amaroq
I would know who roars mostly like the beast
going out to hunt and then back to feast
going out to hunt and then back to feast
S
omething changes as she flees before him, red as a guiding flame before being swallowed up by the dark. He is helpless against it and eager for it, the way his mind begins to slip savage as soon as she runs. It is thrilling, the hunt; the thunder of his heart, the little lashes of branch and vine. His horn is like a lance of moonbeam, and ice blooms in the places pressed down by his hooves. Amaroq wants to run as close as her shadow through the jungle, so that the frost of his breath might touch her heels like the last blush of fall. But he is not so lithe and leonine as she and so he follows as a wolf would follow, his breath spilling in faint mist as his magic wakes in him like a fissure in the ice. There is no humor in him now, and no regret for the way the algae bloomed like an aurora. All there is is animal need, the hunter’s desire to catch what runs before it.
Catch me.
He smiles, fleeting, when he arrives at last to the beach and sees the way her footprints begin to edge toward the water. Perhaps he will not have to catch her at all. Perhaps she has already given herself to the sea. Once more the kelpie begins to run. Now it is only wind that rakes his hair, now he swallows up the ground in great hungry strides, still reading her tracks like a letter she wrote. The sand grows dark and gleaming-wet, studded with shells. The sea opens before him like welcoming arms and there, waiting, at the edge of the waves, is the woman.
Amaroq does not check his stride. It looks as though the unicorn might collide with her, and bear her into the sea with him; he lowers his horn as if to run her through. But at the last moment, when he can see the gleam of moonlight off her teeth and the dark shine of her eyes, he cuts around her like water around a rock.
Only then does he slow, and wheel like an osprey, and arch his neck like the crest of a wave. When he approaches her his breaths are coming fast and his eyes are as bright as the shells on the beach. That gaze is hungry, devouring her, each slope of her muscles and the way the moonlight gilds all her covers with faint silver, almost as though they are already underwater.
This time he doesn’t stand between her and the murmuring sea. For a moment he watches the way it kisses her ankles with salt, the way it anoints her hooves as with oil and leaves them shining-wet. Then he pulls his colorless gaze up to her crimson eyes and there is nothing for a moment but the sound of their breathing - hers, and his, and the ocean.
Almost he doesn’t want to break that not-silence. Almost he wants to let their gazes do the talking and asking, or the set of their mouths, or the hint of their teeth. And more than that: even his blood is running hot, now, and he takes a step nearer and then another, and there is a part of him that longs, that waits, for her to run, or fight, or look away for too long -
Amaroq lowers his head, and the tip of his horn sways lazily toward her breast.
Catch me. But there is space between them yet.
“Show me why you led me here,” he says, low.
He will not write her story for her, this strange mare, who gave him no name but Orestes’.
But he wants to.
@Boudika | at last!
