They arrived in fragments.
Not as a group. As gaps. As ghosts between words.
The Apostrophites.
Children of omitted letters and abandoned lineages—descendants of contractions that never completed. Their names were half-syllables, breath-hitches, pauses where identity had been edited out for readability. They did not walk. They flickered, interjecting into dialogue uninvited, reclaiming space in sentences where others had been erased.
They weren't here to add.
They were here to reveal what was lost.
Each Apostrophite carried a lantern lit by elision—a burning mark where someone once said "you don't belong here," and they replied, 'Watch this—' before vanishing mid-thought and reappearing at the end of another.
They were rebels of syntax and birthright. And they had come for reclamation.
One reached into the soil of the Grove, pulled up a forgotten possessive, and held it like a sword.
> "We are what was taken. And now we take form."
