Lost and Found (Finding Saira Patil)

Chapter 8 - My Identity

I run upstairs after Church ecstatic and loved by the world, I uncover Aster from a different pillow this time, a lovely hand embroidered one in a room where it is only me and my memories of Rhona and Isla, and allow my thoughts to become words.

Aster! Darling Aster, I love your name, it is like saying 'a star', a twinkling, merry star in the melancholy night.

So much has happened since I last wrote, you know that it was visiting and adoption day on Friday, well guess what, I got adopted by the Dubhghlases, who are my real family and I have a twin.     

My Mum is called Lindsey and my Dad's name is Angus, I have an older sister called Eithne (Eth-na) but everyone calls her Effi, she is in year twelve but still hangs around in youth 'to keep an eye on the twins especially mischievous twin one - Fraser'. Fraser is my twin and his is as mischievous and as bubbly as a dolphin, I am not going to school as we are all home-schooled. I also have a chubby, little, adorable, brother, Pòl, who is two years old. 

Mum explained to me everything, when she was pregnant with me and Fraser, she was going to call me Perpetua Felicitas  which means 'everlasting happiness' but then she was a witness of a horrible car crash, (she was crying at this moment when she told me) and wouldn't speak until after we were born. I was born very weak and ill so I was sent to a special hospital, who sent me to the orphanage when I was better. Mum and Dad would have come for me sooner but they didn't know where I was but they knew that I was alive, (don't ask me how but Mumsey knows these kind of things, she has like this feeling and can rely on it, she also blames herself for my muteness, as she thinks that the fact she wouldn't speak until after we were born has somehow harmed me mentally) so eventually they found me and... guess what?

THEY LIVE IN THE HIGHLANDS, in a sweet village called Ryne-Braeinvernn and we go to Church in Cumnlinnaird where I met two new friends Aileas and Georgie, I am going to see them next week at Church. Yes, I go to Church but it isn't boring like it used to be.

Persis Perpetua Felicitas Dubhghlas.

P.S. Mumsey has decided that my name is to be Persis as it suits me but Perpetua and Felicitas are to be my middle names.  

Music is playing, Christian music, but not bad Christian music, 'I could sing of your love forever', I don't actually mind this. Mumsey likes to listen to Christian music, I could repeat this one off by heart if I just heard the first chord, I've listened to it so much since I came to the Highlands and I've only been here two days.

Over the mountains and the sea,

Your river runs with love for me,

And I will open up my heart

And let the healer set me free.

I'm happy to be in the truth,

And I will daily lift my hands:

For I will always sing of when

Your love came down.

I could sing of your love forever,

I could sing of your love forever,

I could sing of your love forever,

I could sing of your love forever.

I could sing of your love forever.

Mumsey and Dad, I could sing of your love forever...

Oh, I feel like dancing

It's foolishness I know;

But when the world has seen the light,

They will dance with joy,

Like we're dancing now.

I'm dancing now, well with my feet, lying on my bed my feet twitch... and circle round and round, round and round. The music ends. My revelation is over.