The Tale of the Wizrain Kingdom

The Girl Recalls the Dragon's Memory

Translated by: S3

Treat me to a Ko-Fi to give me more motivation!!!

*****

That thick tail was her pride and joy. Swaying it with a heavy bounce, she would encircle the human who seemed so small compared to herself.

「What’s this? I can’t move,」 the man said, smiling bitterly as he stroked her tail.

This is merely an unconscious action, she explained, and the man laughed.

It was a fleeting moment for her, but not for him. Because this tiny man rode upon her back, racing freely across the vast skies and striking down countless villains, people called him a Hero. But to her, such titles mattered little.

「Say, Elnalfia.」

Saying her name, he would touch Elnalfia’s smooth scales and speak to her quietly. The scales made a cool, chiming sound.

There was only one human she allowed to ride upon her back and fly the skies. She had decided: only once in a lifetime. So, she flew. Wrapping her wings in the pale blue air, she kicked off the earth, diving into the sky as if plunging into the ocean, yet soaring steadily upward. Deeply, she submerged herself in the sky.

And then—

She fell into the sky.

Just as she thought that, Elna remembered the memories of her past life.

(A human... body.)

She looked at her own slender fingers in shock. Water dripped from her cheeks. Water was splashing onto the floor. Each individual droplet reflected the light of the window glass, sparkling and glittering as if she were inside the sky.

(Have I been reborn as a human?)

Her memory was slightly muddled. Elna is a human. She is a sixteen-year-old girl, and a servant. Her fingers are red and chapped, stinging from even a small amount of water. It is a puny body. A soft body that bruises from the slightest bump; the reflection quietly staring back from the puddle has no shiny scales anywhere. There is only a small girl with hair of a halfway color, difficult to call either orange or brown. —She certainly does not possess a magnificent body capable of carrying a Hero and flying about the sky. Yes, the kind called a Dragon.

「Ah, that's right. I was reborn as a human, and so, um, well...」

「What sort of gibberish are you muttering!」

The one shouting at Elna was a blonde girl with prominent freckles. She—Laura—looked down at Elna hatefully, ordering her to wipe up all the water in the hallway properly and clean it, spitting her words like foaming bubbles.

Laura is Elna's stepsister. Earlier, Elna thought of herself as a servant, but in reality, she is the second daughter of the Baron Calzeed household. Her mother, whom the head of the house, Baron Calzeed, had bought as a mistress, died early from illness. Elna, brought along as her child, was pitied by the Baron and adopted into the Calzeed family.

However, that was the beginning of her misfortune.

Baron Calzeed's folly of not only keeping a mistress but adopting her child caused his wife's jealousy to erupt. It stood to reason that her daughter, Laura, though only a few months different in age, would treat her stepsister harshly. She bullied her in various ways, and the Baron, fearing his wife and child, pretended not to see it.

Young Elna lived without knowing right from left, led by her mother, but the mother who protected her had already died, and the anger of Laura and her stepmother felt natural to her. She simply lamented her own powerlessness. Because she had clumsily gained the name of Calzeed, she couldn't even run away. And she also had a reason to obey them. Stuffed into a narrow room that was a storage closet in all but name, the "Second Daughter" of a noble house survived the winters shivering with bright red hands.

Even now, claiming Elna’s floor scrubbing was clumsy, Laura had upended a bucket of water over Elna’s head, drenching her. The bucket rolled away with a clatter, and the scattered water on the floor looking like a reflection of the sky was what triggered her past life memories—what a supreme irony.

「Don't just stand there spacing out! Thanks to you, there's more work to do! How are you going to fix this!?」

「Ah, I'm sorry...?」

Though she apologized reflexively to Laura's unreasonable words, Elna felt no sadness or fear in her heart. After all, the opponent was human. What had awakened was a broad-minded Dragon Mind. Why on earth should she fear a human she could squash with a simple pop if she wasn't careful?

(What a surprise.)

She quietly rubbed her chest. First, her perspective of sight was different. To be specific, Laura used to be an object of fear for Elna, but watching Laura huff breath through her nose, turn on her heel, and walk away, Elna found herself absentmindedly thinking: (Her nose really puffed up just now like a balloon.) You don't have to huff-huff so much, she thought. However, there was just one thing. Only one thing. (Ah...).

The oval glass stone hanging from Laura's chest. That alone disturbed Elna's heart.

Because that was Elna’s stone, the one she had held dear.

***

The cool stone, about the size of Elna's thumb, was said to be something she was clutching when she was born. Her mother had told her that when they opened the tiny infant's hand, she was gripping the shining sky. Elna didn't understand what on earth it was, but it felt like a part of her own body, so she attached a string to it and carried it as a necklace. It was a mysterious stone; though it shouldn't be rubbing against anything, if she strained her ears, she could hear a sharari, sharari sound, like the rustling of sea sand.

That was why, from time to time, she would gently lower her eyes and listen to the sound. She should never have seen the ocean, only heard of it in stories, yet for some reason, it made her feel nostalgic.

From the outside, it likely looked like a ridiculous figure—desperately treasuring a child's toy, a mere piece of flat glass. So, as harassment, Laura took the necklace from Elna and, despite it being ill-suited for her fine dresses, always displayed it to Elna.

Regarding that, the old Elna felt sadness rather than complaint or indignation. She was hurt by the malice directed at her, wondering why Laura would do such a thing.

She was a girl who would sniffle and cry rather than talk back—kind-hearted if you put it nicely, spineless if you put it poorly. But now, her mood was: (Well, it can't be helped, Dra-Dra). She had tried thinking of "Dra-Dra" to help settle her resurfaced memories, but she immediately stopped because the ring to it was bad.

Having regained her memories in this way, Elna dashed out of the mansion, her body still soaking wet from Laura’s bucket water.

Hah, hah, she exhaled, her strides growing larger. Unable to suppress her eager feelings, she had started running before she knew it. She crossed the town wall—no, she "jumped over" it—and stomped her feet as if dancing. Facing the vast earth stretching as far as the eye could see, she stretched her body out with all her might.

Thinking about the necklace Laura stole was aggravating, but it wasn't something worth causing a commotion to dig back up.

More importantly, the sky filling her vision right now was far more significant. It felt like something very important to her past life, but Elna was living in the now.

Elna is unmistakably a child of man, just a sixteen-year-old girl. However, her oversized soul wrapped even around her skin, and her overflowing magic power easily surpassed human limits.

Staring at the horizon that stretched endlessly while standing on just two legs, Elna bit her lip, trembling. The earth is huge. After all, her current self is tiny. "Amazing," she murmured, taken aback.

While she was doing this, she realized the water that had soaked into her shoes was dripping down her cheeks and hair, wetting the ground from her sleeves and skirt hem.

「Yeah, this isn't great. I'll catch a cold. I don't like water very much.」

This body was incredibly frail and would take to bed over the slightest thing. When Elna exhaled a breath, the clothes that should have been soaking wet dried softly in an instant, creating a fluffy warmth around her. The hem of her long skirt danced in the wind. A Wyvern is a fire dragon, and as the pinnacle of them, Elna had rampaged with a Hero on her back.

The fire spirits filling the atmosphere rejoiced at Elna's awakening, laughing playfully.

「Nmu-fufu.」

It was so fun she couldn't help but laugh. After all, she had been reborn as a human.

「I'm standing... on two legs...」

She glanced down and wiggled her feet.

「Nmu-fufu—!」

It wasn't a cramped body that would crush people if she moved slightly, nor was her voice a roar to be feared. A fire spirit, even smaller than Elna's small palm, burned on her head, blinking its round eyes. It was very cute.

「This is nice, being human! I've been human for sixteen years, but let me say it again! This is niiice!」

It was so fun, so happy, she spread both arms wide.

Stomping both feet, she tasted the "air" with her whole body. Elna felt as if she had just been born, accepting the fullness of life. The same uniform the maids wore fluttered in the wind, and because she didn't have the tail that existed in her memories, she staggered, then laughed alone again. That was why she didn't know yet, and didn't understand.

—She never expected the stone Laura stole to have such a meaning.

「This is, without a doubt, the scale of the Fire Dragon Elnalfia, the guardian dragon of the Wizrain Kingdom...! W-Why, where did you get this...!」

「My, my...!」

Laura blushed suddenly and stepped out from among the young ladies. It was as if she were watching a story where she was the protagonist.

「This stone is something I was grasping when I was born! I myself thought 'it couldn't be,' so I was unable to tell anyone until today, but I have memories of flapping through this sky as a dragon!」

Speaking of Elnalfia, that was the name of the dragon in Elna's past life memories. In other words, were there two Elnalfias? Elna wondered idly, but surely that couldn't be the case. While amazed at Laura's audacity, Elna was absentmindedly surprised: So that flat piece of glass was actually my scale, huh.