From The Other Side

ARC | Backstory

How Shenli and Norma met.
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"Princess Shenli? Where are you? Oh dear, where did you go?!" A maid panicked as she tried looking for young Shenli.

This little girl always likes to play hide and seek with the maids since she rarely gets any time to play with other kids.
Another thing is that her father doesn't let her play with the children who are in the peasant class.
And the noble or duke children were too boring for her since all they talked about was dolls if they were, books and how they will rule their kingdom when they grow up.
Other times the noble boys will pick on her by saying she can't rule the Empire because she's a girl.

Well it wasn't her fault for being the only child of King Sadan and Lady Ali.

"They're never going to find me here." Shenli snickered in her mind as she closed the cellar door.

She knew that she wasn't supposed to be in the room since her father said that it had all the wine stored and he didn't want her to taste wine yet.
However this was one of the spots that the maids will never check.
Usually the door would be locked but someone was foolish enough to leave the key in a place where she could grab it.

She had a candle and some food ready ahead of time so that she can snack on something until they discover her or when she leaves to avoid getting into trouble.

She walks down the cellar stairs, humming the lullaby that her mother used to sing to her when she was about to sleep before she died due to illness.
As the more she walked down, the noise of someone in the cell was heard but her humming made the other noise inaudible.

She finally reaches the final few stairs before stopping as her humming was cut off by the sound of chains rattling and moving.
The room's light was only shunned by the natural light coming from the barred window on the ceiling.
This is definitely not what a wine cellar should look like.

There was a tail sticking out of the shadows.
Did an animal fall in here?

"Hello?" She called out into the shadows of the room.

The tail quickly retreated into the shadows in a blink of an eye.
Someone was in this cellar, meaning this was a prisoner cell.
But why one in her castle?
The cells have a different building so why is this one in the castle?

She tilts her head to the side in confusion and curiosity.
She places the candle down on the ground and slowly scoots the candle to the shadows where she saw the tail from.
Reason why she is doing this is so that she doesn't accidentally drop the candle and risk burning the stairs since they were made of wood if she needed to run.

The candle revealed more and more of what was lurking in the shadows with its orange light.
It was revealed that it was what seems to be a child using wings similar to a dragon to cover their face and body.
The body was shaking as if the child was shivering in fear.
Their wings were pinned to where they can't fully extend that allows them to fly as there was a weighted chain on his leg along with bruises.
The child's clothes was just a simple old potato bag that was torn up in some spots.

She has heard of Dragon hybrids before but she never thought she would see them until now.
Is this why her father prevents her from entering the cellar?
She heard that a prisoner was going to get executed soon.

"Hi! I'm not here to hurt you! I'm Princess Shenli! What's your name?"

The child paused before they moved their wings a bit, revealing it was a blonde blue eyed dragonet hybrid.