On the edge of the forest and steppe, far from people, an elderly Buryat woman Demid lives with her dog. The war took her family away from her, but she doesn't seem to remember it. Years pass, and Demid, as before, washes the laundry of his children and sends the dog to the forest married to the forester. The dog runs away to look for the owner, but always comes back with nothing. One day, Demid's oblivion is broken.

A young man called Sharnokhoi rents a small cabin on the outskirts of UlanUde, a small city in eastern Siberia, with his fiancée Garalma. She ran away from home after her parents forbade her to marry Sharnokhoi. Garalma is pregnant. Suddenly on a way home she sees a strange man in a busy city street through the window of the bus – a horseman wearing the ancient armor of the Huns, riding a black horse and carrying weapons. Garalma feels sick, doctors from the local hospital can’t make an accurate diagnosis of her condition and keep making tests and giving her strong sedative injections every few hours. Sharnokhoi meets another patient of the hospital, an old Buryat man who tries to explain to Sharnokhoi that the doctors cannot help his wife and that if he wants to save her a special shaman ceremony should be performed.