"Ah, it's adjustable. Cool. ...got any other powers? I saw how you got out of my hug, that was cool."

Eric shrugs. "Not that much. I'm a changeling. I'm under Restriction." 

Suddenly, the room is full of gold coins. "I can make stuff, I guess."  

The coins vanish, but now his bed is a sleeping lion. “I can turn things into other things. You know, if it’s not too fake. Wood’s usually alright. Plastic, forget about it.”

He takes Zanna's hands. Suddenly, they're standing on a deserted tropical island. The sun is setting beneath the horizon, burning the sea and sky scarlet and violet. "And I can go places, but only places that are now."

He glances at Zanna. "Oh, sorry, not used to taking clothes with me."

Zanna giggles in delight, then looks down and giggles some more. "Can you glamor me too?"

"Sure, nobody around, though." Eric swishes a finger. "Anyone looking thinks you're wearing a ballarina dress."

"Ugh, fine. Ballet sucks, for the record."

Eric giggles. It's the first sign of happiness Zanna's seen from the boy. "You asked." 

He sits on the sand. The surf stretches out to touch his toes. "Sorry, my magic's pretty boring." 

Zanna considers sitting, then decides to instead stand in the water.

"Seems pretty cool to me. I've never been anywhere like this."

"It used to be somewhere they stuck sick people. Glad we don't do that by the way. Get sick, I mean." He stretchess a leg out into the water. "Guess I'm kinda like the people they put here, though."

"Like a leper colony? I don't think you're very much like a leper. I'm at least unusually sure you aren't missing any parts - despite the lesions."

"I was boring. Not good enough."

"That's still not very similar to leprosy. I guess you could call it a developmental disability." She shrugs. "Supposedly I've got one of those. Unspecified, supposed to account for my unusual deficit of friends. Ignoring my explanation, which is that people are fundamentally garbage."

"...Am I garbage?"

"...statistically probably but so far you haven't been? I mean, broad strokes."

Eric perks up slightly. “Are my wings really nice?”

"Your wings are beautiful. And your eyes are pretty, too."

“Thanks!” He bites his lip. “Ah, Sarah and your mom can still hear us playing Monopoly in my room. Should we go back now or…”

"Oh, Monopoly, gross. Am I at least cheating? Yeah, let's go back."

Eric smiles, a little slyly, “Now you are.”

And with that, they’re sitting on Eric’s bed again. 

Zanna picks up her abandoned clothes and considers them. "I've still got sandy feet," she says. "Can you shift my glamor to look like what I have here?"

“Sure! You’re really pretty by the way.”

It sounds less like flattery and more like bare fact.

"Thanks!"

She takes a look at what he was drawing when they arrived.

Two great floating land masses, one covered by forest, the other by sea, bridged by an enormous, felled tree. 

"Oh, that's lovely," she breathes.

“Home,” Eric says, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Everywhere in home is beautiful.”

"...I've never seen anything really beautiful, I don't think."