Heroes of Dreamland, Book 6 1/2: The Last Sakuranoki (OLD)

Introduction

Our story starts many hundreds of years ago, not long at all after the beginning of the first War Against the Nightmares, as it is known by my people. The setting is a warm Early Autumn day on the planet Ripple Star, in a quiet, mostly unihabited area far from Rippling City and the Ripple Star Palace. You find yourself standing on a rolling grassy hill that is surrounded by other rolling grassy hills. Every one is absolutely covered with wildflowers of every kind imaginable and cheerful Fairy animals that hop or walk or crawl around. Not far away, over by the Spring of Song, (the source of the Rippling River that flows all the way to the center of Rippling City, almost five hundred miles away,) birds chirp in chorus while frogs sing their croaky tunes that the Spring is named for.

As you walk through the hills and valleys, thinking of how peaceful everything is, of how lovely the sun feels on your face, and of how wonderful the spicy scent of the colorful falling autumn leaves is, another scent adds itself to the mix. It's a subtly sweet, soothing scent that is rather out of place here. It takes you a moment to place it, but you soon recognize it as the smell of cherry blossoms.

Confused, you turn to try and discover from where the wind is blowing the scent to you. After finding the approximate direction, you break out into a run and head that way as fast as you can. You run not because of fear or because you're in a hurry, you run because it's the sort of beautiful day and place where you just have to run, just have to move, just have to feel the air whooshing by you as your feet pound against the ground in a quick, chipper rhythm.

As you crest the tallest hill in the area, you sit down to catch your breath, then lose it again the instant you look into the valley that rests just down the hill you.

It is covered with hundreds of blossoming cherry trees.

That can't be right, you think. This is Early Autumn and cherry blossoms only bloom for a few weeks during Early Spring and Midspring. How in the ripple are they blooming now? But you're unable to fret about it for too long, as several blossoms blow up towards you on the breeze, swirling around you excitedly and then landing all around you in the tall green grass.

As you laugh at them in pure joy, you suddenly begin to hear a beautiful sound. It sounds a little bit like a super-speedy Warp Star, but softer and sweeter sounding. As you quiet down and listen, your eyes drift close and an almost-sleepy smile spreads over your face.

It is the sound of a Fairy singing, one of the most beautiful (not to mention most hypnotizing) noises in the Galaxy.

After a minute, you shake yourself out of the resulting trance just enough to look down at the valley, trying to spot the singer among the blossom-laden trees below as their white and pink petals continue to float all around on the breeze. A hint of an autumn chill blows past on the wind, causing you to shiver just a bit, but the warm sun soon makes you feel comfortable again.

Finally, you spot the singer as she walks up the hill on the other side of the valley, around half a mile away. You can hardly hear her song anymore except for the occasional phrase of music that the wind carries to you, but you don't really mind. It was a wonderful lullaby, but you're not really interested in taking a nap right now.

As she turns around toward your direction, (but doesn't spot you,) you take in her appearance. She has shoulder-length, very light-pink hair with a few naturally white streaks. It's pulled back from her face with a dark pink headband that matches the simple work dress with short, puffy sleeves that she wears. In her hands, she carries a leather notebook with an eraser-topped pencil tucked in the leather-string binding that she holds to herself in a day-dreamy fashion. She's looking down at the ground, lost in thought, when suddenly her head snaps up as some noise you can't hear pulls her from her spacing out. Now that you can see them, you can see that her eyes are aren't anything special. They're colored a warm honey-brown that makes you think of caramel candy. They're bright at the moment, which tells you that she's happy, although they're also a bit distant, like her mind is still wandering off to somewhere else than where she is now.

But there's one particular thing that strikes you about this being, you just can't quite figure out what it is. Finally, it hits you: this Fairy has no wings. She walked through the valley and up the hill, and now she turns around again and walks over to a trio of blossoming cherry trees and sits down under one of them, rather than flying like any other Fairy would.

That's quite strange, you muse in confusion. You've never seen a Fairy without wings. Wait- is she even a Fairy? She looks just like a Fairy, but without any wings, you can't be sure...

This Fairy (who is indeed a Fairy) is Cherry, the heroine of this story, and a very important character in the story of our Galaxy. This, dear Reader, is where we can no longer participate. Now, we can only watch from a distance as her story unfolds...