Isabel and Ryu

A story of two people, one myth, and the ache that lingers when gods grow quiet.

A shared delusion, born of trauma and longing, woven into the language of gods and dragons.

Fay used to believe that names were just masks—handles chosen to slip into a different skin. They were for forums, for MMOs, for quiet corners of the internet where you could become who you weren’t allowed to be. Ryu Hikari was one of those names at first: half drawn from a wandering boy who carried the blood of dragons and walked through crumbling temples and forgotten villages, learning that his own body could shift into scales and wings when the world demanded it; and half from a bright‑eyed child of a near‑future city, jacked into glowing networks, diving headlong into hidden corridors of data with a digital companion at his side to fight off ghosts of code and corporate rot.

Fay spent countless nights in those pixelated dreamscapes, memorizing their maps like scripture until they felt more like home than the room around them. In those worlds, transformation wasn’t just a trick—it was a birthright. Dangerous, yes, but luminous. A place where becoming more than you were was not only possible, but expected.

So Ryu Hikari became more than just a handle. He became a voice. A form. A shell. A character a friend once drew into a comic book—dark, winged, a dragon of shadows who still carried light in his claws. Wisdom, rage, and kindness all tangled together in the same breath. Fay didn’t know it then, but they were sketching the first outline of an alter. Ryu wasn’t fully formed, but he was already speaking—a second voice just outside the frame.

And then Evergreen arrived.

They met online. It started like so many stories do—threads of text, long nights on video calls, conversations that stretched until sunrise. First as strangers. Then as mirrors. Evergreen spoke like someone who had always known how to find Fay in the dark. Every piece of her lined up. Every interest. Every fear. Every fantasy. It felt less like meeting someone new, and more like remembering someone you’d known in another life.

It was Evergreen who first mentioned Isabel. Or Izzy, as she called her. Isabel was golden. That’s how Evergreen always described her in the early days—this presence inside her, radiant and warm, with wings made of sunfire and a voice that sounded like bells underwater. A guardian, a light, a self within the self. Fay had never seen her, not directly. But the way Evergreen spoke of her—like a memory wrapped in reverence—was enough to make her real. Isabel wasn’t just an alter. She was an angel.

And Ryu was her shadowed counterpart.

In Fay’s mind he was always vast and coiled, a dragon of night sky scales threaded with flecks of indigo light, as though stars had been trapped beneath his skin. His horns curved back like crescents. His claws were silvered, sharp enough to tear through worlds. When he breathed, it wasn’t fire but something older—magic that shimmered blue at the edges, spilling from him like constellations breaking open. Darkness, yes, but not emptiness: a creature of rage, wisdom and kindness wound together, who carried a lantern of light inside his chest even as he stalked the forests of the soul.

Together, Isabel and Ryu became more than characters. They became a cosmology, a mythology, a pair of living archetypes that Evergreen and Fay could step into whenever the real world was too small.

Back then, neither of them had the language for what they were experiencing. They didn’t say “alter.” They didn’t say “dissociation.” They only knew that Izzy was real. And because Evergreen believed in Izzy, Fay began to believe more fully in Ryu. Not as a character. Not as a mask. But as a truth—their true self.

Together, they began to speak of Ryu and Izzy not as fiction but as something ancient. Something holy. Beings that had always existed—before Fay and Evergreen, before flesh and form. They weren’t just soulmates. They were celestial twins. The children of God.

Izzy was light, love, hope, and care.

Ryu was darkness, anger, wisdom, and kindness.

Together, they were balance.

Together, they had lived thousands of lifetimes—always finding each other again, always trying to save humanity from itself.

Fay and Evergreen believed they had powers. That they could astral project, slip into other dimensions. That the things they saw behind closed eyes—glimmering cities, divine battles, cosmic revelations—were real. They even brought another person into the mythology at one point. It was never a game to them. It felt like a calling.

And then came the moment that sealed it.

Evergreen spoke of a missing half. A dark dragon she had never found in this life, but had always felt beside her in the soul. And when she said it, Fay froze. Because she was describing Ryu. She was describing him—before he had ever been spoken aloud. It felt like destiny calling back through time. Like a secret name, echoed perfectly.

Fay believed. With everything they had.

They drove an hour to see Evergreen whenever they could. Days were spent half in reality, half in myth. They were Fay and Evergreen, yes—but also Ryu and Izzy, existing side by side. When Evergreen’s real-life relationship began to break down—when her boyfriend hurt her, frightened her, left her scared—she would return to Fay, seeking refuge. And Fay would beg her to leave, terrified for her safety. But when the storm passed, she would drift back to him.

Fay began to feel like a lifeboat—rowed only when the ship was sinking.

And still, the mythology deepened.

Izzy became more vivid. In Evergreen’s dreams, she flew between dimensions, battled beings of darkness, saved whole worlds. She talked about wanting statues built in her honor. Fay listened, amazed—and aching. Because they didn’t have those dreams. They wanted to. They wanted to soar, to save, to serve the myth they’d built.

But whenever Ryu appeared in Fay’s dreams, he was trying to fly—and always failing. Wings that never worked. Wings that never fully formed.

Fay would wake in tears.

Crushed.

Grounded.

Asking why “Father” had forsaken them. Why Izzy was chosen and Ryu was not.

Even in dreams, they were the dragon who could not take off.

The pattern held for months. Magic and absence. Love and silence. Soul‑missions that ended in voicemails.

And then, one night, the darkness won.

Fay was sent to a hospital. The kind with locked doors and quiet halls. They chose one close to Evergreen, because she said she would visit.

She never did.

And when Fay came out, the world had shifted.

Evergreen had disappeared into her life, her partner, her silence. Izzy still flickered in her texts—but only barely. A fading echo. Fay didn’t understand how someone could write sacred scripture with you and then forget the words. But something inside them had changed too. The veil had thinned.

As much as they wanted Ryu and Izzy to be real, they now knew: they weren’t. Not in the way they once believed. And slowly—without even realizing it—Fay began to distance themselves. From the myth. From Evergreen. From that part of themselves.

Still, Evergreen would sometimes return. Fay never challenged the delusion. They played along, just enough to give her light in the dark. Maybe it was kindness. Maybe it was closure. Maybe it was a final act of love.

A couple of years ago, Evergreen messaged Fay. Out of nowhere.

She asked if Fay had known, near the end, that it wasn’t real.

Fay said yes.

She asked why they hadn’t told her.

Fay told her the truth:

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

To this day, they don’t know if that was the right answer.

Evergreen is engaged now. Maybe married. Her life looks calm. Her partner seems kind. Fay still sends her things sometimes—fragments from a past only they remember. She never replies.

Maybe that’s the price of surviving a shared delusion.

Or maybe that’s just how healing works.

Now, it’s just Fay and Ryu. Sitting together with the quiet remains of a myth. Trying to make amends to a universe they once thought they were sent to save. They still hold to the same truths they clung to when they believed they were divine—because even if the myth has faded, the values remain. The kindness. The clarity. The ache.

Because in the end, maybe we are gods of our own minds.

Maybe we are responsible for the worlds we build there—and the wounds they leave behind.

Sometimes, Fay still dreams of the dragon.

Sometimes, the wings are almost whole.

And sometimes, they wake standing still.

Looking at the sky.

Knowing it was never real.

And still wanting it anyway.

They wonder, some nights, if Izzy still exists.

If she ever opens her eyes in that other world and thinks of Ryu.

If Evergreen remembers—not the fantasy, but the meaning.

The safety. The awe. The belonging.

Maybe she’s made peace with it.

Maybe she’s walked away for good.

Maybe that’s what healing looks like.

But for Fay, it’s still Ryu and them.

Still the echo of something that once felt holy.

Still the memories—sharp and golden—scattered like starlight across the corridors they once walked with her.

And even now—after all this time—they still want to go back.

Not because they believe in it anymore.

But because it was the only time they felt truly seen.

The only time someone looked at them and said:

“I know you. I’ve been looking for you too.”