Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Distraction

It didn't occur to Onnu that by withholding what she now knew, she was no better than the God she was so frustrated with. But really, what would the littles do with what she knew?
   They'd dub us the new friggin' Holy Trinity, that's what, she grumped. It set her teeth on edge every time, and her teeth had many more edges as a dragon.
   It did, however, answer the questions they'd had about the Hundred Little Kin. If she was the only ferrywoman for lost souls, she had indeed been the only one to lay eggs at the Awakening.
   Yeah... that's not something I want getting spread around, either...
   She'd also learned the answer to the question of how big a dragon got. It was couched within the data stream she'd downloaded from the cloud, as it were, along with other basic dragon facts that would take time to untangle from the mass of information she'd received.
   The Triplets were as big as dragons got.
   Which meant, if the rumors were true, that the Nomad was one of her "brothers".
   She wasn't even sure she should tell the other dragons. On the one hand, Marla would know that she would grow as big as the others one day, but on the other hand, she didn't know if any of them would grow quite as large as the Triplets. She rather thought that Pannu was as large as any of them could get. She wasn't positive, but there had to be a way to identify the Triplets, aside from Crossing Day. Maybe their size would be enough? So, then, did she tell them that they would never grow as big as her? Would that breed jealousy?
   Her mom side reared up and growled "it's for their own good."
   The part of her that was, as Grim said, a priestess, believed she was saving their souls from the temptation of idolatry and pettiness. True, they were supposed to be better versions of themselves, now that they'd been transmogrified, but did that mean they were infallible? She just didn't know.
   What she did know was, some of the littles were perilously close to doing just that, and they didn't even know about the boys yet!
   As she lay looking across the Bowl, she chuckled to herself. So, which one would I be? Holy Ghost? I can't be the Father or Son.
   Except the other two Triplets were male, which made the joke far too real, so she thought of other things.
   "How are we coming along with the peryarns? Any luck taming enough for cloth yet?"
   Pannu could read her well enough to know that she'd been deep in thought. She didn't share whatever was bothering her, but he was more than willing to distract her from those thoughts. They were so heavy, they wore deep grooves under her eyes.
   "The first generation was... slightly successful, but their kits seem more friendly." He made the so-so gesture with his paw when he paused.
   She laughed. "That's usually how domestication works. By the way, how are they removing the fur? I haven't seen any shears lying about."
   He looked around to see if anyone knew, because he hadn't had a chance to ask yet.
   Grim shrugged. So did Mira. Tan made a scissor motion with her claws.
   "It's not super precise, but we can make it feel like we're just grooming them. The hard part was convincing them that we weren't going to eat them." She chuckled. "It took some trial and error to figure out who had claws that worked, and who didn't. Retractable works the best, but anything with an edge will do. The gargoyles weren't happy to find that they couldn't help, so some of 'em tried taming instead."
   She didn't continue, so Onnu prompted her to tell them how it went.
   "I dunno, ma'am. That was round the time your cork popped, so I was awful busy." She looked at Mira. "I'd imagine they'd have gotten a fair few scratches, so maybe you know?"
   The elf laughed. "Yeah, a few. I've also been a bit busy, but I think they stopped coming to us after a while? That could either mean they succeeded, or they gave up."
   The dragoness mildly observed that their responsibilities kept them too busy to fraternize. It did not escape them that she was getting back at them a little for teasing the dragons about the same.
   "Maybe we need to set up some sort of town hall, or just... general meetup? A day where we just catch up on the goings-on, so every... uh... department... is up to date?" Pannu wasn't any more comfortable in leadership than Onnu was, but he was good at coming up with solutions to problems they didn't know they had. It had been his idea to orient the Hundred Little Kin on the strengths of the other Holds before they fostered them out.
   "How did it take us this long to think of that?" Onnu asked, thumping her forehead with a paw (and wincing when she poked her palm with a small horn she forgot she had on her brow ridge).
   "Busy," Dragonfriend chuckled.
   "Well, you lot had better get that set up before the eggs hatch," Mira said. "I'd wager we haven't many more weeks until they do."
   She had to say it twice, because anyone who understood Draconic, and the general situation, was laughing. In the original sense of the word, being too busy to do important things was becoming a meme. At least in Onnu and Pannu's Hold, that became a surefire way to get any of the Holderkin to laugh.
   Onnu sent the nearest unoccupied winged kin to make the rounds of the Holderkin and find out when a good time would be, with strict instructions to make them give her a timeframe, no matter how vague. She also passed on Mira's time constraint of "before the eggs hatch".