Free Awakening (Children of Angels) by Jessica Gibson

felt any betrayal though, they certainly weren’t showing it on their faces. Both were watching her carefully as she sifted through the cuttings, and now her mother moved towards her and touched her arm gently.

    “ Oh sweetheart, don ’ t get upset! I know it all sounds bad in those stories honey, but you have to remember that wasn ’ t your life forever. You were found and you were safe, and that was all that mattered. You didn ’ t stay lost - you found your way home, it was just a slightly different home than the one you came from. ” She smiled and Mia nodded, blinking back the tears. It was sweet that her mother had wanted to comfort her, and thought it was the tales of the family who hadn ’ t wanted her, the mother who had left her in a cardboard box in the street like people abandon unwanted litters of kittens, that had upset her. When really it had been the fact that someone else had wanted her.

    She looked down at the cuttings again, this time focusing on the pictures accompanying the stories, whilst she regained her composure. Her mother sat down beside her father and they both continued to watch her carefully. As she gazed at the picture on the first headline, the picture of the church she had been found outside of, she felt a jolt in her stomach. She picked the cutting up closer to her face, and squinted. In the background, she thought she could see…but it wasn’t possible. No, it must be her imagination. There was a person standing there, in the far background, but their face was nothing more than a blur. She frowned, and closely examined the next picture, this one of the press conference appealing for information and for her birth mother to come forward.

    This time, there was no mistaking. He was standing there, in the background but close enough for her to make out his features clearly, and to know it was him. She stared at his face and frowned harder, wondering how on earth this boy she had dreamed about could have been there when she was just a tiny baby. In her dream he seemed a little older than her, but she would have guessed he was no older than sixteen or seventeen. In the picture, he was exactly as he had been in her dream.

    She struggled to make sense of it, to figure out a logical explanation. Involuntarily, a voice slipped into her mind, Leonara’s voice, telling her that human logic was foolish and silly, that there was only Truth. She pushed the thought away, squashing it as quickly as it had risen up.

    “ What is it, Mia? ” her father asked.
    “ Hmm? ” she had almost forgotten they were in the room with her, they had been so quiet and so still while they watched “ Oh … nothing I just … I thought I saw someone I knew, that ’ s all. ”

    Her parents exchanged a confused glance, which was not missed by Mia, who then felt all the more obliged to come up with a reasonable explanation.
    “ Who did you think you saw, honey? ” asked her mother.
    “ Oh … no-one, really. Just a face I recognized. I meant I think I ’ ve seen him before, not that I really know him. Do you recognize him? ” she asked, handing the clipping over to her father.
    “ Who? ” he asked, scanning the picture.
    “ The boy - in the background. ”
    “ What boy? ”
    “ He ’ s right at the back, just in the corner. ”
    “ I don ’ t see any boy, Mia - what are you talking about? ”

    Mia felt an irrational surge of annoyance, and shoved a chair out of her way with more force than was really necessary. She walked around the table to where her father was sitting, with her mother peering over his shoulder, squinting at the picture too.

    “ He ’ s right …” Mia jabbed a finger at the page, to point to where the boy was standing, but stopped midway when she realized he was not standing there. “… may I? ” she asked, taking the clipping from her father and scrutinizing it closely. The boy, it seemed, had simply vanished from the page. She hastily leaned over the table to pick up