Firstly, I'm at about the point of passing out, so this writing may not be my best.
This is a piece that I got from  ritikin involving my fiancee, Kyrie, as a birthday present. I'm once again just stunned and amazed at the final result of all her incredible work and effort - I think this is just objectively among the most beautiful ones I've ever been a part of.

I love how detailed and intricate the flora all are. They feel very Knytt coded, or Rainworld coded. Either way, just zoom in on some of them! Mother egg. And the colour shading and grading of the picture is movie-tier! The artist also draws me really very nicely and I feel positively cute standing on the rock.

Please make sure to go and favourite the artist's version, too, which you can find here <3 She has breathtaking art, and if you like what you see here with this piece then go and check out her other works! She's also a big Rainworld nerd in the best way 💙

In any case, the art is ©
Kyrie ©
Salrith and the words attached © me! (Does one © herself, or is it kind of just implied?)

* * * * *

The stars glittered brightly in the dark sky overhead as Kyrie walked hand-in-hand with Salrith across the grey terrain that was speckled with strange, almost under-sea plants. Little pods and fronds waved languidly around their feet as they walked, each casting their gazes around the gently sloped hill.

“Didn’t you say that the portal back should be around here?” Salrith asked, her eight eyes hunting for any familiar disturbance in the air. The four-armed creature, half Kyrie’s height, gave a flick of her thick, segmented tail. Kyrie knew Salrith well enough to be able to interpret the gesture as mild unease. Salrith knew him well enough to know that when he squeezed her upper grasper, it was in reassurance.

“Should have been, yes,” Kyrie said, his other hand adjusting his robes against the chill. “Something must have gone wrong.” He frowned, looking around the empty field. The only thing of note was a large, flora-covered rock, some of its damp surfaces glinting in the pale moonlight. The wild plant life that clung to it gave it an almost coral-like appearance. “They might have had to close the way early.”

Kyrie had it relatively easy, being rugged up in his fluffy, insulated robes that were designed to protect from all kinds of environments. Salrith walked beside him in nothing but her pink and black collar – not that she saw anything amiss with that, these days. It did mean that she was feeling the cold, though, and the shivers that twitched through her tail were signal enough of that.

“So,” Salrith chittered, swiping one of her two-toed feet along the damp ground. Some stray, almost ghostly flowers swayed back and forth. “That was meant to be our ride home. I don’t like the idea of being here for however long it takes someone to come pick us up.” She looked up at Kyrie sceptically. Besides – who knew what state the house would be in when they got back if they were gone too long.

“Oh?” Kyrie asked, lightly swatting her with his tail. “You don’t like this world? It has all those handsome hippogriffs I saw you checking out. I’m certain they would keep you warm.”

Salrith lifted her snout indignantly.

“You know I prefer dragons,” she huffed. “Besides, I wasn’t checking them out.”

“Mmhm,” Kyrie rumbled knowingly, which made Salrith wriggle just a little. She looked up at him.

“How about you and those gnoll creatures. The librarian sure seemed to have your attention.”

Kyrie pressed a hand to his chest as though deeply offended.

“Gnoll-adjacent creatures so rarely get such lofty positions, it would have been an affront not to admire him,” he declared. Salrith snorted, letting go of his hand. She hopped up onto the rock, bringing her up to Kyrie’s head height.

“I still don’t want to be here for however long it takes them to come fishing for us. I propose…”

“Shouldn’t you be on your knees for that?” Kyrie asked. “Besides, I already did.” Salrith shot him a scowl, and he smiled.

“I propose that we find our own way home.” Salrith lifted one grasper, extending a claw upwards and making an idle circle. As she did, the air shimmered around her claw, distorting and rippling as though she was stirring the surface of some sort of viscous puddle. She gave Kyrie a look as she tugged on the local space with that claw, lower arms crossed and her fourth grasper extended to him.

“That seems a little extreme,” Kyrie said, crossing his arms as well. He lifted his snout to look at the sky. “We’ve only managed that once, Sal.”

“So?” Salrith asked, clapping her lower graspers together, then her upper two. “We’ve only become an even better team over time!”

That brought a slight smile to Kyrie’s snout. He looked down at Salrith’s exuberant, determined snout. The little vartello, as she liked to be thought of, could be a force to be reckoned with when she got going. It was why they agreed that Kyrie ought to help… steer her. Was it worth trying to go home on their own? Or was it better to stick it out and just wait for however long it took someone to organise to come and get them?

Though Kyrie stood there for a moment, mulling the prospect over, Salrith knew he would come around. He was a dragon who liked to show off at least a little – and there was no one here to chide him for being frivolous with his abilities. Besides, it wasn’t like it even was frivolous to want to go home, was it?

Kyrie sighed, then held out his hands, palms to Salrith. Standing on the rock as she was, it put them at approximately equal height, which was convenient.

“Try not to let your mind wander?” he suggested. “This will open doors to all sorts of places we’ve been or connected with, not just home.”

“I’m on the case,” Salrith said, giving a thumbs up with one lower grasper. Then the four-armed creature pressed two three-fingered graspers to Kyrie’s hands, and the two of them began to focus. Salrith could open paths to other locations, and Kyrie could harness the connections between people and things – and perhaps most importantly of all, places.

It started as a soft buzzing in the ground beneath their feet, a pressure that spread out around them. It made the stone beneath Salrith’s feet almost crackle, and the plants all seem to bow as if in worship of Kyrie.

As the two worked in tandem, a spark of light erupted in the space between their palms and began to glow. Salrith frowned in focus as the light began to brighten and tremble like some sort of jelly. It grew larger and brighter until it was hard to look at, before suddenly bursting thin lines outwards in a flash that speared through the air like cracks in glass. Blueish light erupted forth like paint trails that hung in the air, distorting it in swirls of refracted colour.

The lines of light almost seemed to wobble, like dyed strands of ghostly web. Around them, at the furthest reaches of those fingers of light, globes of brightness began to grow like plant buds. Kyrie focused firmly on their connection to kingdoms and lands they had been, while Salrith worked to carve a way physically to them like someone flipping through pages of a book.

In the brightest parts of the strange, globular buds, shimmering images began to crystallise - each of distant lands, like fogged windows that were slowly clearing. Kyrie looked around, eyes scanning for the window that led homewards.

“Give it time,” Salrith said, eight eyes closing with a smile. “We’ll find it. For now, let’s just see what worlds remember us, yeah?”

Kyrie smiled faintly and nodded, steadying himself as they worked. It would take time to bring out the thread that bound them to their home, of course. But however long it took, they had the company of each other and the shimmering apparitions of places they had been. As the field slowly but steadily transformed into an almost kaleidoscopic nebula of colours and visions of faraway places, both Salrith and Kyrie knew they would find the way.