Free Awakening (Children of Angels) by Jessica Gibson Page A

the pile of other clippings, and found the one from the first day, the day she had been born. The person in the background, who had been too smudged to make out clearly, had vanished.
    “ Mia? ” her father prompted.
    “ Sorry … .I must have … .I don ’ t know. My mind ’ s playing tricks on me or something. ” she muttered quietly “ Anyway, what else is in the box, Mum? ” she asked brightly, dropping the cuttings on the table as though they had burned her.

    “ Just these. ” her mother replied, pulling out a rough looking blanket, out of which a scrap of paper fell. “This is the blanket you were wrapped in, inside the box ” she handed it to Mia, and bent down to pick up the scrap of paper which had fluttered to the floor.
    Mia held the blanket and tested it’s weight. It was fairly heavy, and it was almost as rough to the touch as it looked. She turned it over and over, but it was just a blanket. It did not yield any clues as to where it might have come from, or where she might have come from. It certainly was not a nice soft blanket meant to wrap a baby in, of that she was sure.
    “ ..and this ” her mother said, straightening up and holding out her hand to Mia “ is the note. ”

    Mia dropped the blanket onto a chair to free up her hands, and took the piece of paper her mother was offering to her.
    “ Note? ” she asked, confused. She had never heard anything about a note before.
    “ Yes, when you were found, there was a note, in the box, just resting in the top fold of your blanket. ”

    She looked at the piece of paper, which seemed to be more smudge than writing.

    “ It got wet that night, everything was drenched through ” explained her mother apologetically.
    “ Oh ” Mia nodded absently, and returned her attention to the note in her hand once more.

    The majority of the words, written in blue ink, had been lost to the rain. A few, however, were badly smudged but readable. Mia read the fractured sentences, scanning these too for any clue as to who she was.

    This child … .I give … she is … mia … forgive me

    The only readable words on the page told her very little, but she stared in wonder at one particular word - Mia. She had always assumed that the people who adopted and raised her, the people sitting before her in this very room, were the ones who had given her her name. But now that she thought about it, no-one had ever told her that, she had simply assumed. Assumed that a mother who could not be bothered to raise her, or even take her to an orphanage or to social services, would have bothered to give her a name. But now it seemed that her mother had cared about her, at least enough to name her, and to ask forgiveness.

    For a moment, all her anger at this woman slipped away, and she allowed her thoughts to run away with her. Perhaps her mother had been a frightened teenager, or in an abusive relationship, perhaps she had wanted Mia with all her heart, and it broke her to let her go. The words that popped out of Mia’s mouth next seemed completely unconnected to this train of thought, yet at the same time, very much connected.

    “ You didn ’ t name me. ” It was not a question, it was a statement.

    “ Well, no, we didn ’ t. Not exactly. We assumed, from the note, that your mother had meant to name you Mia - it ’ s hard to tell, the whole thing was so smudged. We looked into names, we wanted to give you a very special name. We looked up the meaning of Mia, it was a pretty name and we thought we should at least consider honouring your biological mother ’ s choice. It ’ s a variant of Maria, and means ‘ longed for daughter ’” - it was perfect, so no, we did not pick out the name ourselves, because your birth mother had already picked out the perfect one for us - just like she gave us the perfect daughter. ”

    “ I thought it was Italian. It means ‘ my ’ , doesn ’ t it? … I Googled it when we did a school project ” she explained, in response