[P] kiss me, and you will see how important I am;

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind She is dark as a seal, dark as the wet rock she walks across, and it is not so hard to think that she could belong here. Not to a court, not to a god, but to the waves that sigh and crash and the wind that shrieks and the silence that comes as soon as you break below the surface. For once Amaroq does not feel out of place either. This world is his and he is both father and son to the ice around them, to the snow that threatens in a blue line on the horizon, to the whitecaps that look like horses lunging and vanishing out of the corner of his eye. Here he is at ease, his wariness made small by the cold and the hanging moon and the way all the sea-creatures know his name and fear it. She does not fear. He looks at her, the salty bristle of her hair like an indignant bird, the cold chips of her eyes. Almost he regrets his question when he sees her stiffen, and the tip of his tail begins to twitch like a snow leopard’s, but then she speaks. At her words and their cutting tone his smile carves further up his mouth like ice eating up a river. Fierce little wolf, little falcon, ruffling her feathers at him, lashing him with her tongue. The kelpie shrugs a dark shoulder beneath a seafoam-pale fall of hair and turns his gaze back out to the sea, half-hidden in mist like a world undiscovered. But it is she his attention remains on, from the seashell-curve of his ear to the hungry drum of his heart. “As you wish,” he says. “Then tell me of yourself.” @Marisol amaroq