amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
What will we hunt? she asks, and she does not turn away from his touch - she responds to it, she turns it back on him like a parry, like they are playing at war.
Well, aren’t they always? Isn’t he always, in a way, when his life comes down forever to another creature’s death - blood and salt?
Amaroq smiles at the sound their horns make, rattling softly together like spears. He smiles at the sear of her skin on his, her teeth near his throat, stripes against spots, predators each. Against the cold of his skin, humidity-slick, she’s as warm as a fire - and when he inhales, there is the faint smell of smoke, too, bonfires of cedar and incense. The unicorn-queen’s city on a hill, he thinks. She had invited him there, when they met many full moons ago, and he had said not yet.
Nothing waits for a wolf in a city but death. Such places were for rats and sheep. Without the wind, without the stars, without the heartbeat of the ocean in his ears and the pull of the moon, his teeth would be blunted, his mind dulled.
Amaroq wonders if that is all that separates them. If there is a part of her that wants to be feral, that sneers at a life made easy.
(What will we hunt?)
The kelpie laughs, low and black, water below ice. “A relic,” he says, and when he pushes himself away from her, pale as moonlight against the black, his strange cold eyes ask And what else would you hunt, side-by-side with such as me?
@boudika | sorry this is so short :(
