Found (New Earth Saga)

Ch. 1

My first name is River. My last name is now unknown. Just like everything I thought I knew about my life.

A few hours ago I packed up my art supplies after a typical Saturday spent drawing until my pencils were dull, and my hands were covered in charcoal or oil pastels. I guess art is something I still know to be true. Drawing is my number one form of entertainment, seeing as I'm not allowed to use the internet, or even watch TV. Of course that doesn't mean that I've managed to never see these things. Every establishment in New Earth has a screen of some sort, so I've snuck and watched all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, I'd always end up back home in the suffocating company of my mother... Well, the woman I've known as my mother.

Kerry Remington is the only mother I've ever known. Of course, I have a huge memory gap where I basically can't remember anything before the age of 6. I suppose I remember turning 6, just as I've always been haunted by memories of begging my mom to let me go back to my "real family", whatever that meant. Nothing made Kerry Remington more upset than the mention of my "real family". Around 7 I stopped trying to escape this reality, and just accepted that this was now my life. In fact, my mom- I mean, Kerry, used to try and tell me that I probably skipped timelines, so that's why I thought I had another family somewhere. Jumping timelines sounded fake, but then again, so did half of the things my mom- Kerry Remington, goes on and on about.

I was today years old when I learned that Kerry Remington was not my mother. If you looked at us next to each other, that made perfect sense. Kerry was tall, thin, and pale, with stringy blonde hair, and bright green eyes, while I was short, curvy, and brown, with thick almost jet black hair, and brown eyes. Kerry used to tell me that I looked like my father, who had apparently died in some fire that happened when I was a baby. Of course, I was also today years old when I learned that the father Kerry'd always told me about, never existed. One's mind might assume Kerry had been an upright person, and chose to adopt a child out of the goodness of her heart. But of course, that is not the case.

About 10 years ago, there was an international rise in the trafficking of human children who'd been adopted by giants. As tension rose in light of the legalization of inter-species adoption, anti-giant humans would target the children adopted by giants, and kidnap them to be sold on the black market to other humans. One of those scumbags who engaged in the illegal adoption process was none other than Kerry Remington. But that's not even the worst of it all... As it seems, illegally adopting me may have been the least terrible thing Kerry Remington did, when it came to her involvement with these illegal adoptions.

3 hours ago Kerry Remington was arrested for the murder of 3 human children, and the trafficking of one human child... me. Apparently Kerry had adopted 3 other kids before she got around to adopting me. And where were these kids you ask? Apparently they were buried in our back yard this entire time. A fact that will most likely keep me up at night for the foreseeable future.

So where does that leave me now?

For now, I am sitting in a social workers office with nothing but my backpack full of art supplies, and the clothes I'm literally wearing right now. Thank goodness I'd taken so much of my art supplies to the park today, or else it would all be stuck back at my house.... Or the place that was my house, until it became a crime scene.

Every officer and social worker to come through this tiny office has marveled at the fact that I'm even alive. After a thorough examination, and a sample of my finger prints, I've been told that my name is not River Remington, but instead it is River Reed. Apparently there's a family of giants all the way out in Wendleton that have been searching for me for the last 10 years. Could this be the infamous "real family" I used to talk about as a little girl? No... This family... the Reed family... They are a family of towering giants.