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

[Judas]

for what can break the magic that the devil made?

"The Meadow is still here," the mare interjects with a soft smile, and the delight in his face - of finding solid ground in his apparently vast time-slip, is not hidden even a bit. That had been as good as his longest standing home and it felt suddenly less like he had walked out into an alien planet to know that there might yet be pieces that he could recognize. His eyes spark with a bit more life, as if he were waking up more and more as he steadied himself in the present. He looks on her, then, in a more steady and meaningful way.

She is beautiful, but also frightening in a way that originated with his own early life. Magic had always been wild in his day, unpredictable and a lot of the times nasty. Beauty did not guarantee safety, or kindness, but as she does not attack him or do unnatural things to harm or bewitch him, he rather hates that Eir brings up the old demon of Beqanna. He snaps at his soul-fragment and friend, Eir looking a bit abashed when the mare’s eyes turn to him and he is found out - just the same as Judas is found out. "He remains."

The words stab him in the gut, the flinch not unlike a pinch-tight girth being yanked up too snugly. He kicks a hindleg at his belly, ears out to the sides in clear discomfort… and yet somehow it too felt right and home to have that monster always at the edges of his awareness. He does not take peace in it, as he had with the Meadow, but he does indeed feel more on-the-earth. "The river that runs through those hills is shallow and warm this time of year."

The appreciation, and a bit of embarrassment, dawns on his face at the directions, "I very much appreciate the directions, as well as the up-to-dates. I almost thought that I were not even awake when we first saw you. There was nothing… like you, when I last took a turn about the place." He starts in the direction her nose had pointed, not sure if she would accompany him for the river’s rinsing refreshment - but not opposed to speaking to someone that had so much to tell him of the most recent histories.