Is "chiri" a valid coniugation of chirasu [散らす]?

[Fearabhata]

Greetings to you!
I stumbled across some text, of which from I could not make much sense.

Here in romanji form:
sora ni chiri

It could mean "geography" or "dust".. So in a sense, dust in the sky?
Uppon further reading I just came to the conclusion that it might be a form of "chirasu", which means scattering or dispersing. Are both forms chiri and chirasu related or would it change the meaning completely?

 

[Majestic]

It could mean any of those. It completely depends on the context.
空に塵 dust
空に地理 geography (unlikely, but need to see the context)
空に散り scattered (derived from 散らす)

 

[Toritoribe]

Sorry for nitpicking, but 散り is a conjugation form (-masu stem/i-form/ren'yōkei) of an intransitive verb 散る. 散らす is the transitive counterpart of it, and the -masu stem of 散らす is 散らし chirashi.

Incidentally, 散らす is originally derived from 散る, so it can be said that 散り is somewhat related with 散らす.

Interestingly, the etymology of 塵 is 散り. So, even if "chiri" means "dust" in your quotation, it's not totally wrong to say that "chiri" is also somewhat related with 散らす in a sense.

ちり
1 日本語
1.1 名詞：塵
1.1.1 語源
「散り」と同源。

ちり - ウィクショナリー日本語版

ja.wiktionary.org