Even after regaining consciousness, Mia continued to lie in bed, her limbs splayed sloppily across its surface.
“I feel... terribly ill.”
She had no appetite, and her lunch remained untouched. Her mind was occupied by the nightmare. She wanted to believe it was a nightmare. However, the vivid intensity of the memories and the existence of the bloody diary suggested otherwise.
“Ugh...”
She groaned and rolled from one side of the bed to the other. Then, she groaned again and rolled back. All the while, she kept thinking and thinking. She thought long and hard.
For a whole thirty minutes.
“I feel... terribly hungry.”
Her stomach growled. Barely an hour had passed since she’d turned down lunch.
“Ah-hah,” she said with a dainty clap. “I remember hearing that sweets are good for thinking about things.”
Having had what was undoubtedly an excellent idea, her face lit up as she quickly hopped off the bed and scampered out the door.
The emperor’s family, Mia included, lived in a castle known as the Whitemoon Palace. Its halls were adorned with green, gold, and white moonstone, while lavish ornaments lined the walls. She walked through it, taking in the sights. It was an empire at the peak of its opulence, but, she knew, on the brink of decline.
Eventually, she came to one of the castle’s four dining rooms, the White Night Dining Hall. In the large room was a man; he gave her a puzzled look.
“Why, if it isn’t Princess Mia. What might I do for you, Your Highness?”
He was a bear of a man with a thick, fluffy beard. Mia’s eyes widened a little in surprise as she recognized him immediately.
I do recall... that this man is the head chef whom I fired.
On the day of her fourteenth birthday, she’d fired the head chef who kept bringing her vegetables that she hated.
“That would be two years from now...”
“Um, pardon me?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much. I feel hungry, so I would like to have some snacks prepared. Some moonberry pie would be marvelous.”
The head cook frowned and shook his head.
“I beg your pardon, but I cannot bring Your Highness snacks so close to lunch.”
There was a nostalgic ring to his words that made Mia smile in spite of herself. It occurred to her that he was the only one who ever refused her wishes like this. The chef who replaced him simply cooked whatever Mia ordered. And in the end, that got boring. Getting her way each and every time was, after a while, tedious.
“Ah, well, if so, the leftovers from lunch will be fine. Would you be so kind as to bring those please?”
“Huh?”
For some reason, the head chef stared at her in shock.
“Yes?”
“Uh, nothing. Pardon me. I shall bring them right away.”
Before long, an assortment of food was brought before her. There was some bread that gave off a sweet, subtle aroma; a stew made with a generous amount of seasonal vegetables; a long piece of marinated rouge salmon; and a fruit bowl.
“Ah, how wonderfully nostalgic,” she said as she gazed down the table of food.
In particular, the vegetable stew caught her eye. She felt a wry smile creep across her lips as she dug her spoon in. There they were, mixed in with all the other ingredients. The ambermoon tomatoes that she hated.
I could never stand their sourness.
She held up her spoon and regarded the chunk of ambermoon tomato on it.
I must say though, this does look somewhat appetizing.
Just then, a memory flashed, bringing back to her the food she’d been forced to eat in the dungeon. She remembered the bread; stale, moldy, and so hard that it hurt her teeth. It had tasted like sand in her mouth. Time and again, her throat would close up, refusing to swallow another bite. At times, they would bring her stew. It was always murky and gray, but the reason why remained a mystery to her. The only things that passed for vegetables in it were grassy weeds, which were deeply unpalatable. She didn’t mind the taste though, she really didn’t, she just wished it didn’t make her stomach hurt for days on end. While she’d heard about the ongoing famine and how it left people with nothing to eat, she’d come to believe that her treatment was the result of spite rather than necessity. She even had proof; after hearing that she hated ambermoon tomatoes, there were days when they had fed her nothing but.
How terribly unpleasant that was...
She could still recall how raw it smelled when they’d held it up to her nose. And when they forced her mouth open and pushed it down her throat, she’d retched from its sour bitterness. She shivered. The memory gave her goosebumps.
Pulling herself out those thoughts, she returned her gaze to the ambermoon tomato on her spoon.
Compared to the ones back then, this seems to almost glow...
She’d intended to leave it uneaten, but curiosity got the better of her and she put the piece in her mouth. Immediately, her eyes snapped open.
“Chef! Someone summon the chef! Now!”
The maid she’d shouted at jumped and asked in a trembling voice, “Y-Your Highness? Is something the matter?”
“Just bring the head chef here!”
The head chef, having heard the sudden commotion, quickly appeared.
“Was something... not to Your Highness’s liking?” he said with a nervous smile. His cheek twitched a little.
“What... is this?”
Mia held her spoon up to the head chef’s nose. On it was a piece of ambermoon tomato.
“Well, this is... a stew... made with seasonal vegetables...”
The way his eyes wandered suggested he was feigning ignorance. Mia, however, was having none of it.