Ellie knows Joel sees it more than she does, but it's not as if she's blind to it. She's been in the zones her entire life; well, until now. And in there isn't like out here. Though Joel's seen the cities how they were before; something she was never able to do, it still takes her breath away to see the vines and trees among the bricks and buildings.

She knows this is the product of a plague-swept world that's fallen into disrepair. She knows people used to live in these cities, that they were once full of life in a (for the most part) thriving, educated, and safe world. She feels a little guilty about how her mouth falls open and her eyes widen, drinking in the way green clings to the crumbling buildings, the way grass grows from the split pavement. Feels like it's disrespectful to the dead who once walked these streets.

But yet, there was something beautiful about how nature re-took that which humans had taken for themselves. That among all this death and destruction, life prevailed. The way the ghost of a civilization still existed in the form of roads and residencies, but how it was slowly being erased by nature; the vines creeping up the buildings, the new cracks in the roads with each spring, the new grasses growing from them.

It really strikes her when she sees the giraffes; that this world isn't run by humans anymore. It still belongs to them, but they don't own it. It belongs to them just as it belongs to the wild things that have re-taken it; just as it belongs to the sun and moon which seem so fitting above a city of both green leaves and gray cement.

She had been to school in the zones, and while they focused mostly on technical things like math and survival techniques rather than things like reading and writing, they had been taught to read and given a (rather limited) choice of books. She had picked one that had made reference to a "phoenix". She brought it up to the teacher, asking what a phoenix was. The teacher explained that it was a mythical creature that burst into flames when it died, and from the ashes, a baby phoenix was born. It was supposed to symbolize rebirth.

That's what this world was, she thought. Like a phoenix. From the ashes of the world of Joel came this world, her world. Saplings growing from the cracks and gaps in the sidewalk, wind-blown dandelion seeds touching down and taking root in the fissures of a highway. Vines overtaking buildings, city-trees grown so large the roots push the pavement up and the branches grow into windows.

Giraffes eating leaves off the side of a hospital.

This utopia-turned-dystopia is full of the dead and the living dead. There are a few surviving people like her and Joel amongst it all. But they aren't the only living things here.

This dead city is full of life.

Soil buried by cement is hosting life once more. Rebirth.

'Like a phoenix', she thinks, green irises breathing in the beauty all around her.

Catz: I heard Young Volcanoes by Fall Out Boy and the line in the description really reminded me of The Last of Us.

And so I wrote this.

There's a video by PlayStation called Wasteland Beautiful where Neil Druckmann says "There's something really pretty about nature reclaiming it's domain once we are gone," which also was a big inspiration for this.

Hope you enjoyed~