"Not easy to tell, if brain there is." Atal gave a chuckle, "But truth there is, to what said you have." He leaned forward to blow into the fire, the flames billowed and danced, their orange corruscating with tones of blue, white, green, and shimmering gold.
"I remember, winged one," he said in a strangly hollow sounding voice, perhaps a little closer to the true voice of the istari than the wheeze of an old man. Shapes danced in the flames, the graceful arch of a serpentine neck, the flare of a dragoncrest. Wings rose and fell, as the flames became a multitude of dragons, each no more than the size of his hand. The smears of color were no construct of flame, it was the glimmer of dragon hide, the gold ones, the red ones terrible in wrath, the blacks so black that they took on a purple shine.
There was no malice, no mockery in the construct of living flame, but there was a remembrance of grandeur, and of the terrible pride, and honor of the great serpents, and their half-spawned children. The flames guttered, and the serpents, one by one, flickered and faded until only the orange flame remained, the fire from a half burned firepile.
"More wood, we need." Atal said, his voice again reedy, and old.