Polina Barskova's new prose is about the connections between a person and his habitat, about their loss, search and painful restoration. It is based on the story of Dorothea Merian, an artist who came to Russia at the invitation of Peter in 1718 and became a mentor to the first generation of Russian watercolorists and engravers and a keeper of the Kunstkamera. This is the story of her connection with her mother, the great entomologist, artist and traveler Sibylla Merian, who discovered the metamorphosis of insects. And it is also a story about St. Petersburg, which at first was only a replica of Amsterdam and only gradually acquired its own features and its own special destiny. But perhaps the most important part of this whole is the author's attempt to tell her story about the loss of a city and the discovery of oneself, the search for a language and her own transformation.