother, father, and their ten-year-old son, Artyom.
He loved the water — could swim for hours — and his parents would only occasionally call out to him:
— “Toma, don’t go too far!”
He would always wave back: “I’m right here, Mom!”
But that day, the sea suddenly changed.
The sky darkened, the wind picked up, and the waves rose higher than a person.
People began rushing from the beach — someone screamed, someone called for their child.
His mother saw Artyom raise his hand — and then a wave swallowed him.
They ran, they shouted, but it was too late.
He wasn’t found that day, nor the next.
The sea stayed silent.
A week passed.
The beach was empty now. The family sat on the shore.
The mother stared at the water, clutching a pendant — a silver anchor on a thin chain.
Artyom had the same one. They’d bought them as a pair: “So we’ll always be together, even when we’re apart.”
— “He couldn’t have…” she whispered. “He just couldn’t have vanished…”
The father stood beside her silently. No tears. No words. Just exhaustion.
And then, on the horizon, a dolphin’s back broke through the water. Then another.
Dolphins were common there — but this one was swimming strangely, straight toward them.
A boy nearby shouted:
— “Look! It’s carrying something!”
Everyone stepped closer. The dolphin really did come up almost to the shore. Something glittered in its mouth.
It stopped in the shallows, shook its head — and a pendant fell into the water.
The mother rushed forward.
It was Artyom’s pendant.
Scratched by sand, the thin cord torn.
The woman burst into tears.
The dolphin didn’t leave. It circled nearby, as if waiting. Then it quietly swam closer, touched her palm with its nose — and slipped back under the wave.
The next day, rescuers found the boy.
Alive.
Two kilometers from the beach, near an old fishing pier.
He was weak, sunburned — but alive. And he told them, “The dolphins pushed me toward the shore.”
— “They didn’t let me drown, Mom,” he said later in the hospital. “One of them carried my pendant so you’d know I was alive…”
Since then, the family has returned to that same place every year.
The mother walks to the sea with both pendants — hers and Artyom’s.
And every time the water splashes on the horizon, she smiles and whispers:
— “Hello, my friend. Thank you.”
Sometimes miracles don’t come from the sky — they rise from the depths.
When a heart calls out… even the sea listens.
