We never told her, the bright-eyed creature who called us aunt and uncle. It seemed kindest to let her think she belonged, even when her body cringed against us, lungs screaming when our air polluted them. She’d no memories of home but her soul knew this was no place like it.
When the portal reopened, a storm’s eye, rolling madly, we couldn’t stop it taking her.
It was only when she was spat back out: that world too bright for what we’d made of her, that we realised what we had stolen from our too-changed changeling, her eyes weeping rainbows.
Tom Juniper Poetry 