DAWN WILL RISE 

By Tessa Harvey

    Maybe it wasn't too late to pray? When she was six, her kind Auntie Klara had told her about Jesus and asked Ella if she would like to know Jesus? "I'll think about it," Ella had replied, but she hadn't, not really.
    Ten years later they were in a different country and she was spending the night with a friend from school.
    The friend's mother had come to the bedroom and tucked them both struggling in bed. She really liked that.
    But her mother was running an informal day-care, so she said nothing. Sixteen was, after all, too old ....
    Earlier Ella had marveled at the beautiful old ghost gums along the riverbank nearby. And when the laughter of kookaburras woke her, she laughed, remembering a song at school in the U.K. about those very birds laughing.
    The friend's grown-up sister had given her a bible. Now ten years later she opened it. So many she knew mocked this book, but she needed to help Dawn fly. This seemed a beginning.

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