[AW] just the color, just the shape;

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind “I am not sure than anything is ever as lovely close up,” he answers softly, and his voice is like virgin snow beneath a full moon. Ah, but perhaps it is not true - at least not for this unicorn-queen. For now she is near enough to touch, and though there is no doubt that she is not as he, now he can see the gleam of scales across her belly, now he can see all the colors of his beloved sea in the shifting blue of her eyes. Even her chain makes its own soft music, this close, rustling like a ship’s anchor through the fog. He inhales her scent, faint though it is beneath the salt and summer sea on her skin - he wonders what she smells of him. Does she know what he is, has she seen another like him? Amaroq does not mind being called a monster, especially if he is not the only one. When her question comes he smiles, aware of the way she has not given her own name or the name of her city. “Far enough that I do not recognize some of these stars. My world is one of ice and snow and sea. Before I fled I had not seen trees since I was a child.” The honesty costs him nothing, but still his heart feels pierced by a shard of ice, crooked and sharp as an old dagger; his eyes are pale and empty as the moon. If it were not for her dragon and the way it watches, the way it roars, the way it can move between sea and sky - if it were not for these things Amaroq would make her like him. It would not take much; they are so near the sea, after all, and her throat so near his teeth (near enough he could see other marks there, if he knew enough to look). She is bold, she is cunning. She is foolish, too, with how near she stands, near enough he looms over her, near enough it would be nothing to seize her, take her into the waves, baptize her and watch her rise reborn. She could be queen of more than a city, then. Oh, he wants to put lips to skin, teeth to leaping pulse - but Amaroq steps away. He makes himself a shyer thing than he is, a wary and tail-tucked wolf; he wears his weariness like a cloak. “Does your city welcome the lost, unicorn?” It does not matter what she says - he knows it can hold only slaughter for such as him. @Isra amaroq