Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Sp-egg-ulation

Pannu supposed it was only a matter of time before Onnu heard the rumors about them. He'd been asked so many times, in so many ways, if they spent time together without the rest of the kin, but for some reason, no one approached Onnu about it.
   Dragonfriend knew, of course, but he didn't tell her about it. Sure, it was petty, but it was almost as big as Charon, metaphorically speaking. She had her secrets, so he kept his.
   That didn't mean he wasn't the first to ask her why she called it Egg Hold.
   "I dunno, it being bigger, and sort of oval-shaped, I figure that's probably what they'd have used it for." He didn't think she was being evasive, but then again, he hadn't thought she had secrets before, either.
   Onnu really hadn't thought about it much, even after he asked. It just seemed obvious to her. That was the one Hold where she didn't struggle to get in or out. Presuming she was a full-grown dragon, the only reason she could think of for the extra room was extra girth.
   This wasn't to say that she thought she was full-grown, of course, but it was a logical guess, based on the Holds they'd seen so far. If she'd occupied the Hold they were in now, all by herself, she would have had a decent amount of room to move around. It was having another dragon in the Bowl that made it slightly cramped.
   Which was partly what led her to call it Egg Hold, in the first place: it was big enough to hold two dragons her size, plus the little wiggle room they had here. Well, why else would you have two dragons in one Hold? There ought to be enough room, probably on the narrower ends, to shelter eggs from Charon's Maw. She hypothesized that each parent could take an end, and half of the eggs, and shield them with their bodies.
   She really hadn't thought about it much, because the purpose of the Hold was so obvious, she would only speak the aforementioned aloud if asked. It was purely instinctual, this knowledge; sort of like the Charon radar they seemed to possess.
   The fact that two dragons occupied the Hold where she currently lived did not factor into her calculations. As they'd discussed, nobody knew how developed anyone else was, so Pannu might not even be of breeding age yet. Again, not that they thought about breeding. The subject just sort of slid sideways, any time their minds ventured near it.
   All the same, no one spent much time in Egg Hold. They would hunt skitters and flitters to keep their numbers low, or graze a bit, but they kept thinking that eggs would one day magically appear, and nobody wanted to be anywhere near the egg of a dragon that could easily carry a jumbo jet. They didn't even harvest crystal-cover from it.
   Some of the kin became superstitious about the crystal-cover itself. It first fell when Onnu danced and hummed, so it felt somehow sacred to the dragons. It wasn't, of course. It was similar to oxidation on metal. It was just something that built up on top of the crystals. But these were dragonholds, they were dragon crystals, and no one could tell them differently.
   Except a dragon, of course. But the superstitious would not dare, and the majority of the kin thought it too silly or odd to mention to Onnu or Pannu.
   Three of the superstitious ones felt wrong even living in the dragonhold. Dragons must have created the wells and streams, theirs just didn't know how yet. They were their crystals, and their homes, and the smaller kin were just squatters.
   Had they said as much to Onnu or Pannu, or anyone with a lick of sense, they would have pointed to the sleeping niches, also put there by whoever made the wells and streams. Obviously, dragons didn't mind having them there. If they had, they wouldn't have made safe places for them to sleep.
   Sim, Jim, and Bjorn were so guilt-ridden, they went on a hunt one day, and didn't come back. They vanished into the grove with tools they'd made, and did not return. They told their winged escorts that they were going to explore life outside the Holds, see if they had other options.
   Had they ridden with gryphons, there might have been debate, but they knew that the birdkin were just as likely to let them go their own way. Birdkin tended not to question the motives of the land-bound, or become overly attached to them. It wasn't that they didn't care; it was more that they didn't feel the need to influence anyone either way. They went with the currents. These three had clearly made up their minds, and it didn't affect the birdkin, so they let them go.
   One day, a Charon flew over so fast, they almost didn't have time to get to safety. They never did learn what it hunted, but they did learn how plants got their water. The Maw, combined with its great speed, atomized part of the water that it passed over. This water hovered for a time, and fell, much as rain did on Earth-that-was. The only difference was, clouds rarely formed when this happened.
   The greyskins in both Holds noted this phenomenon, along with the dragons' observances of the stars. Firmen and Solar Scribe (the greyskin from the pilgrim group) tried to add details to their diagrams, to differentiate the planets from one another, but she was right. They all looked so very similar, one never knew which planet was where! Even the planet with the moon wasn't always identifiable, as the moon wasn't always visible. Plus they spotted two more moons, which complicated things even more. They weren't even sure that one of those two moons wasn't the first one they'd seen! Were there two, or three?
   On the matter of Firmen and Solar, they decided that their kin name would be dragonkith. As Onnu had observed, they shared many draconic traits, such as the gills and scales. She hadn't mentioned it to either of them, but Solar had been into the same roleplaying games with dragons that Onnu had been. He'd made the connection independently.
   The aquatic plants they thought might yield pigments finally began the testing phase, so the dragonkith tried adding color to their diagrams, but it still didn't help much. The problem was, they could never tell if they were looking at a different side of the same planet, or an entirely new one.
   "I wish we could just fly through the whole Verse and map it out," Solar said one day.
   "I do not know that we cannot, I only know that I cannot leave the kin until they can make fire on their own." Onnu was firm on the matter.
   "Wait a minute," Dragonfriend said. "Do you mean to tell me you'd have left weeks ago, if we just had fire?"