My friends, today I found this short and touching story. Please do tell us how you feel after reading. :3 A Bright Start. Chapter 1. The floods had been devastating. Nasreen looked around. The floods had wrecked the village where she lived. People were standing in disbelief that nature could be so cruel. “Mama!” she shouted, seeking that familiar face. “Mama!” she yelled, though there was only a cloaked silence. The usual humdrum activity of her village had been silenced into a fear for the future. Children stood on street corners though the streets were not easy to distinguish. Piles of mud, and rivulets of brown water ran down the hill through the village. The children were clad in dirty clothing and seemed almost apathetic, looking in disbelief at the changed landscape. The rains had taken away the familiarity and replaced it with a dark emptiness of unfamiliarity. Nothing escaped them. They knew it was a question of survival of the fittest. Nasreen gathered together her brothers and sisters, and what little clothing she could find in the ruin of her home. She looked at the battered walls of what used to be her home. Now it stood in disarray and was alien and uncomfortable to look at. The picture of her mother floated in a puddle of mud and she bent down to retrieve it. Tears filled her eyes. Only the children could be found. Mama wasn't anywhere, and although she had run through the streets searching for her, mama was missing. The crowds made their way like flocks of sheep along the lane which skirted the village, toward a new settlement. Nasreen joked with her sister to try and make her feel better. “It's okay” she murmured. “The ark was a long time ago. This is just a storm.” She saw the fear in her sisters eyes, and knew the reality wasn't as simple. Not only had they lost their home and village. They were now displaced people with no food for tomorrow and no clothing to change into, out of these mud covered saris that clung to their bare feet in perpetual reminder of their struggle. It was a two day voyage. The children were sick, and people had been kind, giving them bowls of rice to sustain them, and sharing precious water among the group of villagers. Where it had come from Nasreen never knew or questions. She merely drank, knowing that without fluids the chances of illness were increased. “Drink a little, even if you're not thirsty.” she insisted to her sister. Her brother was looking sicker by the day, and on the second day, Nasreen had carried him the last few miles to the camp. The camp was makeshift. Tents and covers were better than nothing at all, and the Red Cross had flown in supplies, though Nasreen was afraid. “Where will we go from here?” she asked one of the elders. He looked at her with tear filled eyes and didn't need to answer. His eyes told her that this was all that they had, and things wouldn't change. Chapter 2. In a muddy puddle, Nasreen did her best to clean the children's clothing. Drying the garments was easy as the baking sun scorched the muddy earth into a landscape of darkened mounds. Below them, in the valley, the waters were high, though the dangers had been spelled out to them about wandering too far from the camp. They were still recovering bodies, which lay in neat rows along the water's edge. Nasreen looked toward them and prayed her Mama wasn't one of them. The uncertainly and daunting thoughts of reality made her feel vulnerable and afraid, though she couldn't show it. Her brother and sister needed her to be strong. Four hundred deaths in three small villages was the reality. The women stood at the edge of the encampment waiting for news, and Nasreen was no exception. Each day, new discoveries of survivors or dead were announced, and many taken immediately to medical tents for attention by doctors who spoke foreign languages. Nasreen had tried to make sense of what they were saying, though their accents were difficult to understand. On the fourth week, Nasreen turned to her sister. “Mama isn't coming back.” she said, and cuddled her sister. Seetha cried as young children do, greeted by news too terrible to comprehend. “She is coming back!” Seetha yelled at her sister. “I am sorry Seetha, I really think it's too late, and that they have found everyone who was left in the village and mama isn't anywhere to be found.” She had an enormous responsibility to Seetha and her brother, and little by little hope was fading. On a hot morning in July, Seetha woke to greet the day. She stood outside the tent which had been her shelter for so many weeks. The sun was rising in the sky and a kind of mist cloaked the earth. A silhouette in the distance caught her attention, and as it grew closer, she saw the outline of a woman. “Mama!” she screamed for joy, running to embrace her mother. Standing in the morning sunlight among the mists that lay across the horizon as if in a dream, Nasreen embraced her mother with a new vigor, a new hope. This was the first hope she had felt in all these weeks since the disaster. When Seetha woke up, she found her sister, brother and mother circled and sitting cross legged around a fire pit. There her mother took flour and made those familiar rounds of dough she had tasted at home, patting the dough between her worn out fingers, just as she had at home. The sun was rising on a new day, and a bright start none of them expected. Amid the chaos of loss and doubt, today was a new beginning. From humble foundations, each of them knew that the world held possibilities and that it was possible, amid an ambiance of despair to start again, and to build something familiar and secure together as a family.