[AW] just the color, just the shape;

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind Amaroq smiles at her words, but it is a close-lipped thing, for if not it would be little more than a baring of teeth. There is a flicker in his eyes at the word bonfire like a spark all its own - one pale enough to be ice, one that promises no burning but endless, aching cold. “Perhaps,” he allows, like a wolf at the suggestion it might like grass. There is something in the way she watches him - ah, but the kelpie keeps his gaze averted, lest she read something there that should not be in the eyes of a man so lost and alone. Instead he studies the dragon, and he sees him now not for what he is (so young, his teeth uncut) but for what he will become, the way a wolf will regard a polar bear - a grudging sort of respect. Her offer draws his attention away again; he watches her walk across the sand that has become not-sand beneath her feet, watches the waves try and fail to wash her prints away. Strange, he thinks, and the ice grows a little firmer beneath his own hooves, and crawls along his horn like a vine. For a long moment he doesn’t answer her, only lets the water fill the silence, hushing them both. Shhhh, it says, shhhhh, in foam and salt, and Amaroq wonders if her dragon would be so nimble below the waves as above. He wonders if this unicorn-queen can change the water, too, to suit her needs - perhaps she could turn brine to blood, kelp to chains. Is that not more monstrous than he? He only hunts to live, after all - why should this queen remake the world to suit her? “Yes,” he says softly, for he would like to find out, the hunger for knowledge the same low sharpness in his belly as the hunger for meet. But it is an answer to a different question than the one she asked. “But not yet.” His stare is almost a challenge, the way it meets hers with such boldness, such immovable ice - to see her standing in the waves, his sea, the element that carried him here. But then he dips his head with all the somber dignity of a king, and turns to fade away into the darkness and the sharp smell of pine, a pale ghost soon swallowed by the deep shadow of the trees. Only the frost in his footsteps remains, and then that, too is gone. @Isra amaroq