TWELVE YEARS AGO

She lay unconscious on a shore above the waterline. Gentle waves broke against piles of jagged boulders that created a small cove sheltering the limp, sleeping girl. Pink, lavender, and grey colored the early morning sky. It was the beginning of another summer day outside of Capital City somewhere in the sparse, waterfront suburbs.

Two joggers ran on the trail above the shore. They stopped after seeing the girl near the waterline.

“Look! There’s someone down there!” the female jogger said. “It looks like a young girl.”

Her male companion strained his eyes down toward the shoreline. His eyebrows lifted in shock when he saw the girl. “Maybe she’s dead and washed up onto the coast?”

“Maybe we should just call the police.” said the female jogger.

“Not yet, she might still be alive and need help. Let’s go down and see.”

The two joggers climbed down to the water’s edge. As they approached the girl, they noticed more details.

“She’s just a child,” said the female jogger, “probably twelve or so years old.”

“She doesn’t look dead.” The other man came very close to the girl. “In fact, she isn’t even wet.” Indeed, the girl’s orange-sienna hair was soft, dry and lusterous.

The two joggers noticed the girl’s nakedness and took off their jackets to cover her.

“I’ll call the police,” said the man as he pulled out his personal communicator.

“But why is she here?” asked the woman as she watched the girl sleep. The woman knelt down by the girl with the orange-sienna colored hair and brushed her cheek with her fingers.

The touch stirred the girl, frightening the female jogger who jerked back her hand. The girl opened her eyes and looked around a bit before settling on the eyes of the woman who had awakened her.

“Who are you?” asked the female jogger to the twelve-year-old girl. “Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know,” replied the girl.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t remember my name.”

“You don’t have a name?”

“I don’t know.”

“The police are here!” the male jogger shouted from the running trail above.

Looking up, the woman saw the flashing lights of a law enforcement vehicle parked above them up the slope of the shore.

Two officers of the peace came down to water’s edge to ascertain the situation and question the two joggers.

“What do we have here, ma’am?” one of the officers asked the female jogger. He took out a tablet with a stylus pen as he began to write his report.

“We were jogging along the trail above when we saw this girl lying on the ground unconscious. We came down to have a look and covered her up with our jackets.”

The officer wrote everything down. “OK, did she tell you her name?” The officer pointed to the girl under the jackets.

“No, she says she doesn’t have one. Whatever she’s been through must have been horrific for her to forget her own name.” The woman shuddered at the thought.

“Ma’am, I can’t fill out this report without a name for the girl. What do we call her?”

“Call her ‘Viviane’,” the woman dreamt up a name for the young girl, “because Viviane means ‘life’ and she will have to live again.”

“All right, Viviane it is.”

The officer wrote that name into his report on his tablet. He then proceeded to gather the testimony of the two joggers before taking Viviane into protective custody.