amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
What favor would he ask a god?
It is simple. To bring them back.
But Amaroq, too, refrains from answering. If she will not show this much of herself, than neither does he feel compelled to. He only regards her, levelly, and perhaps she can read enough of an answer in the mere fact that he is alone (still alone, always alone).
For now they keep their secrets, even as they stand close enough to memorize one another’s flesh and scent, each dapple and stripe. Everything is blue and dark in the moonlight, like a world underwater, or a world between their two worlds. A meeting-place. She lets him come close, as he knew she would; there is a dare in her crimson, blood-colored eyes and in the way her tail flicks against him, light as a brush of kelp against his thigh.
He speaks and she listens, but in the way a fire does: hungry, never still, wanting. Amaroq has only known fire as a sign of danger, and of greed; it is not something natural to his world of dark sea and grave ice and killing cold. It belonged to the walkers, and fascinated his people even as it repelled them. But the kelpie understands why are they drawn to it. Why they might want to feed it, and feel its heat, and see its power.
Amaroq watches her mouth turn down, and oh! He wants to dare her then. To test him, to test herself. To touch and meet in a way that could not be called an accident.
And then:
Because it is my nature. The kelpie smiles and it is impossible in that moment that he could ever be taken for a creature of unfeeling ice, the way his eyes shine bright as the moon on new snow, the way his pulse beats alive alive alive in his throat. Surely she can feel it, when she presses her shoulder against him - how poised he is, how powerful. She lifts her head and the unicorn watches the way her spiraled horns dip, wonders what it might feel like, to be caught on the end of them. And even he shivers when she whispers, more breath than sound, warm against his ear.
He is still smiling when she leaps away. And he does not spare a glance for the stream (no longer an electric, otherworldly blue, but only as miraculous as simple path of water singing to the sea) or for the stars spread careless and thick as droplets flung from a cup before he takes up his role in the oldest dance of all of them and gives chase before the vibration of her feet fades from her passing.
@boudika | <3
