Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Survey Says

Onnu quickly discarded the title of "forekin" to describe the four kin foremen. It never passed her lips, because she could just hear the snickers it would evoke. She thought about it while they assembled teams and tools, and suggested instead "holderkin".
   As usual, most liked her word for something. It was never unanimous, but what in life is?
   Tandy didn't just dictate what Holds they needed, on a whim. She spent the rest of that day talking to the crafts-kin, to see who needed what. She even noted who ate what!
   "Well, how am I supposed to know what we need, if I don't know what we eat?" she reasoned.
   So, although some of the kin thought her a bossy busybody, they went along with her, for the time being. If nothing else, this project would get her out of their hair (or scales) for a while.
   The first order of business, she decided, was for Chet to survey the barren Hold. They wouldn't know if they could plant right away, without that.
   Onnu agreed, so that was how she spent that day. Pannu could've taken him just as easily, but she was the more restless of the two dragons. This was perhaps because she was also the more cramped of the two. Being smaller, he didn't mind being in the Bowl as much as she did.
   They brought along Stan, Stella, and Harvey Hearth, a gargoyle cook, to see if there might be somewhere to set up a clay oven. While Clay had made a large portion of the bowls, it had been Harvey that knew how to make a clay oven. He'd been a bit of a survivalist, on Earth-that-was.
   The thought was, if the barren Hold was actually barren, they could at least use it for anything that required fire, without fear of burning away all of the grass. The way it was set up at their Hold, there was a border of bare ground around the ovens, but there was limited space for both crops and ovens, where the grass had been grazed down to stubble.
   The barren Hold was roughly the same size as their Hold, so she had to carefully angle her wings, to avoid scraping them on the spires. She set her little group down, and Stella immediately went to work. Nobody had to tell her to look for water! She would spend an entire afternoon in the algae pools, if they let her.
   Chet bent to inspect the soil as best he could, digging at it with his hooves to see the color and hydration under the surface. He worked his way along the Bowl, jabbing here and there to see the loam beneath.
   Harvey made a beeline for the nearest wall, where there was a guaranteed fireproof windbreak. He looked for niches that might serve his purpose, since there wouldn't be as many kin sleeping here. Clay ovens could be roughly the size of a prone person, and he thought a niche might enable him to keep the fire from going out overnight. Well, I suppose it'd have to be right next to another one, so I could poke it without gettin' out of bed, he thought. But not so close I'd choke on the smoke...
   The front opening might smoke more, if there wasn't enough room for the top opening to vent properly, but he knew that the night winds would suck the flames right out of the top, if it was built up against the spire. They hadn't figured out a way to stop that from happening at home, and it took so long to build a single oven, they couldn't really experiment much.
   If they knew how I proofed those two at home, they mightn't enjoy his breads so much,  Harvey laughed to himself.
   Onnu watched the group, and the sky. She perched on a spire to check that Charon wasn't coming through early, and to be out of their way. But this was a new Bowl, and it made her nervous. There were none of the usual sounds or smells, which set her on edge.
   About midday, as she gauged it, Chet signaled her to come down.
   "I've got what I need, and I don't like being away this long. Can we go home?"
   Onnu had noted that centaurs often had as keen an observation of the natural rhythm as dragons did, so she took her own discomfort more seriously.
   She clapped her paws once, which turned every eye her way. "Time to go!"
   All of the little kin with her today had been in her original group, and knew to trust her with their lives. If she said it was time, it was time. Even Stella, having located three water sources, trotted toward the dragon before she finished speaking.
   It was on takeoff that the dragon and centaur saw the reason for their unease.
   "Shards! We're gonna have to book it," said the dragoness, already diving for the safety of their dragonhold. There were two Holds between them and their home, so if Charon was particularly quick today, there were options, but nobody liked those options.
   She flapped harder than she ever had, hurtling them at top speed through the air. It would have been faster to bypass the two Holds in between, but then they were committed to home or nothing.
   In the end, her decision was wise. Charon was too close to make it home, but the Bowl nearest theirs was easily attainable.
   She dropped down into the larger, oval-shaped Bowl with more speed than grace, with room to maneuver. The downside to this was, there was more sky in the middle. That meant more suction.
   So she did what dragons did best: tucked the smaller kin under her body, beneath the narrow top of the oval where the spires were the closest together, and braced for the night.