In the first month of our imprisonment, everything was quiet. Everybody avoided the mountain, where the supposed 'monsters' dwelt. Me and Miko lived at the shrine temple alone and in seclusion, just as we had done during the first week after my transformation. Miko in particular was banned from approaching any point of the perimeter closer than 500 meters, to prevent someone on the outside from spotting her.

Eventually, I started going to town cautiously. The locals were terrified of me, and I kept my visits brief, wandering around only at dawn or dusk; I didn't know what exactly I wanted from this – perhaps some recognition that I wasn't a freak of nature, a subconscious yearning for communal belonging. The only person in the entire district who wasn't deathly afraid was my friend Jared. He was actually excited about my transformation into a buff weredinosaur, and asked me all kinds of questions, sometimes much to my annoyance. His house was the only place I was welcome during that first month.

With the passage of time and Jared's help, the residents of Makinata District gradually began to get used to me, especially since I wasn't doing any scary stuff. Indeed, in an attempt to win some favor and convince the locals I was still a rational individual, I tried to find a job. It was a difficult undertaking, not merely because of my nature, but because the economy inside the quarantine zone had totally collapsed. I had no luck until Jared helped me again, persuading Mr. Takeda to semi-employ me at his car repair workshop. That's how I met the Makinata Shadow Warriors, the first people besides Jared who talked to me like a normal person. I was most often working on their cars, maintaining and tuning them up. It was the one thing I missed dearly from my old life, being able to race.

At home, me and Miko were sexually engaged every day. When we weren't occupied in such intimate manner, I spent time getting to know Miko as a person. I began to study magic under her tutelage, learning about true spellcasting. I now felt some kind of inner power which previously had lain dormant in me. It made me feel... capable. Insightful. Potent. With Miko's guidance, I tamed that power and used it as a focus for spellcasting.

I remember the first time I hurled lightning from my hand. It was a grand, intoxicating innocence of being able to wield such power. I felt like a god. I also felt this was a meme, somehow.

Miko tried to teach me many spells which she seemed able to cast with effortless ease. Yet I struggled to do the same, either botching the spells outright, taking too much time concentrating to cast them, or wasting too much energy in residual effects (like the FX you see in movies and videogames; in the real world, those are hallmarks of a sloppy mage – or someone who's very powerful). While over the course of a year I eventually learned a respectable number of invocations and became proficient with basic magery, I felt my progress was too slow; it irked me to no end there was nothing I could do to learn faster.

Winter came in Japan, and it was a brutal one. In Makinata District, people were unable to leave their homes; there was no one to clean the streets, or make deliveries for essential goods. The snow cover became so high I had to wade through snow up to my knees. I had never seen such conditions this far south before. (And remember, I had traveled the majority of the country for three years.) The JSDF failed to deliver fuel and food for two weeks; something about blocked roads or some similar bullshit. Their scientist division came to take samples from me and Miko regularly, though, coming and going by helicopter. With Jared telling me about yet another local who'd nearly died of starvation and hypothermia, I had snarled in the eggheads' faces to bring some supplies by air, instead of their useless asses. I think that won me some black points with the military, but the very next day they airdropped ten tons of rice packets and diesel fuel. Jared later said this had saved more than a dozen lives, mostly elderly people.

Me and Miko lived through the winter easily enough, our bodies protecting us from the freezing chill, and for food we chopped trees and ate the wood. It was a dreary time, but it didn't compare at all to the locals' misery. Even proud Jared, stammering from shame and loss of self-respect, came once by the shrine temple to beg for Miko's milk.

No, I won't tell you how that ended.

Then, three months in since our imprisonment, Miko laid her first clutch. For me, this was a game changer – to put it mildly. First, I was astounded from the fact that I was going to be a father. Second, I was stunned because I was going to be a father so soon. Thirdly, I was going to be a father of four – because Miko had laid four eggs.

Let me tell you, few eventualities put things into perspective so thoroughly as seeing your own flesh and blood recreated and brought to life before your very eyes.

Sixth months in, Miko laid eggs again, while the first clutch hatched.

I was a father now.

I felt like I was going to explode – my dream wife laid eggs every three months, and they hatched three months after that! I asked Miko if she would keep laying eggs like that, for, what, perpetuity?

"Yes, I will, my love," she answered. "Unless you want me to stop?"

No, I certainly didn't want her to stop. I asked her if there was a risk to her or something else which could be trouble, but Miko said everything was perfectly fine. I felt dizzy; simple math told me that in a scant few years I could be a father of dozens of children.

As time passed, something else happened.

The residents of Makinata, having been imprisoned already for half a year, and having endured a harsh winter like medieval serfs, were getting angry. However, they couldn't point their anger at the JSDF; it was like yelling at the ocean for being wet. And anyway for some their sense of jingoism was greater than their outrage at the injustice their country had done to them. So instead, the locals turned their wrath towards me and my family.

At first, nothing worse happened than me getting some evil stares and muttered curses behind my back (the drunken Russians didn't count) while I was in town. But in time more and more people started talking against me and began openly resenting me. Some bolder people, having more courage than sense, even tried to play punks with me, spitting or throwing stuff in my direction. Usually, a hiss or a warning growl was enough to get them in line. Yet even those measures soon lost their effectiveness; the locals began to think I was too cowed by the military to attack them.

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Tensions culminated when a group of people went to the shrine temple to scout the 'monster lair', in order to plot some stupid Frankenstein stunt with a mob of torches and pitchforks. Instead, what they found were our children. The timing was most unfortunate: Miko had gone out for a brief period to scrounge for food – even she couldn't tolerate munching wood and lichen endlessly – while I was at work.

Upon stumbling onto our progeny, the intrepid 'monster hunters' had swiftly returned to town, spreading fear and panic about how the monsters were multiplying. A most predictable pattern followed, observable in human history for millennia.

Days later, an angry mob of hundreds of people gathered, marching toward the shrine temple. They carried makeshift incendiaries and bombs, as well as other improvised weaponry. They shouted and yelled – I guess more to keep their morale than to scare us – and so we had ample warning of their coming. The bastards intended to torch the whole area to the ground, temple and forest and all, thinking they could quickly and cleanly get rid of us.

But when the mob came up the pathway, me and Miko were there, of course, waiting and prepared.

Miko scared the majority of them with a lot of intimidation and flashy spells. I had more of a support role, using my smaller size to dash around and put down any fires or keep people from circling around and sneaking at the back. The showdown lasted merely a minute or two: the mob quickly routed, most of them without even getting into a fight. We managed to overcome the opposition without actually hurting or killing anyone, but part of the surrounding forest burned down due to stray fires; we couldn't fully protect both the people and the environment, and fight at the same time.

In fact, a few people were indeed hurt in the resulting chaos, but due to their own (or their comrades') panicked actions. Miko, however, healed their injuries and we let them go. We were not monsters, and we were determined to prove that. Even if my hot-blooded nature wanted to bash a few heads in just to make a point.

After the incident... nothing happened. There were no reprisals from the military, and no further attacks from the locals. The eggheads came for their scheduled visits and took samples from us and our children, acting like business as usual. Me and Miko accepted the locals were deathly scared of us and decided one of us had to be at the shrine temple at all times. The locals, in the meantime, perhaps trembled in trepidation for some sort of retaliation – a laughable notion, given our inability to do anything without incurring the JSDF's wrath.

I went to work at Mr. Takeda's car workshop as if nothing happened. Days passed, and I worked, bought pastries from Mrs. Obuzaki's bakery, and acted like nothing happened. Things slowly returned to 'normal'. People still kept their distance, but stopped harassing me or talking about my family. It dawned on the locals that despite their rash and dumb attempt of murdering us, we hadn't killed anybody, and had even helped those attackers who'd suffered any real harm. It was rare, but afterwards I overheard some people talking in favor of me and my family. A small victory at so risky a cost. But this was an uphill battle up a glass mountain, so I counted my blessings.

Nine months came and went, and I became a father again, while Miko laid another clutch of eggs. By that time I noticed how quickly our children grew up: already my elder daughters were able to walk upright, talk, manipulate tools, and were interested in advanced topics.

You know this by now, but at the time I noticed two things: all of our children were daughters, and they all were hermaphrodites. To say I was flabbergasted is putting it mildly, but I didn't complain. Not one bit.

By now, I was constantly busy with all kinds of stuff. I had to quickly learn how parenting worked because I was a father of eight already. I was studying magic intensely, and thanks to my spell-hacked access to the internet I was revisiting my earlier studies into quantum physics and other scientific fields. I was also learning how to be a teacher, in order to school my children. I had my job at the car repair workshop. I went with Jared on street racing nights. And so on.

On top of everything, I constantly had sex, and to my surprised shock I found it was getting a tiny, tiny bit tiresome. (At least on some days.)

The perfect life, an outsider looking in would say. My deepest desires were fulfilled – I had become a powerful saurian creature, I had a dream wife who was a giant horny dinosaur, both of us were mages, we had many children, we loved each other infinitely... It was everything I ever wanted, in one complete package.

Yet... I slowly realized I wasn't being happy.

...

Of course, I could rationalize this through my family's existential predicament: we were imprisoned, not free. We weren't loved or even liked by the public at large. The Japanese government treated us like test subjects and dangerous monsters. We had nowhere to run to. We were, in essence, at the mercy of others.

Except...

Except this was me bullshitting you.

...

Here's the naked, ugly, painful truth.

After the events of that fateful night, the night of my birthday, the night of my transformation, the night of Miko's genesis, I often thought about the Sea of Stars. About its mystery, and its grandness. I felt an inexplicable longing about it, as if I had lost something priceless, like a close relative, a loved one, or a precious memory. Something made me yearn to return to that ethereal place.

Yes, you could say that I had become addicted to the sensory overload and soul-vastening experience during my voyage in the Sea of Stars. Yes, you could also point out the Sea was the only way to escape imprisonment risk-free.

Yet I tell you, there was something more. Something... else.

I didn't know what that 'else' was. But as the days flashed by, as the months went on, as the seasons changed, and my new life bloomed, I slowly became... troubled. Unhappy. Depressed.

Cold, terrible fear crept in my heart. I trembled, overcome with dread, because this was similar to when I had dropped out of MIT. This was the same situation when I lost my job as an English teacher. This was the same ugly trauma which had risen when my parents got divorced.

But this was older than any of those turning points in my life. This was a primordial monster which had hibernated in me for as long as I could remember.

Something was depressing me.

I had no idea what or why. It made no sense. I had a perfect life! I had a fantastic giant horny wife, I had numerous children, and I was a fucking dinosaur who could cast magic! How could I feel unhappy? What could possibly make me depressed?

I... had to find out. I simply had to.

And I believed the answer was in the Sea of Stars and its eerie calling.

I had to find a way to return there. I had to.

Why else would the Sea grant me my deepest desires, if this didn't make me happy? What have I missed? What unfathomable curse lay upon me to make me unable to enjoy even the greatest of blessings?

You wanted the truth.

This was the truth: outwardly, I lived my new life like the luckiest guy in the world, enjoying my newfound power, love, and family. Inwardly, however, I was a somber soul which had a singular obsession – to understand what the fuck was wrong with me.

I believed the Sea of Stars was the only way I could learn the answer. It had granted me grace once, and I would implore it to do so again.

Thus, above all else, I wanted to return there. To the place where everything began.