"Do you remember lots of different kinds of dragons?"

"Oh, for sure. I was one once! It wasn't fun, I had a weird dragon disability."

"A weird dragon disability? Like you couldn't breathe fire or fly or something?"

"Couldn't fly. And the magic dragon language insisted this meant I wasn't a real dragon."

"That's... weird? Were they having ethnic conflict with wingless dragons or something?"

"Oh, no, I had wings, the wings just didn't work. And my parents' wings worked fine; sometimes a dragon baby is just born with the inability to use their wings properly. And dragons could shapeshift, and if a dragon that can't fly gets close enough to a dragon who can fly, in their natural forms, the not being able to fly is contagious. And we don't become able to shapeshift until we're twenty--which, by the way, is still a toddler for dragons--and once we can shapeshift we can be, like, birds, but until then we can't fly at all and a dragon who doesn't fly experiences increasingly horrible chronic pain about it."

"I... was about to say that's a stupid reason to experience chronic pain but I will experience chronic pain if I don't go put my feet on June's feet for hours every time I do a dungeon, so who am I to judge your reasons for having chronic pain."

"The species setup was incredibly terrible but, like, also human women menstruate, sometimes a species is just randomly terrible in ways."

"We do do that and it is randomly terrible. Does your angel elf situation not?"

"It had better not. ...I think even if angelfs usually do I have a fertility control thing that'd prevent it."

"Angelfs!!"

"Pretty sure you said that word first!"

"It's a very pleasing word."

She giggles and emails May a handful more pictures; a dragon with scales like moonstone, wings hanging uselessly at her sides; a human girl with moonstone-shining hair; a mildly humanoid moth with moonstone wings, and a hairless flat-nosed mermaid with a moonstone tail. 

"Sparkly! Are these - all you?"

"Yeah! We get five forms we can turn into--most of us--and it's considered smart to leave one or two slots open for emergencies. So I had a normal humanoid form, a flying form, and a swimming form." 

"Why a moth?"

"Oh, that's not a moth, that's a fairy."

"Oh! I usually don't... look at the middles of moths very much. So it is."

"Fairies and sprites are both insectoid sapient species, and they do magic differently from how humanoids do it, and if you're a dragon and you have a sprite or fairy form and a humanoid form you can learn both!"

"Huh, what's different about 'em?"

"Well part of the magic involves making gestures with your hands, and fairies and sprites have two pair."

"So they cast different spells or something? Can you still cast those spells - the non-insect ones anyway -"

"I cannot."

"Any idea why?"