amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
He is savagely glad to be named.
It is the first time that any of them have spoken it - have given tongue to what he is, even in terms so vague. It spreads a grin along his mouth, too high, too far, like a crack splintering darkly through the ice.
At the same time it tells him that he was wrong, that his hope was misled, that she is not like him at all. They are both left with disappointment flaying their ribs like a fish-knife. When she names him he lifts his head, saying yes with the tilt of his chin, the swift run of his pulse just beneath his jaw, the proud glint to his pale eyes. Amaroq does not miss the change in her, either, the way her shift widens to a fighting stance, the knowing curve of shoulder and hip.
As another frigid wave eats up the space between them he wills her forward, nearer, nearer yet, close enough to meet the end of his horn. Close enough to see his grin and his disappointment sharp as the point of his bone-white teeth. The wind whines along the spirals of his horn, a strange music; the gulls cry warning and grief, but to which of them?
When she steps forward he watches her, rapt as a tiger watches a doe. The foam spills lace across her hooves, tugs at her ankles, urging her to him. She does not come.
When she questions him he exhales his own white cloud of breath. His tail lashes behind him, drawing meaningless patterns in the waves; what to tell her? That he is the only, then last, and therefor weak? He will not fall prey to a woman whose eyes are the color of old blood.
"There are other kelpies here,” he says at last, and narrows his gaze at the way her own strays past him, out to the featureless winter sea. "But I am the only one of my kind.”
While her attention is beyond him he takes a step nearer, and another. Amaroq reaches for his magic, and, obedient, it reaches in turn for her: ice fingers along the waves, turns the foam to frost, veils the wet sand around her in a frozen sheen. It is not enough; nothing is, in this half-life he lives, and he grits his teeth and wills the anger and disappointment in him to turn to ice, too.
“And you,” he says softly, but there is a snarl beneath it, for his foolish hope and the way it is dashed. “You are alone too.” When he smiles there is no joy in it, only weariness, and hunger.
@Boudika | I want to meet Orestes and the Khashran! you write so vividly <3
