As I fell off the cliff to my death, I entered the Sea of Stars.

There was no transition, no warning, nothing. In one moment, the storm, in the next – another reality.

Imagine a vast nothingness, great and infinite, and then imagine it replete with everything: stars and planets, nebulae, black holes, stellar nurseries, primordial plasma, all shaping constellations, galaxies, superclusters, vast filaments of cosmic fabric, existence's pattern itself. Fuse ten thousand perspectives and viewpoints into one, take away linear timeflow, and perceive the resulting planescape; take note of it being more than three-dimensional, extending beyond the boundary horizon, its sideward spiral volumes more than what mere five senses could comprehend. Rainbow patterns of countless colors twisting in kaleidoscopic manifolds, endless arrays of sound harmonizing in a grand orchestra, patterns touched and tasted through the other end of the universe, everything incomprehensible and making perfect sense at the same time.

Imagine thus, and you will have an approximation of what the Sea of Stars is.

I drifted in that outlandish place for a long time. The feeling of falling never stopped, as if I was in a Shooting Stars meme. I knew not whether I was alive or dead, and if perhaps this was how the afterlife looked. I could only feel and experience the everlasting transcendence surrounding me, trapped in pure rapture, and would have gladly spent the rest of eternity doing so.

Then I heard a voice.

What is that you lack most?

The voice was gentle and musical, of ethereal quality, as if the Universe herself was talking to me.

I replied instantly, involuntarily, with perfect candor, as if my own soul was speaking, "Love..."

What is that you desire most? sang the voice.

"Power..."

What is your first passion?

"Dinosaurs..."

What is Her name?

"Wha-what name..."

Her name...

And just like that, I blurted the first pair of syllables my addled mind conjured.

"Miko... Her name is Miko."

And so a wish comes true...

"W-wait!... I want her... to be a mage..."

Very well... Now open your eyes... and AWAKEN!

 

***

 

Flash.

Next thing I knew, the night storm was raging all around me. I stood in the downpour, completely naked. I felt extremely strange, like having an acute out-of-body experience. My mind was still reeling, unable to grasp what had happened. I gripped mentally at the reality around me, gathering my wits with effort.

Light flickered ahead; I was before the shrine temple's entrance. I made several sluggish, oddly-gaited steps and raised my hand to knock on the door. I stopped, bewildered: my hand was a giant, muscular thing, ending with sharp dark claws.

My gaze traveled backwards and downward, astonishment overwhelming me: the hand was part of a very thickset arm, the arm joined to a huge torso, the torso standing on a pair of monstrous digitigrade legs. I made an unfamiliar motion and with surprise felt a powerful tail lashing from my backside. I reached for my face with a slow, half-conscious gesture; the muzzle of my elongated jaws registering to my eyes only when linked with the odd sense of touch, sleek, scaled hide rubbing against one another.

The realization hit me like a sledgehammer – I was a dinosaur!

Suddenly, the front door of the shrine temple opened. The old man stood on the threshold, holding a worn lantern and bracing himself against the storm.

He saw me, and froze, rigid in terror. I tried to tell him it was me, but opening my too-large jaws I produced only a slurred mix between a hiss and a growl, and even that the shrieking storm snatched away. Then I saw the old man wasn't looking at me, but rather at something behind me.

There was the merest change in his expression, and abruptly the old man clutched his chest. He let out a strangled breath and collapsed, the lantern clanking on the ground. I looked at him in horror, but before I could react, something huge grabbed me and dragged me into the stormy night.

It was Miko.

(Of course, at the time I didn't know that. I remember vividly, in that single instant while I was whisked away, feeling like a horror story protagonist who was not destined to make it out alive.)

Yanked into the darkness, things happened too fast for me to follow. The huge presence enveloped me, and suddenly there was a frenzy of motion followed by confusing waves of ecstasy. Blood rushed into my loins, and it dawned on me: I was having sex. Wild, chaotic, furious sex, rough and rousing in equal measure. Lightning flashed, and I saw the barest outline of giant breasts, and a glimpse of saurian silhouette.

I came violently before I could process what was happening. But the berserk gyrations and thrusts and groping movements didn't stop. Climatic joy turned into overstimulated pain, then a singular wave of unbearable impulses. At last, as the series progressed, merciful exhaustion settled in, followed by a thorough blackout.

I had enough wits to grasp barely the basic events: I had turned into a dinosaur, I was subjected to an extreme amorous rain-dance by another (giant and female) dinosaur, and I had just caused the death of a dear friend.

 

***

 

The morning after was apocalyptic, to say the least.

I woke in the warm embrace of Miko, my dream wife made real. Everything from the previous night had been true. A torrent of questions flooded my mind, once I was sufficiently coherent to form them: Who was she? Where she had come from? What happened? Most of them remained unanswered; beyond her name and her firm knowledge (and love) that she was my wife, Miko had no more idea what was going on than I did.

Then it hit me, and I stopped my inquiries mid-sentence: finally! My wishes had come true! Something fantastic – something truly magical – had happened to me! I jumped about with joy, and before I knew it Miko seized me and made sex with me again, to which I heartily agreed. It was heavenly, and while I regretted that my first time was half-lost in nightmarish memories, this time around I could fully enjoy the act of getting laid.

(Yes... I was a virgin, up until that point. Laugh all you want. Those who laugh last have it best.)

When the euphoria finally wore off (after repeated mating), another realization struck me.

The old man. He was dead. I found him at the shrine temple's entrance, his garments soaked from the rain, the lantern lying forlornly beside. I looked at the remains of my mentor and spiritual father, and my throat tightened. Strangely, he looked peaceful in death; there was no sign of the terror which had taken away his lifeforce.

We buried him under the willow tree, me and Miko. It was when she revealed she was a mage, because she used her powers to seal the grave and created an elaborate stone marker on top of it. I managed to say several choked words, but the grief overwhelmed me. I sobbed, my heart aching for not even knowing the old man's name. Then Miko knelt, her powerful claws grasping me, turning me bodily, and I ended up crying in her soft hug. I finally calmed down hours later, thanks to her quiet, steadfast presence.

The next days were ones of constant discovery and sex. I had transformed into a nine feet tall weredinosaur, still quite humanoid in shape yet undoubtedly not human anymore. Miko was a greater monster still – thirty feet tall, and shaped more like a true dinosaur with a bipedal stance. I might have been exultant for having my deepest desires come true, but I was perfectly aware how problematic our visages were. The moment people saw any of us, there would be mass panic; we had to hide until I could think of some way (however impossible that seemed) for us to blend in society.

Our primary concern was food. Then it turned out it was no concern at all: our bodies proved able to consume any kind of organic matter, and derive nourishment from it. Taste was another matter; even though I could eat things like raw wood, grass, and bugs, I didn't like it one bit. Miko, for her part, ate without complaint – and her breasts were actively lactating in great amounts. Yes... my main diet quickly became my dream wife's milk. (Ohhh, *shiver* I get turned on simply thinking about it...)

For shelter, we had the shrine temple, although Miko couldn't enter inside. But that was a non-issue, too, because both of us were impervious to the elements – I've always dreamed about being able to endure any kind of weather without a trace of discomfort, and now at long last I could. As for keeping away from prying eyes, the shrine temple was located at an isolated location near Mount Taishaku, off the electrical and water grid, and people basically never visited it; even the dirt road leading to the temple itself ended half a kilometer before its destination.

With our immediate survival and safety thus ensured, me and Miko got to know each other. And any time things threatened to become awkward, my wife would take initiative and engage me in sexual manner with reckless abandon.

Miko was an enigma who simultaneously knew quite much and very little. She spoke English, Japanese, and my native language, just like me; she knew, on an intuitive, automatic level, everything I knew about. At the same time, she was insatiably curious about the world around her, examining everything she encountered as if she saw it for the first time in her life. To an extent, that was true – Miko had no memories whatsoever before the night of the storm; it was as if she had been just wished into existence, becoming instantly a living, thinking, adult being. And... perhaps that was exactly what had happened. When I tentatively explained to Miko about my incident with the Sea of Stars, she was neither surprised nor concerned – she already knew about it. I asked her if she knew about my sexual fantasies, and she said yes. (Wow... that explains how she is so good in bed.)

I was also fascinated by Miko's status as a mage. I would ask her endless questions about what magic really was and how it worked; she answered to the best of her ability, but many times she simply shrugged, saying she couldn't quite remember. Yet when it came to spellcasting, Miko wove spells with such natural ease and grace it was akin to looking at a master with centuries of practice. This odd juxtaposition of awkwardness and expertise was puzzling, but I didn't read too much into it: I was still reeling from the whole experience, and wasn't able to analyze things quite properly.

For my part, I spent much time getting reacquainted with my own body: even if the underlying anatomy was basically the same, there were many new elements which required learning things from scratch. My tail, for example, was a totally new limb I had to learn to move around and manipulate stuff with it. (Because it is prehensile! Awesome!) Speaking was also difficult the first few days, since my mouth was a totally different beast (pun intended) from what it was before. And even then, I kept slurring and hissing horribly for a few weeks. In the end I remastered my smooth, silver-tongued way of expressing myself – humble, I know – although my voice was forever changed: it had a deep, growly quality to it now, with a faint hint of sibilance, and it was strange hearing myself speak so yet I quickly came to love it. And the claws – oh, I was so very clumsy with them at first, but then they became thoroughly useful, in addition to being awesome. Although even today I had to be vigilant with them, since I tended to scratch or completely rend asunder things if I wasn't careful. There were also a host of other things – digitigrade gait, height and weight, center of mass, and so on – which I had to adjust to also, but there's no need to get into further detail.

Of course, our miniature paradise couldn't have lasted forever. While nobody came to the shrine temple deliberately, tourists often went up and down the mountain. It was a matter of time before somebody spotted us. A week after my transformation and Miko's creation, I decided to sneak into Makinata District and cautiously contact Jared, hoping to persuade him to not freak out.

Yet the plan became a disaster. As soon as she heard about exploring, Miko went berserk with excitement – she had existed only for a week, and wanted to see the world. I tried to stop her, but she dashed down the mountain in her rush to see Makinata for herself. I chased after her, shouting to her to come back or at least disguise herself with magic.

When Miko descended upon the district, complete panic predictably set in. People screamed and ran for their lives when they saw Miko, while she stood confused in the middle of the street, not knowing what to do. She tried communicating with the locals, unsuccessfully. Finally, I reached her, and convinced her to go back to the shrine temple. We quickly left, retreating once more to the mountain. But the damage had already been done.

The Japan Self-Defense Force came only an hour later. I don't know how they found us. It mattered not; these days everything was tracked anyway, whether through satellites or big data, and something as salient as two monster dinosaurs couldn't have remained hidden for long, even in a forested mountain.

First, we heard the roar of fighter jets and helicopters. Then main battle tanks came up the road, blockading the shrine temple. Finally, the click-clacks of dozens of assault rifles and machine guns echoed from between the trees. And just like that, me and Miko were in mortal danger.

I surrendered on the spot; this was no movie, and heroics would've only killed us. Even so, the JSDF nearly opened fire on us, but I lay flat on the ground and told a very confused and frightened Miko to do the same. This saved our lives, yet by no means the alternative was better: they chained us and locked us in cages.

For three days we were in captivity, while they took all kinds of samples from us, as if we were lab experiments. During all this time, I insisted repeatedly to talk with someone in charge, a senior officer, a government official, a scientist, anybody. Nobody paid me any attention, and the fact I spoke fluent (if slurry) Japanese was ignored. Fear and desperation mounted in me like a tidal wave – I felt trapped in a nightmare, especially considering the heavenly week I had just prior to this torture. My mind was on the verge of shattering; I knew not what was real or not anymore, whether this was a cycle of pleasure and pain in some cruel purgatory. Perhaps I had truly died during the storm, taking my own life, and now I was suffering an eternal punishment for having scorned such a sacred gift. I didn't know; I couldn't grasp; I felt sanity slipping away, a dark and terrible abyss rising, yawning, ready to swallow me whole...

On the third day, Miko had enough of my suffering. Heavily distressed by my maddened despair and furiously angry at our captors, she released a massive spell that put everyone in the area – except us – to deep sleep. Without a pause, she cast another spell, releasing us from our chains.

She then grabbed me, holding me tight against her, and tried to make a run for it. Still stunned from this turn of events, I barely stopped her. I told her if she ran now, we would face the same problem everywhere, in the entire world. Miko didn't believe me, and said she would find a place where people were like us. I explained to her that this world was populated solely by humans, and there were no people who even came close to us. (Well, except the furry-slash-scalie and otherkin communities, but I doubt they can fight the military very effectively. Some of them were military themselves, but that only further complicates matters...)

Miko then became very upset, saddened why would people treat her and her husband so cruelly. I had no answer for that; privately, I wondered the same, despite my misgivings. But I told her that we had to stay and try to talk our way out of this – it was the only real solution. Finally, Miko let me go. I got ahold of a military radio and once again requested to speak to someone in charge.

This time, I was heard.

After hours of tense waiting, a dark jeep arrived at the shrine temple, heavily guarded by a fresh set of troops and tanks. A lone general disembarked the jeep, acknowledging curtly that he came to 'talk'. I explained to the general, in my most profuse (perhaps excessively so) words that me and Miko meant no harm, that we were living, thinking, and order-abiding people like everybody else, and that we just wanted to live our life.

The general listened in absolute silence, still as a statue, while I poured speech after speech in the most formal and subservient Japanese I could muster. At some point I felt myself rambling, and stopped talking. I held my breath, waiting for an answer.

At last, the general spoke. He made three short statements: that if we wanted to live, we would stay in this area at all times; that we will provide anything that the JSDF requests from us without question; and that if we ever caused any trouble, we would be gunned down without warning.

The general then entered the jeep, and departed without further word.

Shortly after, the other soldiers also left. Some time later, we learned that the whole Makinata District had been put on lockdown. A strict perimeter was established, and absolutely nobody was allowed in or out.

This is how we became imprisoned, alongside three thousand other people.

It was how we would live for the next year.