you can't bargain with smoke - anyone

[Anaxarete]

How quickly things had changed. Anaxarete, for one, certainly was not complaining.  She wasn't one to frequent the meadow.  She never had been throughout her extensive history. Social calls weren't particularly her thing.  But that was before.  Now everything had changed.  Beqanna had changed.   The shadow-mare had been awakened. Who would she become upon this awakening?  The cold woman was an enigma of sorts - poorly defined by any number of stereotypes.  But she didn't truly live up to any of them. She was the cold, icy creature most of the world knew who could be set aflame in a moment's notice.  She was a conquerer and one who sought to restore order.  She was known for keeping the company of violent, bloodthirsty alien creatures - creatures that she single handedly kept from running rampant in Beqanna.  She was merciful and merciless at the same time.   She was strange.  She was undefinable.   She simply was.   And now she was alive.  She was no longer content to live the mechanical, automatic existence that she had for so long.  She would have purpose now.  Because for the first time in so long, her home had once again opened its embrace to her.  That feeling of completion tore through her like an infection - setting her very cells aflame. The shadows swirled around her legs, discontent to lay flat against the ground.  Grasses bent out of her way as she moved and fell back into place as she passed.  Aside from that, she looked perfectly ordinary.  She wasn't bathed in flashy colors or shrouded in sparks.  She was simply a small, scarred, gray mare providing the container for many lifetimes worth of secrets. Cold eyes that once only held ice and cold flickered with life and light. Those eyes flickered across the meadow with limited interest before she slipped beneath the branches of a sprawling oak and drew herself to a halt.  She was content just to watch. For now. A N A X A R E T E

MAGIC. IMMORTAL. PSYCHOKINETIC. ALLIANCE WINNER. THREE TIMES A QUEEN.

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