Awakening

(Sakura)

Lost in my memories the squealing of truck breaks suddenly turned into the high pitched screams of a woman.

“Your highness! Your highness!”

Yes, the first thing I heard when I woke up from my near death experience and sudden memory overloading, was the worried voice of my nurse, maid and all-purpose servant Xia.

“Your highness! Please breathe!”

Instinctively following the instruction, I was somehow able to take one big painful breath of air then another. With each breath the dizziness I was feeling lessened and the fog in my head began to clear. I gradually came to the realization that I was lying belly down, my head angled to the side so that I could taste oxygen instead of grass.

When I regained enough of my wits, I maneuvered my arms to my sides and slowly pushed myself to my hands and knees.  

I blurrily opened my eyes and saw after several blinks that in the middle of the patch of grass I looked upon there lay my nemesis.

Yes it was the cheery seed.

I glared at it, if it weren’t for that stupid pit I would be happily and obviously unaware of my current situation. I could have had a life that was happy and hea…well not exactly a healthy one but most probably at least a happy one.

I sighed a sigh, filled with regrets and then leaning on one hand used the other to grab the seed in one chubby child’s fist. Then using hand and fist I pushed myself onto my rear and sat up and looked at Xia who was still looking at me with worry.

I gave a tired smile to her somewhat wrinkled face, a face that had recently obtained more wrinkles from her concern in an attempt to reassure her.

More ‘recent’ memories had started to come back to me by then, so the sight of the garden draped in the decorations of my 7th birthday garden party seemed quite familiar though far from being as exciting and fun as when I had seen them with my earlier more innocent mind.

When I looked at them now I still thought they were beautiful but overwhelming that feeling was the guilty thought that it had probably been a great bother to the castle staff to get it set up.

I realized by some out of the many various pains I felt, when I tried to stand up. That someone, probably Xia, had hit my back multiple times, most likely in a mostly ineffective attempt to dislodge the cherry seed.

I briefly wondered why someone hadn’t thought to perform the Heimlich maneuver before realizing with slight self-embarrassment, that in such a world as I now existed in, something as useful and lifesaving as the Heimlich probably didn’t exist yet.

I then thought with some morbid humor, that even if the Heimlich maneuver existed as small as Xia was and as big as I was for my age, she probably wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it.

And as for some reason there currently were no guards or other servants around, the young ladies in waiting and servant’s children that I had ordered to celebrate my birthday with me could scarcely be counted on to be able to help either for similar reasons.

Of course all these thoughts were rather moot point anyway, for as stated before proper choking rescue measures probably did not even exist in the first place. Such pointless thoughts were soon interrupted by the thuds of large booted feet.

It turns out that the missing servants had left to get help, and the irresponsible guards who had decided to celebrate my birthday in alcoholic style, while neglecting their duty, had been quickly found but not so quickly roused, to come to the rescue of their princess.

I learned this interesting tidbit, while listening to Xia screaming at them and berating them quickly, now and then lapsing back into Nimese, and their pitiful attempts to talk back.

To the excited surprise of what remained of my past self I found that I could easily understand what she was saying, have been listening and learning both languages being spoken since my birth.  

The guards who were probably clueless about the insults to their parentage, honor and er manhood that they were receiving, humorously looked afraid of the woman who was at least 3 times smaller than them. After their first pitiful attempts sheepishly remained silent, after looking at me and seeing that I looked fine.

The servants who had gone for help stood silently to the sides hands on their hips and schadenfreude marking the smirks upon their mouths.

My throat still painful from where the seed had scratched downwards before it had somehow got lodged inside, and my lungs still aching from lack of air, I didn’t speak.

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But once I felt that I had recovered as much as was possible for now, I raised one of my hands and whispered my nurse maids name, and Xia upon seeing it immediately stopped her harassment and rushed to my side.

I spoke to her in a weak whisper the most I was currently capable of.

“…could you please tell the guests to enjoy themselves without me? I want…need to go rest in my room for a while.”

I had spoken to her in Nimese for it was the language I was used to speaking to her in, she was the main person who had taught it to me after all.

Xia ran to one of the larger guards and switching to speaking commands quickly in highly accented but still mostly understandable Quarnish the guard immediately nodded their head awkwardly in agreement and rushed towards me.

I was as mentioned quite large for my age, but this guard a tall strong man, was able to pick me up, if not with ease, then at least without any difficulty.

Carefully making sure to not touch my skin, I was a mere princess and he was just a lowly guard after all, which was not as hard as it sounds as I was wearing a dress that not only almost completely covered me but also had cloth to spare with all the ruffles and flounces it included.

My childish self-had earlier decided that they wished to look like a proper princess for their birthday party and the maids and seamstresses chosen to make her wish come true were a bit old fashioned in taste even for this world’s culture and time period.

By that, I mean modesty was key and from dimly remembered stories I was told, in that times version of modest it was not uncommon for woman to not only wear veils and hoods but also to be near smothered by fabric.

Eager to get away from Xia’s continued performance as an angry harridan, the guard walked quite quickly and soon despite the considerable distance between my room and the garden in which I hosted my failure of a birthday party I could see the door of my set of rooms.

Xia immediately gestured for the footmen standing outside to open the door, which they quickly did and then the guard with myself still in his arms were ushered inside.

Under the hawk like gaze of Xia the guard carefully set me down on my bed, after she’d pulled back sheets in preparation. The bed was built to be almost as large as my fathers, the servants well able to see which way the wind was blowing in regard to my size and how far it was tossing the acorn from the old tree that was my grandfather.

I relaxed once I was safely laid down and the sheets and had been tucked back tightly around me. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I sensed the guard leaving, and for a time Xia’s continued mother hen hovering presence until she eventually fell asleep.

Once I was sure she wasn’t aware of what I was doing I opened my eyes again and quickly struggled to loosen the sheets being careful not to make any noise. I then reached into the thick almost padded bosom of my dress and took out a necklace.

I kept my hand covering it for a moment, then slowly let my fingers slide down until I revealed its appearance.  I then stared at the familiar engraving like I had never seen it before. For in a way I hadn’t, it was, besides my name and the name of many other acquainces, the biggest evidence towards what my past self was now telling me my identity was.  

It was an unknown silver colored metal, I knew from my own clumsy experience that it was also harder than most materials perhaps even diamonds and that unlike silver it never tarnished. It was stylized in the shape of a particular type of flower that others might see as something else, but I knew from my mother that it was definitely a ‘sakura’ the pretty blossom of the Nimese ornamental cherry tree.

It was a nice eye catching ornament, very memorable and easy to identify. So much so that it was impossible to deny that when my past self-had last seen it portrayed in some artwork, it had been hanging over the enormous bosom of someone that to most was quite hideous as a real person, but humorous and interesting as a side character

Sakura [Star-Risen] Quarnz.

A character who had been in almost all the mediums in which she had been portrayed, web novel and web novel sequel, several volumes of light novels, manga and even an otome game(?): the optimum (worst) type of a bad end, for the hero.