Book One: Onnu and Pannu

New People

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Danger?"
   She felt ashamed that she'd forgotten her friend's presence. She'd been so engulfed in dragon things, he'd simply fallen out of her periphery.
   "No, I..." She looked down at him and smirked. It didn't occur to her to question whether or not the expression succeeded in its intent, but they'd always been on the same wavelength. He knew humor when he saw it.
   "Tutorial level maybe?"
   He laughed. It didn't quite sound the same, but he hadn't had tusks and who-knew-what-else, the last time he'd laughed.
   "C'mon! Race ya!" She bounded a step toward the faint ping and looked back.
   "Oh. Sorry. Uh... D'you want a lift?"
   She waited for him, and she swore it took three full minutes for him to run to her back foot. She dropped down so he could climb her shoulder. She didn't want to arrive at their destination in a year, or take one step every few minutes.
   Out of the trees, what she'd assumed were more trees detached and flooded toward them.
   She snatched him up in her teeth and turned to run, but one of the little figures wailed "Wait, please!"
   "Take us with you!" another shouted.
   She stopped, momentarily confused, her friend dangling from her jaws in the gentlest grip she thought she had.
   The crowd resolved itself into many small forms, a large-ish portion of them vaguely humanoid. Some had four legs, most had two. Nearly all looked equally lost. A few looked belligerent, stubborn, or outright angry. The latter made her wary. She did not lower her friend within the reach of the crowd.
   "You don't even know where we're going," he protested.
   A small elf pointed out that anywhere with a dragon that didn't want to eat them was more safe than wherever they'd landed.
   "I'm not sure 'landed' is the right word," she mumbled around her friend's waist.
   "What?"
   "Oh, sorry." She set him on his feet, rightfully proud that there were no teeth marks on his skin. "I said I'm not sure we landed here, per se. Maybe we were transported? I mean, if we 'landed', we'd still be human, right?"
   A centaur stared up at her, and he wasn't the only one. "You were human?"
   Ah, right. Size difference.
   "Well, so was that gryphon back there, so were you, good sir, and so was this... okay, I guess you might be native to the planet. I'm not sure what your species is called."
   "May's well call 'er Stella, 'cause that's what her name is. Ain't that right, Stella? Who's my good girl?"
   The furry green creature that could vaguely be called feline, if you threw in a few more species, purr-barked and butted her head into his hand happily.
   The dragon's maw flapped a few times. "So dogs got teleported, or transmogrified, or whatever. Duly noted. The point is, we don't know what happened yet, but it's unlikely we arrived in any sort of ship. Feel free to call it alien experimentation if you like. I'll be interested to hear how I fit into that conversation."
   She looked around to gauge reactions, and sure enough, some were murmuring "aliens". Others were, to her thinking, more correctly calling it Rapture. The Bible said they'd be transmogrified, or so she'd been told. She hadn't read that particular passage... or many specific ones. She was, as the kids would say, more of a "vibes" Christian. She Listened, and watched for signs, and sometimes He talked to her. She wouldn't call herself a sage, mystic, or even a priestess (though she'd gotten ordained online, but who hadn't?). She just tried to live her life with a perpetual, metaphorical ear turned skyward. Except those who actually studied theology said heaven wasn't actually "up", so...
   Her train of thought trailed off. She wasn't a theologist, and these people wanted help. She was actually big enough to give them that help. Could she suffer the fools among them long enough to get the rest to what might be safer ground? She was pretty sure there was a verse about that very thing, but she couldn't remember what the adage specifically said to do.
   This forest looked fine to her, but what looked fine to a dragon could be deadly for them. The grass is so soft, though!
   As it turned out, the grass only felt soft to her because of two things: First, she was a dragon, with scales that thought an ogre pat tickled. Second, she was so very large, a bush would go unnoticed under her paws.
   This realization dawned as the centaur, who seemed to be equine in nature, had grass all the way up to his belly. The elf, when the dragon lay down, was waist deep in the grasses. It occurred to her, then, that she should've been able to see where she'd lain. She'd only taken a single step. The grasses should've been trampled! And yet, all she could see was an unbroken fuzzy green, right up to the trees.
   The sturdy grasses did provide some of the smaller creatures a ramp up her shoulder, if they couldn't wait to climb up the foreleg she stuck out. She nestled as far into the grass as she could, but her shoulders were an awfully long way up, and some of them had hooves.
   The gryphon she'd seen before opted to try flying alongside, rather than burden the dragoness with their weight.
   Another gryphon saw some people struggling extra hard with the ascent, and reluctantly provided a taxi service. A female centaur let people hold onto her for balance. One of the large bird species simply picked up what she thought might be halflings or dwarves, and deposited them on her back.
   Her friend stood on the point of the nearest shoulder, directing traffic.
   "I'm sorry sir, the back is reserved for lighter people. She's strongest across the shoulders, and the rump. If you feel crowded here, you're more than welcome to move to her backside."
   The only human he'd seen so far balked at the implication. "Are you calling me an ass?"
   "Sir," he said, striving for patience, "her legs connect to her spine front and back." He made airline employee motions with his hands. "That's where she'll be able to carry the most weight. Unless you want to risk breaking the only dragon we know about, you're going to have to sit either up here with the rest of these people, or go to the back. The view won't be much different at the moment. All we've seen so far is trees."
   His logical arguments gave the man pause. "I didn't know orcs were so well-spoken."
   Her friend bristled, one tusk peeking out a touch more. "One, I'm an ogre, and two, I was born human, same as you. Now it's an order: go to the back of the dragon, if you wish to continue this... migration?"
   The dragon couldn't shrug, with everyone on board already. "I don't know what else to call it, except maybe evacuation? Except we don't see an emergency..."
   The man paled. "It's so much louder up here."
   Her friend's other tusk crept into view. "If you mean my dragon friend, she isn't even talking at full volume right now."
   A low rumble vibrated the scales beneath their feet.
   "You're right, it's not worth it. Go, before we decide you're staying here."
   He backed up, mumbling something about dragon languages and not talking to him directly. When the words sort of made it into the ogre's brain, he turned to the crowd that was already onboard.
   "Was he saying he can't understand her? I didn't quite catch that, but... she's speaking English quite clearly."
   The giants, orcs, some animalistic creatures, one of the smaller kinds of folk, and any humans he could see all looked lost. The elves, other smaller folk (he couldn't tell them apart yet), centaurs, gryphons, and any of the native species all seemed confused that they couldn't understand her.
   "I read a book like this once. D&D party got transported to the D&D world. Couldn't understand or read Common, but English was perfectly fine. The barbarian wrote words in the dirt to prove that they weren't illiterate. Could be I'm just speaking the dialect of this planet without knowing?"
   Again, she couldn't shrug, but it was implied. He had to translate her words, but they made sense.
   "Maybe she can't speak English anymore? You know, with the...?" The catkin mimed a longer muzzle than... um... theirs. Cats don't have human breasts, or visible male anatomy besides a button he wouldn't see with them sitting; apparently, these weren't the fetishized versions. He didn't look to see if they had the tiny nipples that both genders of cat have. It would've been rude.
   "That's true! I don't have lips like I used to!"
   A giant flapped a hand. "Pretty sure we know what she said there, buddy. Time's marching ahead, though. Might wanna get moving, huh?"
   The last person was boarding the dragon ark. When they were settled, he walked up to her neck and gave it a firm slap. "Ready when you are!"