Thanks for all the excellent reviews that were left for me...It's great to log on and see them waiting for me while I get ready to update!
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Part 6
"My God, Mara…" Harm muttered, before dropping the tankards he was lifting and making his way towards the child. Mac was only a step behind him, hurrying to get to the child.
"Mara…Mara!" they both shouted, but the little girl gave no indication that she had even heard them.
"Mara, honey, wait!" Harm shouted and picked up his pace.
"Mara, Mara, whoa," he reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder but the child started violently, dropping her shoulder down out of his grasp and staggering out of his reach.
"It's okay, sweetie," Mac moved to soothe the child, "We're not here to hurt you…"
Mara just turned her back on them again and hurried on her way. Harm and Mac soon fell back and settled for just watching Mara, there was no way they would be able to distract her from her mission. She just started rooting through a pile of debris.
"It was where her home stood," one of the villagers told the man interpreting, "The family she was staying with are all either dead, or missing."
"What is she looking for?" Harm asked the man interpreting, who relayed the question.
The old villager just shrugged his shoulders.
Feeling absolute sympathy for her, the only thing Harm could think of was to try and help the little girl in some manner. Mac just stood back and watched, unable to spur herself into any action, rooted to the spot where she stood. Harm approached slowly, but stopped a distance from Mara. He bent down and began lifting odd pieces of debris; sheets of corrugated iron, tree branches, objects unidentifiable under layers of mud. Harm had no idea what it was that Mara was looking for, but it was obviously important to her, so he would provide what help he could.
While they were searching, Mac turned to the interpreter and asked, "How on earth did she survive a storm that wiped out all of the people she was living with?"
Again, once the question had been posed to the villager, the man shrugged his shoulders. Mac shook her head, ruefully; there was little that made sense in this tragedy. She sighed softly then made her way to the debris pile and started helping sort through all of the wreckage. Suddenly the little girl let out a cry and dove into mangled wreckage, extracting the remains of the headband of flowers she had worn for the school performance at the village celebration. All the flowers had been bashed to oblivion, but the rudiments of the crown's shape remained. She clutched the ragged item in her hands and sat down amongst the debris. Her head fell down, her chin to her chest and started to whimper.
Harm and Mac approached her, cautiously, dropped to their haunches.
"Mara? It's okay, sweetie…Things will get better."
Mara only said one thing;
"I miss Mama…"
Mac looked to Harm.
Her look said clearly;
'Her Mother? How does she know about her Mother?'
Harm would never really find an answer, himself.
"Mara, honey, are you okay?" Harm asked.
The little girl shuddered through sobs, shaking her head.
"Hurts…" she managed to get out, through her grief.
"It hurts? Where does it hurt?" Mac asked, fearing that the child might have sustained some outwardly unidentifiable injury, "Can you show us where it is hurting you?"
The little girl let go of her headband with one hand and clutched it to her chest, above her heart.
"Here," she sobbed.
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Harm and Mac took Mara back with them in the pick-up truck, that evening.
They had wrapped a blanket around her, as they had no clothes with them that would fit her. All they had brought with them were much too big. Mac took Mara from Harm as he passed the child up. They settled into the far corner, with the child in between them. Lulled by the movement of the vehicle, Mara was in a half-sleep/half-trance for much of the journey back to the main village.
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Mara turned out to have quite a roving spirit.
When Mac woke up in the morning, on the floor of the disused school building, her heart immediately jumped into her throat and she exclaimed, "Harm!" Harm jumped straight up from where he was lying on the floor.
"Huh!" was the only coherent word out of his mouth.
"Mara's gone!" Mac informed him, urgently.
They both stumbled around the building, thinking that the child may have simply moved around during the night. The floor was packed with sleeping children, both those orphaned and those not yet claimed by their surviving relatives. But a quick search of all the dark heads of hair proved that she was not there. They both carefully manoeuvred through the rows of sleeping children and out of the door. First, they ran down the road in one direction, then in the other, conducting a visual survey of the area. They spotted Mara in the distance, walking with no urgency, down a rough dirt track. The child wore no shoes and only the pair of shorts that they had found her in. The shrivelled headband was clutched lightly in one hand.
"Mara…Mara, wait!" Harm shouted.
Mara again gave no sign that she had heard him.
He and Mac ran after her, but this time Harm knew not to make a grab for her and accidentally scare her. He slowed down and walked round and in front of her. Mara halted and slowly looked up, as if realising that the pair of men's shoes in her line of vision actually had an owner. Her gaze continued upwards until she locked eyes with Harm, at last showing that she was registering his presence. Then she looked to Mac.
"Mara, honey, where are you going? You scared us…we woke up and you were gone…"
The child already looked upset enough at this sudden confrontation, so Harm cut off, mid-sentence.
He just sighed and continued, "Okay, honey. It's okay, we're going to go and get some breakfast, now…are you hungry?"
The child slowly shook her head, but allowed Harm and Mac to lead her back to the shelter.
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A tent was set up outside the abandoned school building. The upper floors held families displaced by the storm, the lower floors were home to the orphans and children with no family members accompanying them. The tent was used to cook food for all of the villagers. Very little had been salvaged from the wreckage left by the storm, but there was some rice, corn and some emergency rations, which had been left by the US military forces.
"I never thought I'd be glad to see these again," Mac commented as Harm tossed her an MRI package.
"They're better than nothing," Harm sat down and unwrapped his own.
They both picked through their own packet and took turns in feeding some to the little girl between them. Mara was wrapped tightly in a blanket, leaning against the wall. She was drowsy and not really up to eating, all she seemed to want to do was sleep. She had been like this all afternoon and Harm and Mac were really becoming concerned about her.
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