And at once I knew I was not magnificent - Naga/Amazons.

[Vineine]

***Sun patterns the blanket of snow—tangerine and rose; long, purple shadows edged in golden light. Everything glitters, caught in the low angled light of the newly rising sun. Everything is softened. The celestial sphere wears smooth transitional colours, from dim blue-ish to lightened pinkening horizon. Over the bubbling water fog hangs like a faint orange ghost, moving across the dawn-white field, and dispersing without ceremony. Free, not gone only changed in form and substance. Air—everywhere. ****She breaths, taking deep into her lungs the cold and dry everything; the remnants of mist and whispers left behind, mingling and inter-mingling. Her smile is contained, barely, by the soft and corporeal limits of her lips. She drops her right foot, and it sinks deep into the new snowfall. She lifts her left and repeats, back and front; left and right, moving in forward opposition. Her legs are chilled and crusted with a thin layer of surface ice from hoof-to-knee. ****She is small, a flushed and mousy mare, and it is an effort. She breaths heavy, but the the supple and youthful nature of her movement belies her middle age and exertion. Her girlish spirit is contrasted strongly—though not unpleasantly—by the sharp erudition in her soft, gold-brown eyes. She seems near-immortal, an eternal scholar and dancer. Now and then she drops her fine head to lick the untouched surface; or to examine the dead heads of foxgloves and loosestrife. ****She loves their indomitable drive to sleep, so that they can bloom again in time. Reddish-brown and faded but not dead. Simply waiting. ****She stops, her lungs screaming out a plea for oxygen, her joints shaking with spent energy. But there is delight there, living around the curves and planes. It wafts off her with the curls of warm breath in icy air, and the soft giggle under her breath. She has never refused a hard adventure—she takes great pleasure in the imprints left behind in snow or dirt, memories of moments kept only for a second. Nature does not deal in eternals. Nothing is forever. ****It works cyclically, unsentimental and drives towards equilibrium, always. *magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’