Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Eggs Hold

Onnu was so busy with the poptea, she forgot to tell Trey what she'd learned Above. She supposed they had time, but she didn't want to lean on that too hard. That was how one ended up running out of time, in the end.
   The next day, when they'd set the kin to various crafting activities, she called him up to the spires for a chat. She walked down a pair of crystals (with several between her paws, as she was too large to walk down two parallel crystals) to the plains outside the Hold, and he followed.
   "What's up?" he asked.
   "I know you have your heart set on the egg that's staying here," she began.
   "Who said that?" he interrupted.
   She smiled to take any implied sting out of her words. "It's kind of obvious."
   He didn't deny it, but he also didn't say anything in the short silence.
   "Well, as I said, the egg that gets left here stays here. Understood?"
   His earflaps lay low with irritation. "Yeah. 'Zat what you called me out here to tell me?"
   "Not all I came to say, no. You'll have a couple of reasons to visit us on Tupino, in about a year." 
   "That so?" His earflaps didn't raise much.
   "First, you really do need a dragonkith."
   He thumbed toward the Hold, but she shook her head.
   "I think my son traveling with you would be a... conflict of interest." To herself, she muttered "Not that there won't be conflicts.."
   That did give him a little hope. "What kind of conflicts?"
   "As to the dragonkith, you can have one of ours. Neither are particularly attached to either of us. Firmen loves everything space, but he's got a... pet... that isn't space-worthy. Solar isn't as big on star stuff, but he's unattached."
   He waited, sitting on his haunches. "And the conflict is?"
   She sighed. "The conflict is... when the remaining two eggs that I bring home hatch... The biggest one is to travel with you."
   First, he held his breath. Then it came out in shaky puffs. He didn't want to cheer, but he did? Was this good? What was the catch?
   Following along, she said "The catch is, these three eggs are our possible replacements. They might not be needed," she rushed to say, "but we had a good point about waiting to grow new... us. Instead, I'll have to... guh, it's hard to say aloud, but... When these three are too old to function as Elder Dragons, or if all three die somehow, I'll have to fly out and... get new samples. Fly through a sun. Make new understudies."
   He thought for a long time. He started to say something a few times, and nothing came out. Finally, he asked how long they would live.
   "Same as any other dragon."
   "And we just... keep making new ones, until one is needed?"
   "Mm hmm. We train them in our ways, prepare them for a life they may never need. And hope, literally, to God, that they aren't needed. Celestial Dragons, they're called."
   "What? Why 'Celestial?'"
   "Because, ideally, they would move on to Heaven. Same as everyone else. They won't live any longer, or have too many powers, just..."
   "Waiting for one of us to screw up," he finished bleakly. As much as he talked the talk, he knew in his heart that he would be the first to die.
   Onnu put a paw on his shoulder. "Maybe having her to care for will help--"
   "Her?" His eyes turned bleak. "Tell me she doesn't look like you."
   She huffed what could almost pass for a laugh. "They aren't clones, Trey."
   He released a breath he didn't know he held in. "Right. Good. So... I just cart her everywhere? Teach her how to recognize planets and such?"
   "Yes. The dragon here would replace Dwayne, should he... pass on. And we can, you know."
   He nodded at the ground. "Charon, the great equalizers."
  "That's not what I meant."
   Those eyes, full of things she could not understand, lifted to hers again.
   "If it really gets to be too much--really, really too much--you can voluntarily head back to Heaven. I don't know how it works, but He said we could... un-volunteer, if we just can't do it anymore. I dunno, maybe a portal opens up and we fly through, maybe it's just being eaten... Who knows? I'm sure He'll tell you, if you need it."
   Strangely, that put a bit of starch in his spine. He swiped at eyes that had been too dry to cry. "Nah, I'm good. So I tote her around, show her the ropes, and... what, retire her when she's too old? Wait for you to... get another sample?"
   "Yuh." The word came out more gruff than she'd meant it to. "Be interesting to see how many Celestial Dragons we go through before we need one."
   "Yup." They sat in silence for a while, before he asked her why she wouldn't let her son be his dragonkith.
   "It's not just the weirdness of, y'know, whatever is going on... here..." One claw wobbled between them. "It's also that I lost him when he was a baby. I'm not gonna lose him again."
   Trey choked on an emotion he couldn't name. He wanted to throttle someone, but also hug someone, and the urges warred within him for a while.
   "That's not all," she said quietly.
   "I don't know how much more I can take," Trey warned.
   "I... I think my son is in one of these eggs, only... I don't know which one."
   Her eyes lifted from the eggs down below, to his face, and the raw emotion was too much for him to bear.
   He flung himself into the air, to hunt for food they didn't need yet.