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

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind She knows the currents of the clouds, the whims of the wind, the patterns there like threads that guide her through and through. She knows how quickly they can change, and what trouble they bring before it comes. The sea is no different. Amaroq has a name for each kind of current, for every curl of wave. He knows the water more intimately than a lover, knows the migration of each bird and the hiding-place of the seals. The unicorn can recognize each whale’s song, and when they are lonely, and when they are glad. And he loves it, fiercely and completely, even though it does not make him whole. Up and up rush the waves, to cover his heart, but there is a pocket there in the rock and the ice of it that is nothing but hollow. Still he thinks himself joyful, still he knows he is proud - is it not the same for her? The kelpie waits to hear what she will say of herself, with his gaze still trained on the sea - on that same seam of horizon she watches. A meeting between two worlds that are not so different, two worlds the land-horses will never understand. And though his expression remains impassive, at her answer - so bitter, shattered ice, summer berries withered black - his tail begins to twitch behind him like a leopard’s, impatient. Amaroq does not look at her, for if he did he might show his teeth. “Is that all?” At last his voice is cold, almost cruel - the touch of a frigid wave and then the receding of it, dismissive. There is more in the spaces between his words, in the pause after them, in the cold that hangs between them like the mist. I thought there was something else. Surely you are not so empty. And the greatest thing he does not say (the thing that makes him wonder if he was wrong, as he watched her high on the cliffside with her spear and each time he caught the glimmer of her iron gaze or a flash of the snowy underside of her wing) - I could make you so much more. @Marisol amaroq