amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
He notes the way she looks back at him, for her eyes are sea-bright, jewel-bright, even when the rising sun makes a halo behind her. Amaroq does not care for it, the way that sharp gaze measures him like meat. It has been a long time since he has been looked at in his way (a thing already dead, and only then of value), but he remembers it, and the way his people were slaughtered, and he closes his lips over his teeth before they become a snarl. The grin fades like ice melting, leaving no trace.
It is easy to fall still, then, except for the slow cold of his breathing, and the way his ears twist back at the sound of her pearls clinking together as though in echo of what is woven and braided into his own long skein of hair. He wants to grab her by that string of pearls, and twist her head around to bare her throat. He wants to remind her that she is smaller than he is, and if they are both predators than he is the stronger.
“No.” The word is flat, coldly derisive.
The stranger steps nearer, too fearless, and he dips his head so that the point of his horn shivers like a promise between her sea-colored eyes. Closer again she draws, and his gaze is steady on the knife sheathed at her side, remembering the practiced way she’d been tossing it, light glinting off its edges. Only when she says your teeth does he flick his attention up, and he bares them for her then, glinting like light on water.
She knows him, just as the other mare with stripes like a tiger’s and eyes like fire-light had known him. But her questions do not seem as honest, and Amaroq is disinclined to answer.
Instead he steps forward, too, and they are like two partners readying to dance; there is a tautness between them that can be cut, and the water glows red behind her. The kelpie is calculating the differences between them - the three hands he has over her, the thick of his muscles beneath their layer of blubber. He keeps his head low, guarding his heart.
“What about my teeth,” he says.
@Locust | <3
