Re: Maggie, Amelia & Joshua
[Maggie was the eldest of a scrum of kids, but she had never been an eldest in the hours spent on hands and knees, hair-pulling and teasing and kids. She knew she'd be an aunt in time, the thought neither tugged at metaphorical heartstrings nor sounded an alarm on a biological clock that had given up ticking when a prison sentence had been cashed in. Freedom came without the pitter-patter of tiny feet and she eyed Joshua now, a silent, rangy presence from the door, electric with unspent kinetic energy. Her foot tapped, without thought, the scuff of her heels against the dirt of the floor tracing circles.
She didn't know kids. She didn't know them well enough to judge if that old was old enough to know when to stay quiet and when to run. The woman, the one who'd gone thinner and thinner than the rest of them, sweeping her rations to one side toward the kid like they weren't all going to notice flesh falling off bone, Maggie didn't think she knew how to fight either. But the men were gone, and so was the girl who'd handled a gun like she knew how to use it.
Death and brain-matter and the cloying smell of blood, thick as pennies was forgone. The second the kid was on that skinny hip, Maggie peeled herself away from the door-jam and turned, the expectation that she'd be followed instead of a command.]