Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Crystal Stone

"Timid heart, hide my scars
Make me stronger," she hummed.

   Her hips waggled a little to the tune. Though she didn't sing the words aloud, the song caught her up in its sway. She nimbly leapt up to the spires, and hopped from one to the other playfully. She hadn't sung the entire time they'd been on this new world. It was well past time to, as the kids would say, bring it.
   She quick-stepped down a spire to the rhythm of the sixteenth notes, hopped to another on the longer notes, her humming somehow amplified through what they'd seen as stone. Beneath her feet, the rocky material began to glow, and change colors. Since it was daylight, and her head was so high above her feet, she didn't notice for quite some time.
   The kin below couldn't help but see the rocks crack and turn crystalline, shedding the crust that had covered their pure, smooth surfaces for who-knew-how-long. They dodged the falling debris, until a stray bit bonked a little one on the head, and she didn't cry out in pain. She merely scratched her scalp.
   Whatever the coating was, it had become a sort of clumpy powder. When the craftspeople took note, they snatched up the baskets and gathered as much as they could find. The large blades of grass would make it nearly impossible to find it all later, so they frantically dumped piles of it in whatever niche happened to be nearby, and refilled their baskets again.
   The smaller dragon had eyes only for his dragoness. She danced and hummed and lit the crystals above, and he knew every word of the song she sang; even if she didn't use words. It sounded poetic, but he literally knew the words of the song "Water".
   He wanted to join her up on the crystal spires, but he didn't feel confident enough to do what she did. He had mostly gotten the hang of being a dragon, but what she did was far more advanced than he thought himself capable of, at the moment.
   What he could, and did do, was sing along:

"I need, I need you like water
It's on the tip of my tongue
I'm not asking for much," he sang.

   Her step faltered and stopped, when his voice flowed up to her, like molten lava. The crystals, which had brightened when both voices were joined, now dimmed. When he stopped singing, the light went out entirely.
   Into the smothering silence, a lone voice murmured "Guess we won't be needin' to go to the river after all."
   A few breaths after that, the dragon asked why.
   The dwarf showed him the clumpy, powdered stone. He hadn't understood the actual word, but the query itself was near-universal.
   "Reckon it's as good as what we'd find by the water, bein' all dried and whatnot."
   The dragoness launched into the air, having been released from her obligation.
   Greyskin slapped him on the ankle. "Go on, we've got enough to keep us occupied for a while."
   The dragon hop-flapped up to the nearest spire. Being smaller, he could maneuver better than she could, but he couldn't reach the crystals in one bound. He had gotten the hang of pulling himself up and over, though.
   A standing launch was still a ways off, but he'd mastered the running start down a spire.
   You'd think the crystals would be slippery, hard to run on, but that didn't seem to be the case; at least for a dragon. He got airborne with no more effort than he had for the past few days.
   Finding his dragoness was the hard part. She wasn't anywhere in his line of sight, and that was considerable!
   He climbed higher for a better vantage, and still no dragoness. She could be anywhere by now!
   A chortle above him gave her away. Far above him. So far, he almost didn't hear her.
   How did she get up there?
   He cautiously climbed toward her, a little at a time, in a slow spiral upward. He hadn't learned the limits of their bodies yet. Neither had she, of course, but she'd a better idea than he did.
   "Come on, slowpoke, you won't die. I think we've got an organ just for the gases up here." She didn't say what the gases were good for. Not yet. It seemed he'd been too busy surviving to explore what his body could do. Best not overwhelm him just yet.
   "Hurry up, or you'll miss it!"
   He slipped into the reduced gravity and flailed. She tried not to laugh.
   "Look," she murmured. It would've been quite loud for a smaller kin, but it had to carry across the sky at low enough frequencies not to attract the attention of Charon.
   For that was what she wanted him to see.

   He would have looked where she pointed, but the stars and many suns were a lot to take in. In order for him to spy a moon-sized manta, he had to orient himself within the star system. It wasn't a solar system, it was a system of solars! How did you grasp that concept quickly enough to see anything specific?
   Charon was so huge, he didn't even see the planetoid it was feeding on, at first. All that would've been visible would have been the dead man's coins on its back. Compared to seven suns and fourteen planets, they were mere specks on a blanket of stars.
   When he did see Charon, his wings forgot to flap. Gravity here was more lazy, but he still dropped enough to remember to flap again.
   "What is that?" he hissed.
   She nudged him down, back into the tug of gravity. "I call it Charon."
   "That isn't an answer."
   She guided him toward the small pond, without him seeming to notice he was being led.
   "I'm pretty sure that's what tried to suck you up. What sucks everything up." She waited for his fear, anger, or whatever he would feel.
   Denial was the first step toward acceptance, and he was no different.
   "You saw the suns with your own eyes. How else would it ever get dark?"
   His mouth flopped, but no words came out. She waited for equilibrium to settle in.
   "But why? I thought this was... Oh, it sounds silly, but I thought this was Rapture. We're supposed to be safe! No more pain, or suffering."
   She snorted. "I didn't read much, 'cause spoilers, but all I remember is that we were supposed to be transfigured. Bodies that were better. We got that. I just kinda thought it'd be an adventure, and we've gotten that, too.
   "But," she drew out the word, "nobody said adventure was easy. Seems you learned that the hard way.
   "New planet, new rules, new creatures. We haven't found any scavengers, 'least on land. Grass is too tall for bugs. Something's gotta eat what's left over."
   She waited a moment, hesitant to drop the heaviest truth, just yet.
   "Even us."