The dragon imagery at the end of the chapter symbolizes a resolution between Brave Orchid and Kingston. Earlier, when Brave Orchid faced the Sitting Ghost, Kingston wrote, "My mother may have been afraid, but she would be a dragoness ('my totem, your totem')." Here at the chapter's close, Kingston reaffirms that she and Brave Orchid are both women warriors: "I am really a Dragon, as she is a Dragon, both of us born in dragon years. I am practically a first daughter of a first daughter." Although the chapter's last paragraph strongly suggests that nights still hold unseen terrors for Kingston, she tacitly acknowledges that she owes her creative abilities to Brave Orchid, whose talk-stories are the impetus for Kingston's own power of language as a woman warrior, as a dragon in her own right.
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