your oldest fears 
are the worst ones

amaroq

in his own country
even Death can be kind

usk finds him a shadow beneath the surface of the sea, hunting.

Finding prey is easy, here; the creatures of the sea are unused to such as him, near enough to shore that it is too shallow for the whales and other predators of the deep. Patience rewards him with a harbor seal, young and foolish and far too brave, who sought to touch a unicorn. For his recklessness he won a quick and bloody death.

Though not his preference, Amaroq makes quick work of his meal at sea, and leaves the rest for the fish and seagulls, who berate him in throaty voices as they gather like flies above. He grins at their pretend outrage, knowing well they are as hungry for meat as he - and then he makes his way carefully, carefully to the cliffside.

Oh, he wishes for sea-ice as he rides the tide inland, with the crashing of churning water against ancient rock echoing in his ears. But it is a summer-sea still, and even his magic is no use to him here, with the saltwater warm around him.

So deliberately, delicately, he navigates the waves, drifting inland with only his head and the spiral of his horn above the water. When the water sighs back before another rush, when the rocks are stacked before him crusted with barnacles and salt, he pulls himself up and out of the sea and shakes himself like a wolf or a bear. And then he picks his way among the rocks and little tide-pools, the deep clefts and the driftwood, until he reaches a wide platform of granite a few feet above the highest tide.

The sun is near to setting, now, the whole sea the deep color of a new-cut jewel.

The kelpie glances up at the cliffline, knowing he is unable to see even the glow of the city from here - but still Amaroq is compelled to look. There is nothing but an unbroken line of rock, and ragged clouds above - and then a shape. Wide, bright wings, a dark face and chest; it is hard to tell, in the growing dim, if they are looking at him as well. But if they are he is unmissable: pale throat exposed, hair like a shroud of snow, blood on his chest and on his face like paint.

As the waves dash themselves to foam against his rock, the kelpie dips his horn like a knight’s sword to the figure that stands so high above him. It is a mockery, or a greeting, or a dare.

your oldest fears 
are the worst ones

amaroq

in his own country
even Death can be kind

e should be glad, perhaps, that the stranger far above him did not take the bait. The kelpie is still too new to make a target of himself, too new to tempt these horses who lived in cities like beehives, with their fires and their music and their weapons.

But although he is sated with blubber and blood there is a different kind of hunger still in him, and it clambers to be fed no less loudly. Amaroq was not made to be so long alone.

The wind snags her greeting, tumbles it on the currents of air like a scrap of fabric. When it reaches him he smiles (he does not show his teeth). The pale underside of her wings puts him in mind of new snow; her eyes are bright against the dark of her face with the last of the day’s light reflected off the surface of the sea. Come down, he wants to call to her, aren’t you curious? But he does not trust his voice to reach her, not with the sea rushing up against the rocks and the gulls and cormorants shrieking as they settle along the cliffs for the night.

Instead he only exhales, a stream of vapor strange in the summer night, and gestures again with the ivory spiral of his horn. You’re the one with wings, says the raise of his brows, and his seafoam-colored tail twines behind him against the dark slate of the stone he stands on.

Oh, but his eyes and the arch of his neck ask a different question, loud as his voice would be if he willed it, loud as an iceberg shearing.

What is it, stranger - are you afraid?

your oldest fears 
are the worst ones

amaroq

in his own country
even Death can be kind

maroq has no such compunctions about wanting her.

Of course it not the same. His is not quite a man’s wanting, or even a wolf’s - it is a combination of both and something more, that ancient urge to play god. Not just to destroy and consume but to Make.

He looks at her up on the cliffside and thinks I could make her like me.

But when she leans further yet out toward the thrashing sea he catches the glint of the spear beside her, rising like a savage peak. Then Amaroq lashes his tail, and remembers that while some horses are to be Made, some are only prey, and some are hunters, too.

“Don’t slip,” he says in answer, his voice echoing deep as a glacier against the rock, and shows his teeth at the question that follows in what might pass as a grin, from that far away. ”Never.” As if to echo him (though of course only because the sea is steady as a heartbeat) another wave breaks on his rock in a cool kiss. The foam that flecks his fetlocks then looks not so different as the underside of her wings, pale as lace with the black wet rock beneath. It is dark enough now that is almost all he can see of her, but for the gleam of her eyes. She is too far to see the way the thin remnants of saltwater freeze and shatter like fragile mirrors.

Lucky thing for her his magic isn’t stronger - because he wonders whether he could freeze the moisture in her throat, if only she were nearer. What it might be like, to flex his magic like a hand around her throat - or like jaws.

your oldest fears 
are the worst ones

amaroq

in his own country
even Death can be kind

e had wondered what sort of bird she was - eagle or gull or shy, sweet dove - but she does not easily fit into the things he knows. It whets his curiosity, and it might have been enough to send him picking a path up the rocky cliffside to find out if his other appetites were not so recently sated.

Amaroq has seen curiosity lead to death, as surely as arrogance, as surely as ignorance.

This time he does smile, when she speaks, another neat row of too-sharp teeth. The unicorn leans forward, still watching her, as the wind buffets his back warm off the sea; he wonders if it carries his scent to her, or if all she smells is blood and salt.

And still she watches him, her short main tousled by the wind, so little of her visible in the fading light. Come down, he wants to ask, wants to demand - but she is a bird and he is wolf and the blood is beginning to dry and itch on the snowy pale of his chest. Beckoning, too, is the cool dark of the seabed, the quiet tug of the tides.

“Sleep well,” he calls up to her, as the final seam of light at the horizon begins to go pewter and black-violet. But Amaroq does not want her to sleep well. He wants her to toss in her slumber, wants her sweat-slick and dreaming, dreaming of pale men by the sea who would beckon her away to wonders untold if only she would leave her perch.

He drops his head and his horn dips like a saber in salute. And then he turns upon his foam-specked rock and dives, an arc of muscle and grace like a moonbeam before he is gone and the waters of the sea close ravenous over his head.