Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Holy Days

The day of rest had to be tabled for at least a year, because they wouldn't have the calendars until then. They could, however, set aside a day of rest per month. While they couldn't structure a week, they could count to thirty.
   The day of rest was scheduled on the thirtieth day, or Trueday. They couldn't explain to Onnu how they came up with it, other than "it sounds like Tuesday, but, like, not a day of the week?"
   The day before Trueday was spent cooking food ahead, and wrapping up projects that were time-sensitive. Kin came to regard it as another sort of holiday, and scheduled around it. If someone wanted a crafted good without enough time before Trueday, their order was delayed at whatever point was pauseable.
   As such, the day before Trueday became Pauseday. It would be spelled "Pazday", when written works began.
   Onnu and Pannu would take that time to observe the projects that were on pause, and ask generally how things were going. This fulfilled the request of many for them to have a better talon on the pulse of the Holds.
   What surprised everyone, herself included, was just how much Onnu knew about the different crafts. She knew that she knew carpentry, and many artistic pursuits (which did include fiber crafts), but it never occurred to her that she had also acquired a lot of sewing knowledge, for example.
   "How the heck do I know how to do that, and you don't? I couldn't sew to save my life! Not even the easy tutorials!"
   "To be fair, you didn't do it, you just told us how. Since dragons don't wear clothing, you wouldn't need to actually sew, would you?"
   She couldn't argue with Mirrin's logic. Mirrin Velvet was a Tupin faun who'd opted to pierce her second claw to use as a sewing needle, until they found sufficient sewing needle crafting methods. There were needles for other purposes, but none that could be threaded, so Mirrin periodically pierced her claw, in its stead. She would trim and re-pierce it when the claw grew too long.
   "I suppose we are supposed to be repositories of knowledge, and I am the only female Elder Dragon. Sewing would naturally, though not mandatorily, fall to me."
   "There aren't any other female Elder Dragons? How do you know that?"
   Onnu had lots of practice recovering from possible faux pas by now. "Elder Dragons communicate across worlds, as we must, and I have only ever heard male voices." She didn't say that there were only two others, of course. That would have put them squarely in trinity territory.
   "Well, then we'd best teach you what you don't know, so you can pass it on to the next generation, huh?"
   Onnu reluctantly nodded. "I know much of Erdewaz methodology, but you are discovering new ones since Crossing. That clever claw piercing is something that should be remembered, in case we never end up making Erdewaz needles."
   "I don't want us to lose things like felling and darts, though!" Shardra chirped. She was a catkin who was trying her claw at sewing. What she lacked in dexterity she made up for in enthusiasm, and ingenuity. "And backstitching has saved us so much mending!"
   The kin in the sewing circle nodded enthusiastically. Though they were in the early days of fashion, with mostly ponchos and some rudimentary trousers, the latter often required mending. Onnu had suggested felling seams, and backstitching, to make them more sturdy. Talk of darts and gussets had been the result of rabbit hole sidetracking.  She would never subject them to boning, without a material that would warm and bend with them. Instead, she sketched cross-stitching in the firth, and talked about cutting panels in more complex shapes than squares and rectangles. Now that they had makeshift needles, and peryarn, it was only a matter of time before real fabrics were discovered or created.
   She wasn't a chef on Erdewaz, but she knew about proofing doughs, and marinating meats, and other techniques. She had what she called a yellow thumb, but she knew about crop rotation, co-planting (they were still learning what plants had immunities to what diseases or rots), things like that. She'd caught few fish as a human, but knew about bobbers and the knots to secure them to the line.
   What knots she didn't know, Pannu did. Between them, they were able to teach knotwork on one Trueday. While they eschewed work, they could still learn new things. If Onnu turned the knots into parables, that just made it more appropriate for Trueday. Pannu knew more of the knotting patterns, so she had the time to come up with the appropriate parables.
   She was a deft crochet crafter, or "hooker". With peryarn, and long needles, but no hooks, she taught knitting and simple arm crochet. It would hold them until either Mountain Clan forged hooks, or the scrimshaw crafters carved some.
   She'd drafted the model in the firth, as there was no papygrass or emdief large enough for her to draw on. Nor was there an ink, yet. They were currently painting, or etching into both, with dyes carefully brushed into the scratches with the smallest paintbrushes they could make. The latter was for more permanent work, as it was labor intensive. Sketching could be done with claw or charcoal, as wood burned the same on Tupino as it did on Erdewaz. It seemed to be the exception to the "nothing is the same" rule.
   Onnu added some more parables when they covered carpentry. There wasn't much that their craftskin didn't remember, or learn on their own. She merely added some more complex furniture and framing techniques, to be tackled when they had the materials. It would also require the ability to build furniture, which they could not yet do.
   The craftskin had asked her about carpentry because they thought they might be able to build structures outside the Hold.
   "You would have to build each structure in a single day," she cautioned. "That is not counting a foundation, which may take time to set, as we do not yet have cement. The best we could do, I would guess, is river stone and clay, with perhaps some form of animal product to seal or adhere it? Any outbuildings without a foundation would simply fly up into the air.
   "I'm not saying you shouldn't try, of course. I merely suggest that you leave buildings overnight, empty, to see how they fare. You could also build earthen huts of olde, or pile firth up over your completed buildings, like a tornado shelter."
   Except only Pannu remembered what a tornado even was.