Older material repeatedly places Danu among magnetically shaped iron vines and flowers. The image is worth preserving because it expresses her without explanation: she wants beauty, but beauty that can be controlled.
The Garden can also complicate her. Danu is not indifferent to beauty or tenderness. She may repair a flawed iron vine rather than destroy it, touch an old form unnecessarily, or preserve something aesthetically imperfect. Such moments reveal capacity without automatically redeeming her.
If the final confrontation occurs in or near the Garden, Kaia’s refusal can make the setting itself legible as ‘a museum of obedience’ without requiring that phrase to appear in narration.
Open questions
- Is the Iron Garden literal current architecture or only a development metaphor?
- Did Danu design it herself?
- Should it appear in the final confrontation?