The last thing I remember is thinking this angle is going to get so many views.
The second-to-last thing I remember is the sound a rope makes when it decides, after eleven years of loyal service, that today is the day it’s finally done.
And then: nothing.
A very long, very rude nothing.
So imagine my confusion when I open my eyes and I’m not dead… or at least, not dead in any way that involves clouds, harps, or my mother finally telling me she was proud of me.
Instead, I’m lying on my back staring up at a ceiling made of dark wooden beams, half of which look like they’re one strong sneeze away from becoming a ceiling-shaped floor.
I sit up.
Everything hurts in that deep, structural way that suggests this body has been through something.
I look down at myself.
I am wearing silk.
Bad, moth-eaten silk, sure, but silk.
My hands ..wait, these are not my hands!!
They’re smaller, softer, with nails that have clearly never once pried a stubborn oyster off a rock.
“Okay,” I say out loud, because talking to myself is a professional habit at this point.
“Okay, that’s new.”
A girl about sixteen years old is kneeling by the door, and the second I speak, she flinches so hard she nearly puts her own eye out with the broom she’s holding.
“Y-Your Highness,” she stammers.
“You’re awake.”
Your Highness.
YOUR HIGHNESS?!
I blink at her.
I blink at the room..
peeling paint, a window with more gaps than glass, a brazier with exactly zero coals in it despite it being, judging by the chill, definitely not summer.
I blink at my own hands again, like they might change their mind about being tiny and delicate if I look hard enough.
Here is what I know, courtesy of a very uncooperative flood of memories that are absolutely not mine, arriving like a badly organized cloud backup: I am..was..Empress Liora.
Sort of.
because approximately six hours ago she was stripped of rank, accused of a crime I definitely didn’t commit because I definitely didn’t exist yet, and shipped off to somewhere called the Cold Palace to, and I quote several separate memories on this, “reflect on her sins until she wastes away.”
Wastes away.
Sure.
Great plan.
Very executable.
“What’s your name?” I ask the girl.
“Mei, Your Highness.”
“Mei.” I swing my legs off the bed, wince at how unfamiliar the balance feels, and stand anyway because lying down is not going to solve the fact that my stomach currently sounds like a dying accordion.
“Okay, Mei.
I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to answer them like your life depends on it, because I have a feeling ours kind of do.”
She nods, eyes huge.
“Is there food in this palace?”
A long pause.
“There is…
none allotted to this wing, Your Highness.
The kitchens won’t send rations here.”
“Won’t, or can’t?”
“Won’t.
No one wants to be seen helping the..” she stops herself.
“The disgraced empress banished to die quietly.
Yeah yeah, I got that part.” I walk to the window.
Below is what used to be, I’m guessing, a very nice garden..
now a jungle of weeds, one collapsed trellis, and something that might be a well if you squint and have faith.
Beyond a crumbling wall, in the distance, other palace roofs glow warm and gold with the kind of light that means dinner.
This wing gets none of it.
“Water?”
“There’s a well, but it’s been blocked for..”
“Blocked, got it.
Firewood?”
“We have some, but..”
“But rationed, sure, of course.” I turn around.
Mei is looking at me like she’s waiting for the part where I collapse into dramatic sobbing, possibly clutch a pillow, possibly scream at the injustice of it all into the night sky.
And look, i get it.
That’s the traditional response here.
That’s probably what Liora would have done, and frankly, fair, that’s a lot to process.
But here’s the thing about being buried under an avalanche at twenty-six degrees with a dislocated shoulder and a dead phone: you stop being afraid of “no resources.” You start getting..well, curious..
“Alright,” I say, cracking my knuckles, which..ugh, my small, unfamiliar hands, weirdly satisfying pop anyway.
“Day one.
Location: unknown palace, several centuries adjacent to disaster.
Resources: a broken well, a garden that’s more weed than vegetable, and apparently zero social capital.
Morale..” I consider this honestly.
“Morale’s actually pretty good, not gonna lie.”
Mei blinks.
“You’re not…
upset?”
“Oh, I’m furious,” I say cheerfully, already heading for the door.
“I’m just also very good at this specific problem, so the fury’s taking a back seat for now.
Come on.
Field assessment time.”
_______
The garden, once I’m actually standing in it, is better news than the room made it look.
Overgrown isn’t the same as barren, overgrown means something’s been growing here for a while without anyone stopping it, which means soil that isn’t dead, which means options.
I recognize a stubborn tangle of what I’m pretty sure is a wild green onion relative choking out one corner.
There’s a gnarled tree near the wall holding onto a handful of shriveled fruit that the birds haven’t bothered with, which either means it’s poisonous or just extremely unpopular, and I intend to find out which with the enthusiasm of someone who has eaten far worse on camera for a thumbnail.
“You’re…
talking to the plants?”, Mei says carefully, several feet back, as though I might be contagious.
“I narrate,” I explain, crouching to inspect a weed I do not recognize and choosing, wisely, not to eat it yet.
“It’s a professional habit.
Six years of talking to a camera that isn’t there does something to a person’s inner monologue.
It just comes out now.
Consider it ambient noise.”
“Is it…
a spell?”
“It is definitely not a spell, but I appreciate the confidence.” I straighten up, hands on hips, and survey the whole miserable, wonderful mess of it..
collapsed roof section on the east building, a well that’s probably just clogged with debris rather than actually dry, walls that keep the wind off if not the cold, and a garden with bones good enough to work with.
“Mei.
On a scale of one to apocalypse, how bad do you think this is?”
“…Apocalypse, Your Highness.”
“Solid four out of ten, honestly.
I’ve had worse Tuesdays.” I roll up what’s left of my very fine, very impractical sleeves.
“Okay.
Priorities.
Water first, nothing works without water.
Then we check what’s actually growing versus what just looks dead.
Then we deal with the roof before it decides to become everyone’s problem at once.
And somewhere in there, I’m going to need you to stop calling me Your Highness like I’m about to have you executed for eye contact.”
“What should I call you?”
I consider this.
Liora’s memories come with all sorts of formal, heavy names that feel like wearing someone else’s very starchy coat.
None of them feel like ..
me..
exactly, whoever me is now, half-drowned survival vlogger, half-disgraced empress, wholly unwilling to starve decoratively in a nice building.
“Wren’s fine,” I say.
“It’s..it’s a nickname.
Family thing.” Not technically a lie.
Just several centuries and one entire species of human civilization off from the truth.
“Wren,” Mei repeats, testing it, and something in her shoulders comes down half an inch, like the name is less breakable than the title was.
“Wren,” I confirm.
“Now.
Show me this well.
I have opinions about wells.”
She actually, finally, almost smiles, quick and disbelieving, like she’s not sure she’s allowed to..and leads me across the ruined garden toward a stone ring half-swallowed in ivy.
I crouch down at the edge and peer into the dark.
Can’t see the bottom.
Can hear a faint, promising drip, though, which after a day like this is basically a five-star review.
“Alright, you overgrown drain,” I mutter, rolling up my sleeves the rest of the way, already scanning the garden for something long enough to use as a probe.
“Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
Behind me, I hear Mei let out a small, strangled noise that might be horror or might, just possibly, be the beginning of something like hope.
Either way.
Day one.
Content: technically zero, since there’s no camera and no audience and, as far as I can tell, no way home.
Vibes, though?
Genuinely, unreasonably immaculate.
I stick my arm into the well up to the shoulder and get to work.
Hello!
I’ve started this new book ..
with a slightly unhinged (but sweet..
wierdly sweet) FL who is a survival vlogger reborn as a queen of a empty land!
hope you like it.
show some love!