amaroq
in his own country
even Death can be kind
even Death can be kind
L
ike me, she says, and he wants to show her, then, how wrong she is. That he is a thing of the wild and the water that does not live in a structure of stone and bed down in sweet-grass and eat oats and warm itself by the fire. That he is a hunter like the white bear and the wolf and his teeth are sharp, and he knows what blood tastes like, warm salt-and-copper between his teeth. It would be easy; she is injured, she is alone. He need only open his mouth - But he would be proving her point. That he is a destroyer, too, and not for hunger but for his own whims - like any man.
So he only watches her, as she closes her eyes, as a shiver wends down her spine that has nothing to do with him. Amaroq does not step closer, not when he is near enough, already, to see the faint dapples on her like a yearling fawn. Not when he is far enough away that she might spring yet back toward the safety of her court.
When her silver gaze pierces him again he is still regarding her, and his expression does not shift at her question. For a moment he does not answer, and the gulls clamor overhead, and the sun splits through the clouds in shafts of brilliant light and is gone again, and at last he nods and speaks.
“As any other animal. A thing that does what it must to live, and feels no shame for it.” He does not say as beautiful. He does not say as dangerous. An orca cares not for the opinions of the seals - it only wants to eat. But then, a seal cannot hunt it back.
When he breaks his gaze away and looks out to the sea there is still something flat and glittering-hard in his gaze. It is the bitterness of seeing his people’s blood smeared on the snow, and knowing their killers would wear their coats and fashion their horns into trinkets, into spears. He cannot look at her as he says, “I do not know why men think they are better than any other creature that hunts to fill its belly and looks with awe upon the sea.”
If he looked at her, he might teach her all the ways that men are weaker than beasts.
@Samaira |
