amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
It is the cusp of winter and the coming of it sharpens Amaroq like a knife.
No longer must he keep to the depths to stay cool throughout the sluggish summer heat; no longer must he wait until night, when the temperature dips enough for him to stray onto paths like a wandering moon. Soon the world might be his, and it is well it is so, for in winter his blood begs him to create.
He is no stranger to loneliness, but as frost coats the grass in the morning and the birds migrate south and the moon hangs in a ring of ice it his need to Make grows stronger than hunger. More and more often he ranges up into Denocte, heedless of the chaos of the country, searching for something more than prey.
But he finds something else altogether in the temple in the mountains.
Amaroq had seen it in glimpses from the sea, far below; moments when it gleamed like a mirror against the setting sun. Never had he come near enough, but when cool dawn broke over the waters he stepped from his beach and into the underbrush, and climbed up and up along the cliffs, until he stood below those ivy-hung arches.
Surely this, too, belonged to the unicorn with the city on the hill.
The kelpie keeps no gods but the moon and the ocean and his own sharp teeth, and so he steps beneath those curving doorways without hesitation. He does not count the time he spends wandering, in cool dim of the temple where the air tastes like cold dust and ancient salt, but it is long enough that he forgets everything but a low kind of wonder until he hears the feet of another, coming up the path.
The unicorn stills, turns his pale eyes to the colorful world beyond gold and marble and shadow. So quiet is he that even the stallion’s whisper carries to him, a scarlet leaf caught on a breeze.
“Have you no guess?” he says, voice low and cold, and steps forward from the shadows with his hooves echoing on the marble as they might on windswept ice.
@Metaphor | "speaks"
I swear he won't try to eat him
I swear he won't try to eat him
