She isn't always by the fireside. Poppy is a creature constantly in search of new things and she has been delving deeply into the spaces of her home, heedless of the dangers lurking in the dark - when has she ever been stopped by such things? - so perhaps she is not very prompt when the blue stallion comes like a moth to the flame she has built. Perhaps he is forced to linger in the flickering firelight and wonder who has built it, or who is watching him that he cannot see in the obscurity beyond. Then again, maybe he sees in other ways. Ghaul had tracked her easily without a single eye to speak of in his horned head.

It's a lot of words to say there is a wait. Popinjay is hunting through the wild heath for monsters, and there are more than she expected to find in the rolling heather plains. There are, of course, the usual sort, the strange shifting gremlins that cut and bite and steal and never look quite the same to any two horses, and there are, occasionally, red-eyed beasts without skin, whose breath withers plants and animals alike. They are horse-like, but wrong, a second head atop their middle and long ghastly arms. From above she has watched them, the way they avoid the freshwater, the way they burn paths through her kingdom, and she wonders if this is why no-one comes to live here except those who wish to be left so terribly alone.

It is not a bad reason.

In the dark, cloudy sky, her eyes catch the flicker of a shadow pausing against the beacon of her fire, a flash of blue that matches no-one she knows, and the Rook wheels away with a thunderous beat of her wings, catching the southeast thermal back to the Flame. She circles it once, a great shadow in the sky, but it is not the bird that lands there in a rustle of feathers and beaten air. The singed feathers of her left wing are a lingering reminder of why she makes this choice. She had forgotten, once, that although lightning started the fire, it is not lightning anymore and she has no protection against the licking flames. They deserve greater respect than she had given them, it was not a mistake she would make again. Even Popinjay the daredevil could only press things so far, but she aims to be a master of walking that line. She lands in pulsing darkness and presses boldly forward, the curls of her forelock tossed aside so the star on her brow grins as brightly as her lips. Her dark eyes dance, full of lightning and fire and the twilight reflection of the salt-sea stranger.

"Hello, hello, hello!" Her muzzle reaches out in greeting without waiting for permission, eager for the scent of someone new, "Welcome to Nerine, mind the monsters. Especially the ones without skin."

She hasn't seen them come to the fire, but she is not convinced that they fear it.