Mother, you don't speak much, do you?
I questioned while looking at her figure, holding me in her arms. Of course, all that came out was a bunch of gibberish guuuuu and gaaaas, followed by a ball of spit.
And to add more to my theory, she only took a light glance at me before returning back to her indifferent expression, watching the landscape outside our carriage's window.
It had been over a month since the events back in the broken palace. After spending close to a week in that tent, my parents decided to pack up and move.
My crib was moved inside a carriage, along with a maid who was also my nanny, and mother who looked way too okay for a woman who had just given birth.
For a moment I had been worried they were taking me to a different battlefield. It was only after days and days of travelling in the carriage that I found out we were going home. And even that, I heard from father. Mother had this strange rule of not speaking unless it was official business, or she was talking with father.
All this had made this journey so excruciatingly boring that I would cry just for the sake of it.
Still, this free time had given me an opportunity to think about a lot of things, especially these new parents of mine.
A father who brings his newborn to take a stroll in a corpse-ridden city, and a mother who looked at that said newborn with this deeply hidden fearful look in her eyes. This new family would get along very well with my previous one.
Hah, a small sigh escaped my tiny mouth, as I too began looking out of the window, watching the trees moving past us.
We were inside a carriage moving through the plains. It had already been weeks since I had been inside this carriage, looking out the window at passing forests, horses, lakes, and mountains.
The only time I would be carried out of the carriage would be when we had to make camp.
Huh, another consecutive small sigh escaped my tiny mouth. Wonder how much longer it would take.
Thankfully, it seemed that these world's gods were listening to my complaints after all. A horse rider approached our carriage and spoke something to my nanny/maid, causing both her and my mother to straighten up their backs and briefly smile.
Soon, even I joined in on their jovial mood. In the distance, out of the carriage window. The silhouette of large stone walls began to become clearer and clearer, revealing the figure of a sparkling white city behind it.
Was this it? Had we reached our destination? My answer came in the form of my mother lifting me up and holding me in her lap with a smile.
As we approached the city, more and more things began to become clearer. Our entire caravan entered the city, moving past the marble-white walls into the streets filled with thousands of people cheering, shouting, and screaming. Many of them were looking in our carriage, while others were looking at Father riding his stead in the front.
At once, the maid opened up all the curtains in front of the carriage windows and my mother held me up in her arms, in a way that I was more visible to the people in the street.
Seeing my tiny figure, the screams and shouts became more loud.
"Look there in the carriage."
"Is that Queen Nyssa."
"Is she holding the Prince in her arms?"
My mind, though, was working on overdrive, trying to ignore all the love and instead going through my academy lectures, trying to observe and glean as much information as I could about this world.
After all, one couldn't ascertain the norm in a world by looking at rich people or the military, although that did help. To be absolutely sure, one needed to observe common people going about doing what they considered norm in their everyday lives.
People on the streets were wearing multi-colored clothes, even the occasional beggar would be wearing similar kinds of rags. That in itself showed that people here had advanced to a period where dyeing clothes wasn't considered expensive and an accessory of the rich; as for the fabric, even though I couldn't see it that well, it did seem to be slightly different than the uniforms of the maids and soldiers.
This was a good thing; the more advanced the world, the easier things were going to be for me in the future.
Next up were the buildings; I hadn't been able to take a closer look at the buildings and houses back in the destroyed city due to all the blood and corpses, but I could clearly see them here. Even though primarily made of wood and stones, the material used was too clean and sophisticated to be cut by mere hands. Furthermore, the slanted roofs at the top indicate that this place had a snowy fall.
My mind was going through all these observations. Suddenly the excited cheers became turned into angry shouting, gazing out the window I could see people angrily screaming and throwing trash at something behind us.
Although the carriage didn't have any windows at the back, I could still guess what was going on.
That Blonde king from back then.
The entire journey I had only been able to watch the guy a couple of times. And all those times, seeing his grim figure laying down with hollow eyes had been a stark warning. I must never be like him.
Father had crushed that man's spirit. Even if he let him out, I doubted he would be any threat to us.
Our procession soon reached its final destination, standing in front of a majestic white palace.
The palace's white walls and spires shimmered under the sunlight, making it seem like it was carved from ice. Its towering walls stretch high, too perfect, too flawless, as if daring to pierce the sky itself.