—Broadcast—
Due to various improbable coincidences, Wendy had not only regained her identity as a Celestial Dragon but also joined the New Marine and ascended to Admiral rank. There were quite a few stories behind this remarkable trajectory—stories most people would find difficult to believe.
"Time flies so quickly," Admiral Tenryu murmured while tasting her tea, genuine melancholy coloring her youthful voice. "I've been here for several years now. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Other times it feels like a lifetime ago."
The girl recalled her first meeting with her brother—that pivotal moment when her isolated world had begun expanding into something far more complicated.
Memories came flooding back with crystalline clarity. The Sky Screen's perspective shifted, simple visual strokes painting scenes from Donquixote Wendy's palace of recollection. The broadcast began telling the story of a girl raised by a monster—a tale stranger than most fiction, yet entirely true.
Flashback
A young woman abandoned by the Celestial Dragons endured the most difficult ten months of pregnancy imaginable. Alone, cast out, surviving on an island populated by superstitious primitives who viewed her presence with suspicion and fear.
She never imagined that one day she would become a sacrifice chosen by these islanders. That she and the child growing in her belly would be offered to a powerful monster dwelling in the island's mountainous interior.
The ignorant islanders believed that sacrificing pregnant women would gain the creature's favor, ensuring abundant harvests and protection for the entire year. They thought appeasing the monster with blood would guarantee food and security.
Little did they know this was the beginning of all tragedy, not its prevention.
After the pregnant woman was struck unconscious by the village elders—bludgeoned with a wooden club to prevent resistance—she was carried to the ancient altar. The stone platform stood on a high cliff overlooking the ocean, wind-swept and lonely, stained with generations of sacrificial blood.
The feathered monster that occasionally landed nearby couldn't communicate with humans through conventional language. It showed no interest in their species whatsoever and had never accepted any form of blood sacrifice in its long existence.
The creature found the rituals confusing and pointless. It simply lived in its mountain cave, hunting fish from the sea and sleeping beneath the stars.
But fate had other plans.
When the pregnant woman regained consciousness on the cold stone altar, she found herself face-to-face with something beyond her comprehension. A massive creature covered in white feathers, serpentine body coiled around the altar's base, eyes that glowed with alien intelligence staring at her with mild curiosity.
Terror seized her heart. Her pulse skyrocketed. Blood pressure spiked catastrophically.
The shock triggered premature labor. Hemorrhaging began almost immediately—warm blood pooling beneath her body as contractions wracked her frame with agonizing intensity.
A great mother gave birth to a premature infant through her own life's sacrifice, experiencing difficulties that would have killed most women even with medical assistance. Here, on this desolate altar with only a confused monster as witness, she pushed and screamed and bled.
The baby girl emerged into the unknown world and began crying for the first time. The sound was thin, reedy, desperately weak. She felt cold—the ocean wind cutting through her still-wet skin. She felt hungry—primitive survival instincts demanding sustenance her dying mother could no longer provide.
The pregnant woman's eyes revealed profound reluctance in her final moments. She looked at her newborn child—this tiny, helpless thing she'd carried for ten months, the only good thing she'd created since her exile from Mary Geoise—and finally died on the ancient altar.
Her last thought was a prayer that someone, anyone, would show her daughter more kindness than she'd received.
The monster possessed far more acute hearing than humans. The baby's crying sounded impossibly sharp to its sensitive ears—a needle-like shriek that pierced through its consciousness with uncomfortable intensity.
For this noisy little creature making such unpleasant sounds, the monster's first instinct was to silence it. Cover the human vocal organs with its feathers to muffle the noise.
The creature's feathers—fully warmed by hours of basking in tropical sunlight—descended like a blanket over the infant's naked body. The newborn baby felt genuine warmth for the first time since emerging from her mother's womb.
The crying began to slowly subside. Safe. The baby felt safe somehow, instincts responding to the warmth with trust rather than continued fear.
Her breathing became steady and regular. Gradually, she closed her eyes and fell into deep sleep—the exhausted slumber of the newborn who'd survived impossible circumstances.
The monster became suddenly interested in this magical little creature. What strange biology allowed it to transition from piercing wails to peaceful silence so quickly? What was this tiny thing's purpose?
Under the watchful eyes of ignorant islanders gathered at the cliff's base—villagers who'd climbed up to verify their sacrifice had been accepted—the monster opened its mouth. Jaws large enough to swallow a horse descended carefully, impossibly gently, and closed around the baby.
It spread its massive wings and took flight, carrying the infant away toward its mountain dwelling.
Watching this scene unfold, the village adults celebrated enthusiastically. The child of that wretched exile must certainly be dead now! Swallowed whole and currently being digested in the monster's belly!
With this sacrifice accepted, the creature would definitely bless their entire island. Protection guaranteed for another year!
The atmosphere descended into carnival. Drums beat. People danced. Alcohol flowed freely as they congratulated themselves on their successful appeasement of the powerful monster.
This worship of primitive power was profoundly pitiful. The weak could only hope that incomprehensible existence would bless them with safe lives—but all of it was beautiful fantasy disconnected from reality.
Some people preferred immersion in fantasy worlds. Even if you presented them with undeniable truth that their beliefs were false, these blind individuals would never understand or believe it. Willful ignorance was more comforting than harsh reality.
The baby girl taken away by the monster not only didn't die but was actively raised by the non-human creature. She received a name: Wendy.
The female monster was called Grandine—a name from ancient languages that predated human civilization on these islands. She not only knew human language but was proficient in most of the world's linguistic knowledge. Dialects, dead languages, technical vocabularies, poetic forms—knowledge she would likely never use in her isolated existence.
To avoid disappointing her monster mother, the intelligent human adopted daughter learned everything offered. Languages, history, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, navigation—Grandine possessed centuries of accumulated knowledge and shared it freely with her ward.
At the time, young Wendy didn't expect to use these skills. She simply enjoyed learning, enjoyed the time spent with her mother, and lived a relatively peaceful and happy existence.
This continued until a blood-related man broke into the girl's life, disrupting her isolated paradise.
One day, Wendy was playing near the beach. This location was her favorite playground—she was intimately familiar with every rock formation, every tide pool, every hiding spot along this stretch of coastline.
Even after living with her monster mother for many years, Wendy never felt bored. Being able to sleep beneath Grandine's warm wings every night was simply the happiest part of each day. Waking up surrounded by soft feathers, listening to her mother's steady breathing, feeling utterly safe and loved.
Due to a severe storm that had battered the island several days ago, pieces of wood continued washing ashore periodically. Sometimes debris. Sometimes intact cargo crates. Occasionally supplies from wrecked merchant vessels.
Wendy loved this treasure-hunting lifestyle. The uncertainty brought surprises daily—you never knew what the ocean would deliver next. Opening each container was like receiving a gift from the sea itself.
But today, when she opened a particularly large wooden box wedged between rocks, she received a massive surprise. Or perhaps more accurately, a profound shock.
Wendy actually found an adult male inside the container!
He must have been caught in the storm and hidden himself in this wooden crate to save his life. Unexpectedly, fortune had favored him—both man and box had drifted to shore. Remarkably, impossibly lucky to have survived days at sea in such precarious shelter.
This wasn't the first time Wendy had encountered humans beyond her mother. She'd approached the island village several years ago, curious about her own kind, hoping for connection.
The islanders had driven her away with weapons and burning torches. They'd screamed about monsters and demons, about unnatural creatures that brought misfortune. The heartbroken girl could only flee back to her mother and cry into those soft feathers.
From that day forward, she'd maintained careful distance from other humans.
The man coughed violently in the wooden box, expelling seawater from his mouth and nose in painful heaving gasps. After clearing his airways, he opened his eyes tiredly and saw his savior.
A girl who hadn't yet reached full growth. Most of her clothing was made from woven feathers—beautiful white plumage fashioned into a practical but primitive dress. This could no longer be described as civilized attire.
Had he drifted to an uncivilized island populated by tribal peoples?
This unlucky man was none other than Saint Donquixote Mjosgard—a peculiar figure among the Celestial Dragons, one of the few who questioned their divine right philosophy even before his famous character development.
He assumed the girl before him couldn't speak any recognized language, so he made incomprehensible gestures with his hands—clumsy pantomime attempting to communicate his desperate need for clean drinking water.
Wendy couldn't help rolling her eyes at this display. Her voice carried dry amusement: "What are you gesticulating for? Are you mute?"
The man's face transformed with relief. "So you can talk! That's wonderful! Communication is possible!"
Being able to speak implied civilization, literacy, culture. Not cannibals who ate raw meat and drank blood, who sacrificed captives to primitive gods.
Donquixote Mjosgard was so overjoyed he immediately asked his young savior for water, his voice hoarse from days of dehydration.
The man was remarkably unlucky for a Celestial Dragon. As a passenger aboard a merchant vessel, he'd been caught in the crossfire of a Marine battle against pirates. The engagement had sunk his ship, killing his entourage and guards. Only Saint Mjosgard had survived by hiding cleverly in this wooden supply crate.
He'd drifted on the open ocean for several days without a single drop of fresh water. If he hadn't reached shore soon, he would have died—either from starvation or dehydration, whichever claimed him first.
Faced with this not-unreasonable request from someone clearly suffering, Wendy trotted back to her "treasure spot"—a small cave where she stored interesting finds—and retrieved a fresh coconut for the stranger.
Saint Donquixote Mjosgard used a large stone to crack the coconut's shell carefully, creating a small opening. Then he tilted his head back and began sucking the juice inside, relief flooding through him as liquid touched his parched throat.
He was so desperately thirsty that one coconut proved insufficient. He could only ask his savior apologetically for more, hoping he wasn't imposing too greatly on her hospitality.
Wendy—kind-hearted by nature despite her previous rejection by humans—accepted a human's request for the first time since the village incident. She led Donquixote Mjosgard to her treasure house without any precautions, trusting his obvious weakness and gratitude meant he posed no threat.
The cave contained food and drinks she'd collected over years. Fresh water from a spring deeper in the cave system. Preserved fruits. Dried fish. Various supplies salvaged from shipwrecks.
All of it was available for this adult to take and consume freely.
The girl only made one request: that he stay here in the cave rather than following her home. Her monster mother Grandine didn't like humans. Meeting one might upset her, and Wendy didn't want her mother distressed.
Saint Donquixote Mjosgard, still recovering from his ordeal, agreed readily. He was in no condition to argue or explore.
Wendy left him there with supplies and a promise to return the next day.
She didn't realize this chance encounter would change both their lives forever.