Finding Myself

Chapter 3

"What are we going to do with her?" Someone's voice wakes me from my sleep. 

"As much as I would love to adopt her, we don't have the room. We recently adopted another 3 kids." A female voice says. 

"Are you sure we don't have any room to adopt her? There's nothing we can do?" Derek's voice floats towards me. It sounded like it was right above me. 

"There's no room left in the family. Sorry Derek." Another male voice.

"We can't adopt her either. The aristocrats would talk about why the royal family adopted her, and it could bring more harm then anything else." Yet another male voice says, with a female agreeing with him. 

"I'll have to ask my father after he gets back, but there's a chance he might. He has been looking for a young girl to adopt. Something about being sick of all of his sons. Usually one would be thankful to have 8 sons. The family isn't dying anytime soon." Once again, another male voice says, sounding slightly irritated. Without meaning to, a yawn escapes my mouth. Everything falls silent, as I open my eyes. Derek's face is right above mine. 

"Morning little bed head." Derek grins. 

"Morning cry baby." I yawn, stretching as far as I can without it hurting. I sit up, with the help of Derek. Derek also grabs a bowl from nowhere and holds a spoon up to my mouth. "I have a stab wound, not disabled arms." I sigh, but open my mouth anyway. 

"You've had your spirit broken, little wild horse. You aren't screaming and scratching to get away from me anymore. Did you see that the scar you left above my eye has almost disappeared?" Derek shows me the faded scar above his eye. When I was sick one time, he had taken care of me, but I had acted like a wild animal. 

"What's with all the nicknames?" Someone asks Derek and he grins. 

"I call her any nickname that she is acting like. She's been calling me cry baby for years. Can't you stop already?" Derek pouts at me. 

"Depends. Do you still cry when people talk bad about you? Or when people talk bad about others? Or when someone kills an ant? Or kills a mosquito? Or when people make you wear girl clothes? Or-" I'm cut off by Derek covering my mouth. 

"I think we've heard enough. No need to say anything else." Derek glares at me, his cheeks tinting pink. 

"Your blushing face reminds me of your other nickname, pinky." I say through a yawn and his hand. I'm tempted to lick his hand, but I don't know how dirty it is. 

"Okay, open up." Derek forces a spoon of soup into my mouth. I silently eat it. 

"I thought you said she didn't like being around others?" A female says confused as I'm eating. 

"These are nicknames from before the accident. When she would chase me and-" Derek starts to say, but I jabbed him in the ribs, a sharp glare coming to my face as I look at him. "Sorry." He mutters, giving me another spoon. No one asked anything more, thankfully. 

"I'm not close to others. Just Derek, and my village. How is everyone else?" I hesitantly look at Derek, and he smiles reassuringly at me. 

"They are all fine, and working in the capital now, thanks to the help of my mum and dad. They adopted me a few months ago." Derek explains, grinning at me. "They had said that they would help me find you. How have things been for you this last year?" Derek asks hesitantly. 

"Good. They originally wanted me to become a service person, but my scars would scare the customers away, so I was made to do manual labour. A few rich family's tried buying me for their daughters, but they also didn't like the fact that I had scars covering my body so those jobs never lasted long. I've been in 3 different bandit hideouts after they robbed the people I was travelling with. A few people tried to use me for illegal things, but after they realised it didn't do anything, they sent me back too the slave markets." I shrug.