37 - Chapter 34
Sa Bina had finished her dinner meeting and headed off to bed. It had been a long day, and she had been explicitly reminded in no uncertain terms that she would need to wake up early so that Dian Fu could get her ready properly. She would have to prepare for attempting to bake her white bread tomorrow. The yeast had been ready for a few days, she would also have to remember to remind the cook to keep feeding her yeast and to keep it alive.
As Sa Bina had already been suffering some of the consequences of not presenting herself properly, she had taken the chiding as the well intentioned jibe it was supposed to be. Her team was making good progress, and she hoped to see more of it in the coming days.
As she lay in bed, her mind filled with thoughts of everything that she had experienced since she had arrived in this body. It had actually not been very long at all, and the speed of change had not left her time to really internalise all the changes.
She had woken up in the body of this girl, whoever she really had been, being rescued from what from the outside looked like a horrendous situation. Just what she had seen would have been enough to traumatise a normal 13 year old girl, forget about actually living through it.
Then there had been the whirlwind of travel. A few days on the road. A fleeting glimpse of a foreign world, with enough similarities to Earth to make the strangeness all the more jarring. The flying visit to the sect, the meeting with the elder. Being handed treasures, and just being given to what amounted to the equivalent of billions of pounds. It had seemed so natural at the time, but who in their right mind would give a child so much cash?
Then arriving in the city and being informed that she was effectively a noble and not even an ordinary noble, but royalty. The shock of creating, at least on paper, a kingdom. Then the purchase of a massive estate, and the hiring of so many retainers who she was suddenly responsible for. Was this world really so different that it was considered normal for a child to own property and be responsible for so many livelihoods?
Then, and even Sa Bina could not fathom why, on a whim, Sa Bina had used her experience to push the ministry into opposing the schemes of what had to be some powerful interests. What had started as a little attempt of hers to open her own businesses, and avoid local taxes by leveraging her status had turned into an outright attempt to destroy the status quo. And that was all in the four days she had been in the city before she started school.
That was not strictly true, she knew why, if she was honest with herself. It was because she could. She had been unable to control her fate for the last few decades of her old life. Old age had a way of stripping away freedom, taking away choice, placing limitations in such a way that all that was left was the memories, seen through rose tinted glasses.
She had been left with nothing, seeing her end approaching. Her only real escape had been into those past memories of happiness, of moments lived, the lives changed, of battle fought and won. She had actively chosen not to think on the opposite, the sadness, the despair, the heartaches endured, the battles lost.
She had not wanted to dwell on the darkness in her own memories, had run away from it so much so that she had all but forgotten them. Yet, that had also caused her to lose the lessons those life experiences had taught her. She had become more impulsive, more childish in her desires and actions. There was, afterall, little to no damage that she could cause with her actions. She had internalised a new normal, one that she had brought over to this new world.
She had found herself in a world full of possibility, of magic and wonder. Had she not seen what technology had achieved on Earth, then the shock at the transition would have been more impactful. Though Earth did not have magic, and cultivators, what technology had enabled had been no less wondrous. In a way technology was Earth’s version of magic.
And where in the new world she found beasts, and monsters, and political intrigue and machiavellian machinations, it was all too familiar to the challenges she had seen on Earth in a very different guise. As much as the Earth she had left had changed, and moved towards equality for all, Sa Bina had not forgotten the journey she had seen, the fights she had partaken in over her life to get there. There had been so much more to do, so much further to go, but her age had taken away that most precious thing, the ability to be taken seriously.
Now she was here, in this new world, with challenges new and old, and an opportunity to bring about change, not just for the sake of it, but to actually help those without power. To move this new society towards equality. A world, where it was possible she would not suffer the same ignominious end.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
A world where she had jumped in without understanding all the rules, without thinking through the consequences, without knowing the players, and without a full understanding of her own strengths and weaknesses. If she was honest with herself, she was behaving more like a child than the grown woman she was.
Yes she wanted to have fun, and explore this new world. She wanted to enjoy this new lease on life. She did not want to end up in a prison of her own making, one of responsibility and obligation as opposed to one of a failing body, but a prison all the same. Yet she had already started the fall of the first domino, and there was no undoing that action. She would have to face what she had started. She would have to decide how far and how fast she wanted to go down this route, and deal with those that would no doubt seek to stop her.
The first step on that path of regaining control would be to stop acting so recklessly. To plan and act with deliberation. She felt that a lot of that control had already slipped through her fingers. When she had started the conversation with the minister about having her own guild and finding disgruntled tradespeople, it had been about recruiting for her own businesses interests, she had not even been thinking about the impact of the worst case, where the local system had been corrupted, and the locals suppressed.
Had she spent the time thinking about the worst case possibilities, she may have taken alternative routes, taking slower steps, with more support and consideration. That was the biggest problem, she had forgotten what it was like to have to be careful and considered. She had forgotten the need to marshal support and resources before making bold moves. She had been so happy to be able to show off, to gain that adoration and accolades of strangers that she had lost herself in it.
Even now, a part of her just wanted to do and say whatever, damn the consequences. It had been too long since that part of her could cause her any problems, took long since she had bring that part of her personality under control. She would need to start making a conscious effort to do better.
As she brought her thoughts under control, and started to internalise and accept all that she had been through in the last 10 days in this new world, she finally started to relax, and finally fell asleep.
Her thoughts directed her dreams, and they started with an eclectic and unreal mix of her new experiences and old, an old memory from the war intermixed with the fight which led to her rescue. A weird melding of journeys across two worlds, seeing visions of shifting architectures, and frightening beasts. Memories of schools, undulating between worlds, between roles, between bodies, between faces. At some point her dreams transitioned to the dreams of flying through rainbow clouds, and the memories of all her dreams started to slip away.
Sa Bina was woken early by Dian Fu, and though she had only slept for a few hours, she awoke rested and refreshed. She had a fleeting thought that there was something she ought to remember about last night, both her dreams and her thoughts before that, but the memories trickled away like water in a sieve. As she was distracted from her reminiscence by Dian Fu, she lost all track of her thoughts.
Sa Bina dragged herself out of bed and went through her morning ablutions. Feeling better, she went down for breakfast. She enjoyed a hot breakfast of congee, pancakes, fried eggs, grilled meat and umami soup.
She was rushed upstairs by Lou Sie and Dian Fu, as they both wanted to ensure she was looking perfect today. They started with her nails, as they would take the longest to dry. They went with a red and gold design, using the gold to hint at golden fields. As they were doing this, Sa Bina remembered what she needed for her bread and asked for the cook and Lin Song to attend to her. As they were both women, they could be present while she was getting ready.
It did not take long for the two women to arrive. Lou Sie and Dian Fu continued to work as Sa Bina asked them to enter.
“Thank you for coming.” said Sa Bina to the cook. “I need you to ensure you feed the yeast and keep it warm. I am going to try my version of bread tonight once I return from school. Can you make sure you have a selection of different flours available as well as milk, eggs and sugar.”
She turned to the blacksmith, and continued. “I need your help to get the ingredients how I need them. I need all the flour types to be finely milled, then sieved. It should feel like silk when you run it through your fingers. I also need the sugar to be milled into small even powder. Is that something you will be able to help to get done?”
Both women agreed to look at what they could do to fulfil Sa Bina’s requests, then took their leave. By this point Sa Bina’s nails were done, and were drying while Dian Fu worked on Sa Bina’s hair. With the proper ornaments in place, it was possible to create a more elaborate hair do. The hair took so long to do that the nails had dried perfectly.
Sa Bina was only now beginning to realise how much work it was going to take every morning for her to get ready properly for the day. She would be lucky if she got a full night's sleep ever again.
Finally, she dressed in a crimson cheongsam with light golden embroidery and donned her new shoes. As she looked at her reflection in a mirror of polished silver, she could hardly recognise herself. As she went down to the carriage, she hoped today would be far less eventful than the day prior.
It was finally time to leave for her second day at school.