Prey

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The Narrator

The earthquake separated Rina Aymara from her tribe as she tumbled down a hill and fell into a thick part of the rainforest during the earthquake. By the time she came to consciousness, after the earthquake, she realized that the sun had set and the area around her was dark. Wiping her eyes, she discovered that the place where she was was a place she and her friends were forbidden to play in. She was always curious about the place her parents told her not to play in, but she definitely didn't like to stay there on the night of the day she fell into that part of the rainforest. Saved by the bushes and the canopy of the trees, Aymara's body merely had a few bruises and lacerations. She was able to limp about. From the forest floor, as she scanned her environment, she couldn't see the hill on which her tribe was camping in.

All she could remember was that she was playing with her friend Kantuta Willka when everything around her started shaking. They were playing near the slope of the hill from which one could see the 'forbidden forest'. When the earth shook, Kantuta and Rina had slipped down the slope, despite trying to grip onto the ground as they scraped their way down the hill. After they had fallen down, she remembered walking quite far into the forest with Kantuta -both of them being in a semi-conscious state- before both of them passed out. While both of them were semi-conscious after the fall, they walked very far away from their hill and fainted.

"Kantuta?" she shouted.

Kantuta was nowhere to be seen.

"Rina?" she heard someone call from behind her.

"Kantuta?" she said.

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Sanchez Roderigo was relieved that the dam survived the strong earthquake. The Srilankan children and the Bolivian children were playing outside when the earth began shaking. For that reason, they survived, even though the buildings where the kids stayed had collapsed. What Sanchez didn't know was that there were cracks in the foundation of the two embankments of La Abuela De Princesa Irene. There were cracks through which water was seeping. Like the other officers, he was relieved that the visible portions of the dam seemed intact.

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It was 8:30 pm. Felipe and a doctor who was stuck in the traffic jam that followed the collapse of the bridge began attending to victims who were injured in the earthquake. After the earthquake was over, Felipe had helped remove debris of disintegrated buildings that had fallen on stranded survivors. The unfortunate thing that he discovered was that the number of survivors (a majority of which were seriously injured) was far outnumbered by those who died. Felipe was relieved after he got calls from the people he knew who reported that they were safe. On Facebook, Nacho marked himself as safe from the Bolivian Dual Earthquake Event. His dog Amor was safe too.

Both the doctor and Felipe were administrating first aid to the injured, in hopes that help would arrive in the form of helicopters.

News and radio reports were reporting on the casualties of the Earthquake in Bolivia. The earthquake experienced in Bolivia was caused by two simultaneous earthquakes that originated in the Peruvian town of Lapa and in the Brazilian town of Coxim, State of Matto Grosso Do Sol. Bolivia was heavily impacted because it was in the middle of both these epicenters.

Miraculously many buildings in Bolivia as a whole survived.

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As soon as the earthquake was over that evening, the Wolfgang children attended to Emily Robinson who had sprained her ankle after falling from the capsule she was sleeping in before the start of the earthquake. The earthquake took the children by surprise. They had felt like the earth underneath was being torn apart in a tug of war. Emily had experienced a sprain for the first time in her life. For that reason, she screamed whenever she felt a jab of pain. Kirt could relate to Emily's pain because he experienced the feeling of getting sprained for the first time when he played basketball the previous year. Ever since that injury, he never played basketball ever again.

After attending to Emily, who was resting in a capsule, the rest of the children surveyed the camp. It was damaged. All three cabins had disintegrated. The whole area looked chaotic like the scene of a battlefield.

Kirt only hoped that those who left that morning would be safe. He knew they couldn't go after them because they would have gone very far, but he just wished that none of them would have become a victim of the earthquake.

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Rina was overjoyed when she found Kantuta. After they found each other, they began walking through the forest together. Though they were alone in that spooky forest, they were assured by each other's presence.

They were repeatedly thinking about why their parents told them not to go to the forest, while they were there. What was the possible danger that their parents tried to keep them away from? Only the teenagers of her tribe knew about why children were not allowed to play in the forest in the valley. And those who knew were forbidden to talk about what was in the forest to children. Whenever she and Kantuta would ask Kantuta's older sister Achiq, she would only dodge the topic. Without knowing what was in there, they were left with one of the greatest fears: the fear of the unknown. To keep themselves at ease, they continuously tried to recollect the nicest memories that they had, to no avail.

Being children, their imaginations ran wild. They imagined all sorts of wild imaginations of that which could harm them there. However, despite the warnings of their parents, the forest seemed eerily pleasant, calm and peaceful. They had been walking through the forest for hours, yet they never encountered any beast, demon or monster.

The children could hear the scurrying of rodents on the forest floor. The floor was wet and damp. Some trees were uprooted by the action of the earthquake and the rainstorm.

They could smell the smell of mud and the despicable stench of a dead jaguar that they found.

When they saw the dead jaguar, they walked near each other. The forest was cold because of the cold breeze that brushed against their face.

Occasionally, they saw moths flying from one spot to another, and cockroaches flying about. They could even hear the croaks of frogs.

They walked aimlessly, reasoning in their childish minds that if they continue to walk they would somehow reach another tribe of her people. Her people were composed of 8 tribes who took up abode in different parts of the rainforest.

Little did those children know that they were being watched, and followed.

They would have brushed off about 100 giant cockroaches from their face and limbs as they walked through a cockroach-infested part of the forest.

The sound of their own breath gave them chills.

Suddenly when Rina turned back, she realized her friend was nowhere to be seen.

A few minutes later a loud scream was heard but Rina too was not be seen where she was.

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