A Face and a Name Charlotte Humphrey She had woken to find that she had a face and a name, which surprised her – it was more than she could say for the little girls and boys playing something like hopscotch on the street outside. When the pink oil streaks of dawn slipped up into another day, she watched as they abandoned their jumping game and found new laughter in chasing each other through the dust. All the while they were singing a song she’d never heard before – though it was hardly a challenge to sing a song she’d never heard. One little boy dragged himself away from the group and found a place to sit, in the shade. His straw hair set him apart from the other children, who, through soot and sun, seemed to be made of darkness. His pale features, however, were secondary to the cloth bound round his head that had come loose during the course of their new game. The other children were unfazed by the hole that had been lingering just above his smile. He looked on with one clean eye, whilst he rewrapped the side of his face that fell away into a deep bloom of red and black. It hadn’t been the first time that Karina had seen it. Nor had the moment when one of the little girls had removed her metal leg, to rub the stump underneath, been the first time she’d seen that either. What she had never seen or heard though, was a sign that these children had names. They would call to each other like ghosts - they would click or whistle and always found the attention they sought. As if they were communicating on a frequency with which Karina was not in tune. A face and name. Karina could have sworn, she’d never felt so lost or so lucky. Spring was dying – she knew that much as there was a voice in the back of her head that told her that the sun, which stretched over the dust, and the smell of the desert river meant that the middle of the year was coming, and she had fallen for the scent that drifted up off the green water and palms. She had been standing beyond the one building she had managed to call hers – it stood away from the rest - one nameless day, breathing in the palms and the sun and the distant burning, when she felt her stomach drain like a sink. She blinked, before looking ahead to the store shed. It sat just inside a chain-linked fence and appeared to have gained favour with a low-standing windmill, as the structure had toppled to get closer.
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