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
T
here is a part of him that thinks not here. There is a part of him that wants to seize her in his teeth but only to pull her back, to caution her away from the place where the sandbar drops off to nothing, where it is swim or sink. Amaroq knows that there is something wrong and other about the island; he remembers assessing the shapes dark beneath the surface as he walked the black glass bridge. But he only follows her out into the sea. The water is blessedly cool after the heat of the island and the burn of the chase; his white tail trails behind him, spreading like a veil. They walk in silence, as though to a baptism.
It is not good to be alone.
As the water rises to his hips, as the sand falls from his hooves and he begins to swim, he watches her. Oh, he well remembers that conversation. He thinks how there is no name between them but Orestes, though she is not quite stranger, nor enemy, nor ally. He remembers how he’d known at once she loved this Orestes, and the offer he had made, and how she had fled from it.
I would do anything.
Amaroq’s colorless eyes are set to gleaming by the moonlight as he studies her. She is as sleek and graceful as a shark; she will not suffer for the change. Already she is beautiful and current-quick but when he thinks of what she will be after, something sharpens in him like a hunger.
To have the loyalty of such as she, Orestes must be far more than just a man. And to possess a thousand shapes he may as well be a god. Amaroq has never tracked a god, has never learned to hunt one. But he wonders, for how she speaks of him, if they will be the ones found.
Then the water is high, around his neck, and his breath is vapor hanging in the air like the breath of a whale. Constellations tremble above them, far from their normal paths. It is peaceful, almost holy - far from the day he had changed the girl. He wonders if Boudika is cold; though if she is, she will soon not be.
“Here,” he says to her, over the sound of the waves meeting the beach behind them. Here the water is almost smooth, and it is quiet; no strange birds with eyes of garnet and wings of kelp skim the water, and the sounds of the jungle are far away. When she turns to him, he holds her gaze, near black in the shadows. Her horns are curling black silhouettes that gleam in the moonlight where the saltwater has wet them.
For a moment more, he regards her in silence. He is aware of the press of each curved tooth against his lips, aware of how she still looks at the ocean like it is a cathedral, or a mother. He says, softly, his lips near the curve of her ear, “You will have to take of my blood.” The water laps them both, gently. He does not tell her how it will feel as though she is drowning and burning at once, how it is worse than death because it is waiting for the moment when the lungs cease and the body takes the change. It does not matter. It is better not to know.
Amaroq pulls back enough to look her in the eye. Crystals of ice and salt pattern like diamonds on his mane and the seashell curves of his horn. He does not wonder if he should ask her name, though they will soon be more intimate than lovers. When he drops his lips to the curve of her throat, he holds his breath, so as not to make frost bloom there like an icy palm.
And then he takes her in his teeth, and pulls her below.
@Boudika | I hope this works! it was so fun to write
