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

[Amaroq]

in his own country Death can be kind The taste of blood transforms him like an invocation. At the first tang of copper and salt on his tongue his teeth lengthen; where before they were a snag for the eye, a subtle threat, now they are menacing, the jaws of a leopard seal. They are built to catch fish but they work just as well for for foolish throats and thrashing wings. His pale eyes widen, the flat regard of a shark. The blow of her hoof peels them apart like a mussel-shell. He is silent against her wet gasping, her choked cry. The only noise the unicorn makes is when he plunges into the water after her, and even that is such a small thing against the thrash of the surf and the screaming of the gulls. She is easy to follow, trailing dark blood that wisps on the currents and bubbles that stream from her like a veil. Her wings flash bright as snow beneath the cold water, bright as the belly of a killer whale. It is nothing for him to reach her, despite any thrashing of her limbs. Nothing for him to seize onto her neck or wings, to flood his mouth with blood or feathers. The water foams around them with little bits of ice like lace as his fetlocks become fins and the kelpie begins to drag Marisol down and down into the cold and the dark. Oh, he is meant to be the monster: it becomes him as well as winter does, all his elegant lines becoming savage. He still doesn’t know if he should kill or save - but then the thought of another warrior-girl snags him like kelp. She had wanted the change that he offered, he had seen it in her eyes and in the curve of her neck and in the way she furiously fled.   The girls’ wings may be thrashing, her hooves striking him again and again on his chest, his sides, an urgent drum on his skin. But Amaroq is built for a life in frigid waters and sleeping on sea-ice and his hide is thick as a whale’s. She will leave nothing more than bruises on him here, in his element, and drowning-deep. She is running out of time. @Marisol amaroq