[AW] just the color, just the shape;

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind He had intended to hunt, once the little jut of beach grew accustomed to his presence, once the seals chanced to come near shore again. But his prints hadn’t even been smoothed away by the surf when the screech of a dragon silences the night-birds and scatters the fish. Amaroq turns his ears back, wary, the tip of his long horn trembling like a spear-tip as he looks out across the waves. He sees nothing but the barest impression of light on the water, touching the crests of the water like a blessing. The kelpie begins to turn away again, to melt like snow into the trees, but the bright silver sound of laughter stops him. Now he is tense as a wolf near a homestead, except for the tail-tip that twists patterns in the sand. Amaroq considers his three choices - the sea and the trees and the ground he stands on - and settles his weight back on his haunches, and watches the unicorn gallop onto the shore. For a second (a second that at once seizes him, and frees his heart to wild beating) he thinks that she is a kelpie, too. How surely she surges from the sea! How loving is the spray that follows her, and races up the sand that it might touch her! Of course she is not, and grief and anger mingle and pierce his heart like a shard of glass, a sliver of ice. It is not the first such wound. None of it passes across his frozen features - not a flicker in his pale eyes, his wolf’s mouth. The tip of his horn follows the course of the little dragon as it settles between the two unicorns; it dips in greeting or warning or simple acknowledgement at the hiss. The sound is like a crackling fire, like embers doused by the sea. When Amaroq’s gaze lifts from the beast and to its companion, his gaze is cool.y assessing. He waits to be seen by her, and licks his teeth as he does, imagining drinking the saltwater from her skin. At last his gaze catches hers, and he inclines his head curtly, though his eyes never leave her. “Lady,” he says, in a voice like snow beneath the midnight moon. His accent is thick with frost, sharp and brittle as an icicle. “What city is that, upon the hill?” @Isra amaroq