Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Sunshine

"So, how long do we have to wait for these to hatch?" he asked, when she'd eaten her fill.
   "I don't know. They've been hatching after a month, but I'm only supposed to be here for two weeks, so I don't think we'll have to wait that long."
   "I was told they'd hatch 'soon', but we know that's a pretty broad timeframe, where He's concerned."
   She laughed. "Yeah, once 'soon' meant two weeks. At a guess, though, I'd say today or tomorrow. If I'm only supposed to be here for a fortnight, they'd need maximum learning time."
   He didn't like being reminded that they would only have two weeks together. While he'd been preparing their nest, he'd tried to tell himself that two weeks was a long time. Now, seeing hundreds of eggs to tend, he feared that two weeks would pass in a blur.
   And then they got to the bottom of the pile, where three of the largest eggs he'd ever seen lay.
   "I'm guessing those are dragon eggs?" He really did try not to sound accusing. He wasn't sure that he succeeded, but he did try.
   Onnu gently moved the last of the smaller eggs to open spots on the ground, to get a better look at them. "I don't know. They're so big, maybe they're Charon?"
   They both shuddered.
   "So those are bigger than the three... other... dragons you laid?"
   She blinked once, to clear her vision. "I think they're bigger than the hatchlings are now. I've no idea how they even fit with all these other eggs!"
   He scowled. It was becoming a near-permanent expression, lately. "You said the little eggs usually don't take up space, right?"
   She frowned, but hers was concentration. "Well yeah, but you said I was huge. I don't know how big that is, in relation to the last time. Well, the last time I laid proper eggs. We had another traumatized lot when the hatchlings were... I dunno, a year and a half, give or take. No warning, same as the Hundred Little Eggs. This isn't the first time I've had dragons and littles, though. We had twelve with the hatchlings.
   "Wait. For there to be about two hundred little kin eggs--which means they've seen the Beast, or its minions--things must really be ramping up, now."
   Their eyes met across the vast expanse of eggs. Each one represented a human who had likely died a horrible death, for their faith.
   "I don't know the timeline over there. Is this... No, I don't want to know. I have a job, and I'll do it as best I can. I can't think about what's happening over there." More quietly, she said "I can't..." She stared at the eggs with an odd expression he couldn't pinpoint.
   "What's on your mind?" he asked, with more gentleness than he'd expressed since her arrival.
   "I had children on Erdewaz... And grandchildren..."
   Trey had always been a bachelor, so he couldn't fathom the sorrow that lit the eggs a soft blue. The not knowing had to be the worst. The only consolation he had to offer was, if her grandchildren were very young, they would have been sent to safety early on.
   "I know that. But if they were Raptured, and my children weren't..."
   She looked up, and he swore the blue light would swallow him whole.
   She didn't have long to mourn, though. The smaller eggs had begun to rock, and crack. The sound would have deafened anyone who wasn't a dragon. Anyone in the thick of the clacking of eggs against one another would hear nothing else; possibly long after they ceased.
   Even the dragons were momentarily overwhelmed by the noise, but that was mostly emotional damage, not auditory.
   When they seemed to have finished, to the surprise of neither of them, all but the three dragon (or Charon) eggs had hatched.
   "I guess those will hatch normally," she said. "Except that takes a whole year. Am I supposed to take them home with me, or what?"
   When she spoke, the assembled little kin cringed, almost in unison. She immediately crooned to them, telling them they were safe. Some listened, some didn't. Even Trey made reassuring sounds that she'd never heard from him.
   Onnu lay on her belly, made herself as small as she could. Trey couldn't do the same, as he was surrounded by little kin. He'd been sitting, so he sort of scrunched down closer to the ground. That put him closer to them, but he really was trying.
   She sang the first song that popped into her head, hoping music would bridge the gap. She'd forgotten that the crystals would react, but the blue-opal light did seem to help. Her lullaby soothed some of the frazzled nerves. She didn't expect all of them to be calm right away. They never were. She knew that naming would erase their memories, but they would need all of the knowledge they had, for the time being.
   She'd written a few spoofs in her day, so she tried fitting relevant words into a well-known tune, to tell them what was going on, and where they were:

"You're in a new place,
You all are safe here.
They cannot find you,
This guy's okay.
You'll never know, dears,
That which you run from,
They cannot take my children away."

   She probably shouldn't have called them her children, but she was anxious. Their fear triggered her most protective instincts, which were rooted in maternal instincts. She sang a few more verses that said where they were (though this wasn't Tupino), that nothing was the same, and most importantly, the creatures they fled could not reach them here.
   When her song had soothed most of them, she gave them the usual spiel. When she came to the Charon, she called them flying vacuum cleaners, and pointed to the sleeping niches. "If  you all sleep there, they cannot get you, you'll never get sucked away," she sing-songed. She had to draw out the "u" in sucked, but it fit well enough. It also got some giggles in the crowd, so she kept it.