This is the End of “The Bite That Stuck Around."
I hope you liked the story. [B.R.✧]
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[Pt15]: This guardian of narratives might’ve been. Among orphaned protagonists and half-sketched epics, Espi remains cheeky, watchful, and wholly herself, a draco in starlight, a story that refused to vanish.

[Pt14]: But death was not an erasure.

Like others whose stories remained unresolved, Espi now resides in the Graveyard, a spectral region in the corner of the universe, ruled lightly by Dvcki the esteg duck.

[Pt13]: Within a year, she couldn’t breathe without pain. She passed surrounded by her loved ones, wings curled over Delosi’s shoulders and holding Barcli’s trembling hands.

[Pt12]: Known for their beauty, they concealed a creeping rot: once inhaled, the spores lined airways like velvet suffocation. Within months, Espi’s voice cracked.

[Pt11]: But sometimes, even ortopota dracos burn.

The Wellowmina spores came quietly, tiny yellow flowers that bloomed unpredictably across Grine’s wilderness.

[Pt10]: She never made it to university; she didn’t need to. By 21, she had found her calling: working in child protection. In a fractured world still rebuilding after displacement, Espi became a feral shield for the fragile, ensuring younglings had a fighting chance where others turned away.

[Pt9]: Her warmth was undeniable, even when veiled in sarcasm or a well-placed jab. She could lift grown men in one hand and cradle crying toddlers in the other.

[Pt8]: She never cared for societal norms as an openly asexual, openly affectionate, person. Espi bites those she loves and laughs at dirty jokes that would turn priests' scarlet.

[Pt7]: As an *Ortopota Draco*, Espi could split her form between mundane and draconian. Her wings break through her back creating scars, and her scent always carries a trace iron. Her hair is thick and is usually wore in a braid.

[Pt6]: Espi, in her prime, had built a life of her own. At 29, she shared a home in southern Grine with Barcli and Delosi, her girlfriends, in a house half-choked with plants and patched furniture.

[Pt5]: Locals leave offerings on flat stones: dried meats, old blankets, and sometimes children’s toys. The mundane say Espi's mother speaks only to birds.

[Pt4]: Her mother never returned to her humanoid form after that. She lives tucked into the forested clearing miles from the nearest town, curled in eternal draconian silence.

[Pt3]: Her father stayed behind. Espi asked about him for years, receiving no answer beyond a soft snarl or heavy silence. It wasn’t until she turned twenty, while living in a modest apartment outside Grine’s capital, that a fragmented intelligence log confirmed his death.

[Pt2]: War crept from the horizon, and she and her mother fled aboard a refugee cruiser bound for Grine, a realm of lush, lowlands, unscarred by the war but never untouched.