[AW] he saw my bones beneath; [relic hunt]

[Amaroq]

amaroq

in his own country
Death can be kind

T

his place is like a fairy-tale - though even more unfathomable than that, to a man whose childhood fantasies were still of places caked in ice, glaciers blue as the cold heart of the moon, beasts that drifted like birds through frigid waters. It is like a myth, and so he he is not at all surprised at the woman who steps forward into just enough light to make plain her bald face, pale as a skull.

She greets him, like to like, and Amaroq smiles in a way that leaves his teeth hidden. But his tongue touches them, a press against sharp points, the way one might pinch themselves in a dream. All the birds fall silent, sensing a predator; between them, a thick silver ribbon, the water laughs and cries.

“You think it wails to me?” he says softly, and touches the tip of his horn to the water. At once ice blooms there, like a flower, but the current is too swift: it takes the new bloom and whisks it downriver, tumbling it away, a small ice-floe that may never reach the sea. He wishes he could freeze the length of it, choking it to silence, and walk his bridge of ice to the secret heart of the island, the birthplace of the stream. The shells and bones in his hair chime against each other, rattling like teeth, as he lifts his head again. He is not smiling now.

“This island is no place for those who must rely on a bridge to go to safety.” He does not blink, when his ice-chip eyes seize her like a fist. There is a challenge there, a wolf to a tiger, beast to beast. For the moment, he disregards all else that might wait and hunt in the dark of the trees, in the deep of the sea. He watches her step forward, the way the light slides against her stripes and each hard plane of muscle, the gleam of her crimson eyes cat-like in the dim. Once more there is water between them, and something else just as quick and just as deadly. “Are you going to run again?” This time, there is almost humor in the question. This time, he thinks he might pursue her if she did.

But he does not think she will.

@boudika |

rallidae