amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
He does not know her, to say where she does and does not belong.
Amaroq only knows that she is a warrior, that her eyes spark with fire but more than that with want, that somewhere within her is the same loneliness that lays in the dark of his heart like a rotten seed, scraping him hollow, eating him up. He knows that she is brave, and that she is a little bit a fool (to stand so near, to challenge him so, with her body in his waves) - but perhaps it is only that loneliness that makes her foolish, the loss and the want.
He understands that. He has watched his brethren die, for such foolishness, and has learned that to survive you must be cold.
So the kelpie does not tell her he won’t open this world to her.
But he wonders, now, how much she truly knows of him, of his kind. Amaroq knows little of the other kelpies, the inland ones and those from the southern sea. He does not know that they cannot work the change, that they are only born and never made - but he is beginning to see that she does not know his way. Or at least beginning to guess. Enough to be curious, enough that the line of his mouth turns softer, the color of his eyes more deep. Less like ice and more like the ocean below it, fathomless, almost gentle.
Nearer she comes, and further away, drifting on her own tide, only another piece of flotsam on the beach. For his part Amaroq stands motionless, though he watches her feet, watches the strength of her chest and the curve of her neck, judges the distance between them as any predator does. One lunge and his teeth could be at her throat, less than that and his horn could pierce her breast. And of course (for he is proud, and knows nothing of how well she has fought his kind) once he has her in the water there would be no hope for her. A thrashing in the surf, a clamor of gulls, white foam turned red. And then nothing. Even the waves would lap away her footprints and erase her from Novus.
But Amaroq does not lunge. He casts his gaze back to hers, crimson-dark like the inside of a throat.
Anything, she says, and he almost feels sorry for her. Enough that he shakes his head as he speaks, as if already woeful, as if they are both already gone.
“I could Make you,” he says, as the wind blows up the sea-mist in salty kisses along the arch of his neck, “I could Make you like me. And then you could search for him below every shore, in the trenches of the deep, in the corals and kelp forests. Everywhere.”
He does not say And when you find him you need never leave him. He does not ask And when you find him, will he hate you?
Instead he surprises himself - not a thing that happens often, not a thing that has happened since he left the constellations and the water he knew, each type of wind or ice a thing he could name. “And I would help you look.” It comes out rough, and low, a wave scraping against rock, and the unicorn tosses his head and the somber light glances off his spiraling horn and scatters like spray.
@Boudika |
