Reincarnated as a Fairy in the Beastworld

Chapter 5

Miranda slowly opened her heavy eyelids. Her body was weak and her thoughts were hazy. However, she felt a deep sense of relaxation and comfort. A soft and sweet rosy scent lingered in the air.

She felt better than ever, like a whole new person.

She stretched her body and rolled over onto her back. She felt so well-rested and energised. She had clearly just had the best nap of her life.

Her eyes slowly opened to a blurry and bright scene. As she blinked, the image of a very high ceiling came into sight. She was in an enclosed white place, much like a cave and as big as a football field.

Big white vines grew all over the cave walls and hung from the ceiling with pink flowers blooming on their branches. Glowing pink and white butterflies fluttered everywhere.

Perhaps she was still dreaming?

She sat up drowsily and absentmindedly looked around. She had been asleep within the centre of a gigantic flower, and a small breathtaking meadow spread out before her.

Pure white grass and white bushes with pink flowers covered the ground. A sparkling clear pond lay in the centre, taking up almost a third of the entire space. Weak sunlight flowed in through the cave entrance overhead, lighting up the place but the rays mostly landed where she lay.

She was confused for only a moment before her memories came rushing back. Her head throbbed at the influx of information. Right, time-travel and mana zombies.

"Ah!", she exclaimed and quickly sat up to look over her naked body. Had she really survived?

Her body, which didn't seem to actually be her body, was perfectly healed. She stared, dumbfounded by her glowing snow white skin and the long sharp pointed claws growing from her fingers and toes.

She looked around in panic as everything dawned on her. She had really died.

She clumsily stumbled out of the surrounding flower petals and rushed to the pond, kneeling at the edge to look at her reflection.

"Wha... what...", she stammered in shock.

Her entire body was so pale that it was almost translucent. Her lashes, brows and hair were all white too. She might as well have been curved out of white marble.

Only her big eyes had pink irises. She looked around the cave and realised that she really blended into the background.

Her worst fears were confirmed. She had died and turned into a ghost. Furthermore, she was a monstrous ghost. She then slowly moved her shaking hands towards her head, past her pointed ears and watched as the reflection in the water mirrored her.

It was definitely her and they were real, the small sharp protrusions on the sides of her head were definitely a pair of horns. She breathed a sigh of relief when she realised that things could have been much worse. They could have been antennae.

Luckily, she wasn't an insect. Or maybe she was? She looked around again and marveled at how big everything was in comparison to her. She found that everything else about her body was basically human-like.

She took deep calming breaths, noticing that information wasn't flying through her head as usual. Right, the manobots couldn't have followed her to the afterlife.

"Sherlock?", she called the AI's fitting nickname out loud and probed her mind just in case.

Suddenly, the entire cave came alive. All the plants and the walls glowed pink for a moment and the vine branches swayed from side to side as if dancing in the wind.

That was a clear affirmative if she ever saw one. She was surprised for only a moment before jumping up to her feet.

"I'm alive?" she looked around again in disbelief. "Where is this?"

Only images of a powerful snowstorm came to mind. There was no flood of coordinates, location names, atmospheric data, population data, terrain information... the works.

She looked down at her alien hands and saw the tears falling on them. Her face was leaking. Everything happening was too much to process. She had long forgotten what it felt like to be vulnerable.

Her life as half-machine played like a never-ending nightmare in her mind. She remembered the life of walking through hell everyday, seeking freedom from herself. Her human mind at war with a neural network.

It was a life where all her thoughts seemed to be cut and dried, but she had strongly resisted it. It was only with her great mental energy that she was able to try and seek the freedom that she gravely needed.

It felt like being a circle in a world of squares. Well, she had never been the self-disciplined type and had quickly lost her mind under the pressure. She messed with the fabric of time in a moment of desperation and damned the human race.

All her suppressed emotions burst out and she broke down. She fell to her knees once again and wailed pitifully.

Weak sun rays fell on her curled fragile frame, casting long shadows across the white meadow. Sobs wrecked her pitiful body for a long time.

When she opened her eyes again, silver blue light barely shone through the cave's opening. The entire interior glowed in the soft blue light. It was already night time but it wasn't dark in the cave at all.

Her eyes were red and swollen but she was feeling a lot calmer now. It had been healing to cry it all out and a huge stone was lifted off her chest.

She got up and washed her alien face in the pond, then tried to access her space for some clothes. Nothing happened. She then rashly tried to enter her personal dimension. She disappeared from the cave and suddenly appeared a few feet above an incoming wave.

She splashed into the roiling waters before being slammed by the wave. She reappeared beside the pond, drenched and coughing uncontrollably. She lied on her back and tried to catch her breath. She had almost died once again.

It had slipped her mind that that planet had no land and was entirely covered with saltwater. Nothing ever slipped her mind. She was again reminded that she was not a cyborg anymore, but a weak simpleton.

She could've landed herself in the sun. She had to be more careful.

She could guess what had happened. The temporary spatial spaces had been destroyed after her death since she made them for temporary use and they weren't very stable. It was fine for storing non-living things.

The spatial dimension on the other hand, was entirely different. She had to make it permanent with actual spacetime coordinates and completely stabilise it in order to support life.

She finally managed to put something akin to a dress together using the leaves and flowers around her. She then walked towards the cave entrance and tilted her head. It was much higher up than she'd thought.

~°*°~

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