amaroq
in his own country
even Death can be kind
even Death can be kind
H
e should be glad, perhaps, that the stranger far above him did not take the bait. The kelpie is still too new to make a target of himself, too new to tempt these horses who lived in cities like beehives, with their fires and their music and their weapons. But although he is sated with blubber and blood there is a different kind of hunger still in him, and it clambers to be fed no less loudly. Amaroq was not made to be so long alone.
The wind snags her greeting, tumbles it on the currents of air like a scrap of fabric. When it reaches him he smiles (he does not show his teeth). The pale underside of her wings puts him in mind of new snow; her eyes are bright against the dark of her face with the last of the day’s light reflected off the surface of the sea. Come down, he wants to call to her, aren’t you curious? But he does not trust his voice to reach her, not with the sea rushing up against the rocks and the gulls and cormorants shrieking as they settle along the cliffs for the night.
Instead he only exhales, a stream of vapor strange in the summer night, and gestures again with the ivory spiral of his horn. You’re the one with wings, says the raise of his brows, and his seafoam-colored tail twines behind him against the dark slate of the stone he stands on.
Oh, but his eyes and the arch of his neck ask a different question, loud as his voice would be if he willed it, loud as an iceberg shearing.
What is it, stranger - are you afraid?
@Marisol | an impasse
