After a powerful storm, a fisherman arrived at the shore early in the morning, just like he did almost every weekend. The beach was covered with debris the waves had thrown onto the land during the night — pieces of wood, seaweed, plastic bottles, and rusty scraps of metal.
As he walked along the muddy shoreline looking for a quiet place to fish, something unusual caught his eye. A thin wire was sticking straight out of the thick mud, almost as if it were attached to something buried underneath.
At first he ignored it. After storms, the shore was always full of strange objects. But curiosity got the better of him. He stepped closer, bent down, and grabbed the wire to pull it out.
It didn’t move.
The fisherman planted his boots deeper into the sticky clay and pulled harder with both hands. The wire tightened, but whatever it was attached to seemed firmly trapped in the mud.
“Just great… what is this thing?” he muttered.
He tried again, rocking the wire from side to side, pulling in short jerks. The mud seemed to cling to the hidden object as if it didn’t want to let it go. Several times he almost gave up, but curiosity kept pushing him forward.
Finally, after one strong pull, the ground made a loud sucking sound, and something heavy slowly began to rise out of the mud.
The fisherman nearly lost his grip as the strange object popped free. It was large and oddly shaped, completely covered in thick clay. Because of the mud, it was impossible to understand what it actually was.
For a moment, a cold shiver ran down his spine. The shape looked disturbingly human.
Trying not to think about the worst possibilities, he carried the object to the water and carefully began washing the mud away with the waves.
Little by little, the thick clay started sliding off. First he saw a smooth curved surface. Then the outline of a nose appeared. A moment later — lips.
The fisherman froze.
As more mud washed away, curls of hair carved in stone became visible. And then the entire face appeared from beneath the water.
He stepped back in disbelief.
Staring at him from the waves was the stone head of a statue of Alexander Pushkin. 
For a few seconds he just stood there silently, trying to process what had happened. Only a minute earlier he had been worried that he might have pulled something criminal out of the mud. The thought of calling the police had even crossed his mind.
Instead, it turned out the storm had likely washed part of an old statue from somewhere along the coast and dragged it back onto the shore.
What began as a quiet morning of fishing had suddenly turned into a very unexpected discovery.
