I really just wrote this as a descriptive exercise, so the prose is, without a doubt, wildly overdone. Sakura's POV is modeled off Jeffrey Ford's use of synesthesia in "The Empire of Ice Cream." And, eh, sorry if I screwed up the CCS universe. Characters belong to CLAMP.
"Cherry Blossoms."
"Come on, princess," he says gently, helping her to her feet. The feel of his hands carries the taste of apple pie and the smell of desert sand. Happily, compliantly, she follows off after him in search of her missing feathers.
Fye chatters easily as they move through the trees, oohing and ahhing over the clear blue of the sky, the scent of the forest air. She stares at him almost blankly; for her, sky blue is a run through the low range of a clarinet and the pine trees are downy velvet. Syaoran told her, worlds ago and world away, that her disorientation was probably connected to her feathers' flight, and that she'd see the sky rather than hear it once all her memories were returned, but even the memories her feathers have reclaimed are blurred by this unfocused lens of her wayward perceptions.
It doesn't matter, though, that she smells Yukito's voice and tastes her brother's bear hugs, because she remembers them. But, no matter how many feathers are collected, she can never remember Syaoran.
All she has is the smell of the desert air and the taste of apple pie.
This world they were in felt like the Hanshin Republic, all clean buildings that rang of trumpets and the same boulevards paved with the sticky black smell of molasses. But no, there was a muted tone to the brass and the molasses had a hint of clover honey, like the hiss of summer rain. Somehow, it was familiar. There were cherry blossoms in the air, and they felt like the reassuring touch of Syaoran's hands in hers…
Syaoran helped her to her feet, catching her as she tripped over the first crack in the road, and as she stirred there was the faintest of flutters about her, the feel of alighting snowflakes or the chime of silver bells. Certainly, Sakura could not recall how long they'd been traveling, but, by now, not even Fye or Kurogane or Syaoran remembered, either. And though she couldn't reckon how many feathers they'd collected – enough to stuff a pillow, Fye had quipped once, worlds ago and worlds away – she remembered the faces of everyone who'd helped to claim her feathers, and remembered most of the time before Kurogane and Fye and Syaoran…
But not Syaoran. She couldn't remember Syaoran.
"Sakura?" His voice is a bright splash of turquoise and the touch of his fingers is the taste of Yukito-san's apple pie. Kurogane and Fye are talking to each other in quiet, worried voices that fall upon her skin as brocade and dandelion fluff, concerned that they will never find all the feathers of her memory; they cannot feel the silver bells and snowflakes that herald her wings' return.
There is a tingle in her shoulder blades tinted with cherry blossoms.
A girl stands in the street with long, black hair and a fanciful dress of strawberries and cream. Kurogane calls after her and she turns at her baby-blue name, "Tomoyo-hime," though there is confusion scrawled in flowing penmanship across her pretty face. She does a double-take upon seeing Syaoran and Sakura standing there, holding hands, looking as though she's seen a ghost. Sakura recognizes the girl, somehow, not like the memories of Touya and Yukito that come back with every cherry-scented feather, but some other memories with angels and teddy bears, the echoes of a dream. Kurogane's Tomoyo-hime doesn't answer him; her eyes are locked on Sakura and Syaoran disbelievingly. She stays silent, gaping, even when Fye slips in asking the name of the world, as though neither he nor Kurogane. Finally, haltingly, she asks them their names in a brush of autumn leaves.
Kurogane protests at once with a storm of "don't you remember me?" and "how could you not remember me?" but she just shakes her head and nods politlely as Fye introduces himself in his usual urbane manner. She covers her ears as Kurogane launches into a desperate tirade, and begs him to be quiet for just a moment, then turns back to Syaoran and Sakura and asks, softly, "And you?" with a brush of gauze that hints, in gauze's half-revealing way, that she knows what to expect.
"Syaoran," he says, "and Sakura-hime of Clow Kingdom." Sakura clings a heartbeat closer to him. This strawberries and cream princess nods slowly and asks them all to wait on the curbside for just a moment while she fetches someone.
As she leaves, Kurogane looks wild-eyed, calling her name with all the bitterness of vinegar, but all she does is tell him to wait, and she returns a moment later with a familiar face. "Yukito-san!" cries Sakura, but he wears the same befuddled look that Tomoyo has until Touya joins him by the garden gate.
Fye says something that Sakura cannot quite hear and Kurogane still pleads for Tomoyo's recognition, but they are staring, the five of them, Touya and Yukito and Tomoyo and Syaoran and Sakura, all caught up in some spider's web, with a scarcely perceptible buzz in the air, like an electric current.
"Tsukishiro-san," says Tomoyo gently. "Why don't you go find Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun?" He nods and pulls Touya after him, and they're back in a moment with a man and a woman who are maddeningly familiar. Everything goes silent.
"Come in," says the woman, and her voice smells of cherry blossoms.
Bah to the ending. I wrote it as an intro to a longer story before I realized I couldn't go anywhere with this, but... review anyways?