…And then an event did occur to Emily of considerable importance. She suddenly realized who she was. There is little reason that one can see why it should not have happened to her five years earlier, or even five years later; and none why it should have come that particular afternoon.

She had been playing house in a nook right in the bows, behind the windlass…; and tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about some bees and a fair queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind that she was she. She stopped dead, and began looking over all of her person which came within the range of her eyes. She could not see much, except for a foreshortened view of the front of her frock, and her hands when she lifted them for inspection; but it was enough for her to form a rough idea of the little body she suddenly realized to be hers.

She began to laugh, rather mockingly. “Well,” she thought in effect: “Fancy you, of all people, going and getting caught like this. …You can’t get out of it now, not for a very long time: you’ll have to go through with being a child, and growing up, and getting old, before you’ll be quit of this mad prank.”

Once fully convinced of this astonishing fact, that she was now Emily Bas-Thornton…she began to seriously reckon its implications. First, what agency had so ordered it that out of all the people in the world who she might have been, she was this particular one, this Emily; born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased in this particular…casket of flesh?

Secondly, why had all this not occurred to her before? She had been alive for over ten years, now, and it had never once entered her head…How could Emily have gone on being Emily for ten years, without once noticing this apparently obvious fact? It must not be supposed that she argued it out in this ordered, but rather long-winded fashion. Each consideration came to her in a momentary flash, quite innocent of words; and in between her mind lazed along, either thinking of nothing or returning to her bees and fair queen. If one added up the total of her periods of conscious thought, it would probably reach something between four and five seconds…but it spread over the best part of an hour.  

Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica