she's still out there and the chasm grows; any

[irisa]

and the walls kept tumbling down
in this city that we love

It's a strange place, the dreamscape. A jungle, the plants impossibly green, bathed in light. There is a river, she knows, not far from here, and a palace of diamonds, the remnants of her mother’s dreamed godhood. There are animals aplenty, too, though she does not see any of them, but can sense their presence – the birds as large as she is, the panthers with their jeweled collars, the white stags with branches growing from their heads instead of antlers.
It is beautiful, for a prison.
(She has never tried to change for of her. She knows not know the world could be hers for the taking.)
She watches him take it in, is a little amazed that it worked, that he’s here. He, too, is almost like a dream-creature, with his antlers and shifting wings, he is at home in the jungle in a way she is not, even though she’s the one who grew up here.

“I’m surprised it worked,” she says, as much to herself as to him. She is surprised, and grateful, because it feels better to be with someone here, instead of alone. The jungle feels like smothering, this way.
Perhaps that is why she feels bolder now, her head held higher in the face of this strangeness.
“I can change myself, here,” she tells him, though he didn’t ask, but it has been too long and too lonely in this world.
Without waiting for a response, she paints herself gold, shimming in the constant light, and she changes her wings, too, until they are translucent and glowing. She does not change any other feature, just the color, but it’s enough to bring a smile to her face, albeit a wary one.
“What should I be?” she asks, as the birds chatter around them, and a foreign river flows.

Irisa

tarnished x heartworm