we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade

[irisa]

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

She hadn’t known what to do when her world had first split in two.
When the veil was lifted and she learned that the place she’d grown was a dream, a kingdom built as Heartworm kept her asleep, some insane existence that she had not known was insane, because it was all she knew. She hadn’t known about her twin, either, the child who was left behind – perhaps because she looked too much like her father, perhaps because Heartworm only had the strength to take one. Irisa had never asked – why hadn’t she asked? Too caught up in her own collapsing world, perhaps.

It's still strange, sometimes, because her tongue stutters across the word home, but it’s not a word she speaks much, so maybe it’s okay. And now the tables have turned – now she is the one with the power to dream places into being. She is careful with this power, or she thinks she is. She vows, that if she is to ever have a child, she will not take it into the dreamland until it is older.

She isn’t sure what answer she expects from him, but it isn’t this one: I have been dead. Her eyes widen, and she moves without thinking. She does touch him now, just briefly, to assure herself that this form is real, that he is not some strange ghost come back to haunt her. He is warm, and smells of the earth, though she now thinks of gravedirt and inhales, sharply. But no. It’s him. Alive.
“Dead?” she repeats, unsure what else to say. The word is strange in her mouth.
“What happened?”
She isn’t sure she wants to know. She isn’t sure how he’s standing before her now, but she’s so, so glad he is.

Irisa

tarnished x heartworm