Friend [Maria]
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She is a woman of the present, though her roots lie deep in the past.
When the boy first comes to her, terrified behind his bravado, she smiles and decides to play his foil.
She has no interest in being a mother, and her biological clock has long since ticked itself out. But she can be a friend, a cheerful tormentor, to this strange child that her old teacher has sent her.
Thus she prods, she plays, she needles him out of his sadness.
And when he disappears from her home without a word, she laughs and wishes him luck.
***
****************
She is a woman of the present, though her roots lie deep in the past.
When the boy first comes to her, terrified behind his bravado, she smiles and decides to play his foil.
She has no interest in being a mother, and her biological clock has long since ticked itself out. But she can be a friend, a cheerful tormentor, to this strange child that her old teacher has sent her.
Thus she prods, she plays, she needles him out of his sadness.
And when he disappears from her home without a word, she laughs and wishes him luck.
***
