Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Writing and Names

When she returned, the creature was untouched. She mentally shrugged and lifted it into the air. The dragon and gryphon took that as a sign that it was time to leave, though they could've stayed, to her thinking.
   The dragon didn't want to be left alone with whatever lurked beneath the water, and the gryphon had gotten what they came for. Besides, the gillfolk hadn't returned, so neither knew if it was safe to remain.
   The dragoness wasn't thrilled that they were relying on her so heavily, but it was basic instinct to defer to the biggest or strongest member of a society.
   They really need to be more independent, though...
   It bothered her, over the coming days. The dragon continued to eat the kills of others; far too timid for a dragon to be, to her thinking. She decided that the next time they needed a dragon, she would send him. She would hunt for her own food. If her hunting grounds just so happened to be within earshot, no one needed to know.
   The atmosphere in the Bowl changed after that day. This was partly because the artisans had new materials to work with. Another trip to the pond/lake yielded some colorful plants that the gillnecks thought might produce pigments. The androgynous gillneck was still hopeful that the dragoness would be able to paint the stars.
   The other influence on their mood was that the inhabitants, both traveler and homesteader alike, had finally noticed that the dragons were male and female. Oh, they'd probably known before the crystal dance, but the way he'd looked at her made some of them sigh. There were a few "get you someone who looks at you the way dragon looks at dragoness" comments. They began to see them not as "my dragon" and "your dragon", but maternal and paternal figures. Some began quietly "shipping" them together; matchmaking, if you will. Others simply settled into the security of a seemingly united protective force.
   This was so prevalent that a smaller kin, who they'd mistaken for a halfling, began calling them "Onnu" and "Pannu". The little one couldn't say why she called them that, but her syntax wasn't fully formed yet. Full sentences were a ways off, it seemed. She would just say a name and point, grin widely, and clap her little hands.
   To be fair, she was surrounded by many words that people of Earth would consider weird. They'd begun naming the creature combinations, as best they could. For example, the classification of small game they hunted in Bowls were called "skitters", because that's what they did. If they flew, they were called "flitters", for the same reason--but also to make it easy to remember. They hadn't nailed down names for individual species yet, but that might have to wait until they could record them somehow.
   Which brought them back to pigments, and drawing or writing surfaces.
   A local species they'd dubbed "faun", for lack of a better word, held up a scrap of grass. Their claws did vaguely resemble hands, and their legs were sort of goat-shaped. There was a short tail, but none of the faun was furred. As with many of the species on this large-scale planet, they were covered in scales and tough hide. This one was a blue-grey color.
   Outside the Bowl, this tough outer layer meant that they could walk through the grass that was as tall and hardy as cacti, without constantly losing tufts of fur. Some varieties of grass out there had serrated edges, they'd found.
   "Look, I know they don't last long, and someone is likely to eat them, but maybe as a short-term thing?"
   "You wouldn't be able to write anything historical, but messages or drawing practice might work," the crafty ogre mused.
   "If you find something to write with," the contentious human pointed out. "It's not like we have sticks to put into inkwells, or anything to make a container for ink. Maybe figure that out first." The dragoness--Onnu, had she heard her new name--was pleasantly surprised he'd given it that much thought. She really did appreciate his insights, even if he was a grumbly sort.
   The faun was absently running the grass through their hands in a nervous gesture, until they saw that their claws had scraped lines in the membrane. While the others were debating what to use, they wrote the name they'd chosen for themself on the piece of plant material, just to see if they could.
   Their face lit up more and more, and the others stopped talking to watch.
   "Well that's all very well and good if you've got claws, but what are the rest of us supposed to do?" the human grumbled.
   His constant critique couldn't dampen the faun's joy. They were seeing their name, where anyone could see it! They'd written something! Oh, the stories they'd write, once they had more permanent media!!!
   They triumphantly held up the bit of grass, which read "Slate".
   The others misunderstood, of course.
   "I suppose it is like a slate, except you can't really erase your work," an elf said.
   "No, that's my name! I wrote my name! And I chose it myself, 'cause who's gonna say it's not? My parents? They didn't make the Crossing. I'm free to choose. We all are!"
   The faces around them slowly lit up. They hadn't been using names thus far, because they were all so unique, you only had to describe someone to know who was being spoken of, or whose presence was requested. Names would make that process easier, they just hadn't thought of it yet.
   "I suppose my daughter has been calling the dragons by name," an elf sheepishly admitted.
   "Your daughter?"
   She looked around, baffled. "Well, yeah. You didn't think kids made the Crossing? Stella did. Why do kids surprise you all?"
   No one looked at the littlest ones the same again. They began to treat them with more care, except for two that haughtily informed them that they were full-grown adults.
   It made sense to the rest of them, now. They'd been lumping them all together, in the places near the crystals where they'd harvested enough grass for it to be passable for short-legged kin. Those two had kept an eye on the others, but hadn't really engaged with them. The taller kin had assumed them to be different sorts of little folk, and they were sort of correct.
   But that meant that none of the children had been supervised much, for the month or so they'd been on the planet.