[open] not by fire, yet forged in flame;

[Viszla]

Myrna suffocate the fire  i started-------------------- right when it kindles Myrna’s careful observance of the stranger has left no doubt that he continues to appraise her. For a moment she considers letting the lightning and the shadows free, just to see what he’d make of them. Maybe she could shift into another shape entirely, like she’d changed from the quivering aspen she’d been before his arrival had shaken her awake. And it had been his arrival, she realizes.  He’d emerged from the cave behind him in a way that had shaken the soil itself. He must truly have been down there for ages, Myrna realizes. The Neutral Meadow? She supposes the meadow is neutral, and in a time when the world had been split into Heaven and Evil, being clear about the rules of such a place in the name probably helped avoid a good deal of conflict. “The Meadow is still here,” she says with a faint smile, thinking that she might accompany him a little farther, just to satisfy her curiosity, to hear what else might have changed. Two of the lands he speaks of are unfamiliar - Wildflower Plateau, Dangerous Island - and she thinks of those in the world before it had ended. Hyaline, the mountainous kingdoms she’d grown up in, and Tephra where Malik had lived. Islandres, and Ischia, and the red hills of Loess that the Watcher had told her of. The palomino mare glances up at the bird at the mention of Carnage, then once again back to the golden-eyed stallion. The reminder of evils in the world comes as no surprise. Not anymore. Mynra’s smile had faded at the mention of the dark god, but her expression remains soft. “He remains,” she replies, knowing he is less omnipresent than he has been in earlier times, and knowing it is better to not risk it by saying that aloud. But she does attempt to offer another smile, as though to brush past a minor concern. “The river that runs through those hills is shallow and warm this time of year,” she offers, pointing her pale nose toward the distant rolling knolls through which the River runs.

@Judas