“Among the Dreaming Gods”

Prompt: The Sky Blinked

Skyrunner, the cheetah, held his telescope steady as the furless star-ape peered through it. The she-ape’s grasp of Beast Common was surprisingly quick, at least in written form. Spoken words were harder, and her accent was terrible. The cheetah and squirrel could only teach her Fur-beast dialect, but she picked up several other beast words, and even some demi-god High Common, just by eavesdropping.
They knew she was lonely, hidden away from the town, sole survivor of her crashed flying ship. Her fear-scent had faded at least, replaced by wary curiosity. But they needed to know if those other metal ships had survived falling into deadly Everstorm and Void beyond. Would her people come searching? Tonight was another language lesson.
Hazelnut, the flying squirrel, pushed a storybook from the shelf. She opened it and read aloud, while Skyrunner turned his telescope to the planets pictured in the book. It was a favorite story of how the gods created Dracora and the sky.
Amber listened carefully, reading along as best she could. The human was grateful for the watercolor images, allowing better understanding. What her hosts called demi-gods, she knew as fantasy creatures. To see them in flesh was more shocking than even the sentient animals, completely different from other known aliens.
The story claimed the bright Milkyway band as a dragoness. Dracora’s six sibling planets and two moons were her eggs. The dragon gods hatched from those eggs and created Dracora. They later battled a shadowy, ever-hungry monster called Nex to protect it. Nex slew the mother dragon, creating the lifeless desert Void and outer space beyond. Afterward, the gods ringed Dracora with Everstorm and made constellations to keep Void and Nex at bay. Victorious but weakened, the dragon gods created the sun as a heat lamp, then shed their scales as stars. They shrank into hatchlings, re-entering their planet-eggs to sleep and heal.
Amber pointed the telescope at her colony’s arkship in orbit, wondering if Dracorians could understand it came from beyond their system.
They stared in questioning wonder. Another god-egg?
She didn’t have the words to explain. Yet.