Myrna
suffocate the fire i started--------------------
right when it kindles
She wakes to the sound of soft snuffling, and is fully roused by a licking tongue and the fuzzy tickle of the dog’s morning greeting. “Hi to you too, Feather,” Myrna mumbles, rolling over onto her back and exposing the pale belly of her snow leopard shape to the dappled morning sunlight. The shapeshifter and her Companion had fallen asleep after a late night of chasing the glowing blue rabbits together. Feather relents, and flops down beside Myrna, her shaggy fur and feathered wings an identical shade of pale gold as Myrna’s usual palomino coat.
The early spring morning is close enough to cold that Myrna is reluctant to leave her warm rest, and the pair lounge for a few more minutes, before the rumbling of Myrna’s contented purrs become instead a rumbling of her hungry stomach.
As a horse, Myrna ambles toward the center of the land, toward the place where the stone statue rears beside the Mother Tree. The rising sun quickly warms the rolling hills of the Gates, taking the sharpness of cold from the air. It is sometimes hard for her to believe that this is early spring, after her childhood years of Hyaline’s harshness and high peaks. The hills of the Gates around her have already begun to blossom. Those colorful wildflowers are rarely as delicious as the green grasses that cover most of the kingdom, and the memory of one too many bee-bites causes the pale palomino mare to wrinkle her nose.
She makes her way through the meadow, browsing now and then from the freshest sprouting greens. Though she knows that she is not alone in the newly risen land, the other residents have kept mostly to themselves in the past few weeks. They seem friendly enough (with the exception of Sky, who is most definitely friendly), and she reassures herself that even if her idea is dismissed, at least there is little chance something truly terrible will happen.
Myrna has already had her fill of terrible.
When she reaches the center of the kingdom, she comes to a stop in the long morning shadow of the Mother Tree. To her left is the rearing stone entity. It had once stood beside the lake in Hyaline, and it feels right to have it here with her, in this new place, in this new home.
Taking a breath, and feeling the comforting presence of Feather leaning against her front legs, Myrna raises her head and calls out. Will they come, she wonders? Will they take the time to listen to what she has to propose? She cannot help but feel a little presumptuous about what she has planned, but she knows that leaders are rising in other lands, and that she will not let the Gates fall behind.
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