amaroq
in his own country
Death can be kind
Death can be kind
That smile of his doesn’t waver as the girl answers back, no matter the gale in her voice. All his life he’s learned the sound of warnings, and which he must take heed of, and which he can ignore, and which he can provoke.
“Am I the hunter?” he asks, all innocence, a killer whale with its belly well full.
There are other things he thinks to say - I thought this forest belonged to the queen, for one - but as he watches her come forward from her cover, he only adds, “The wisdom of my kind is different from yours.” And that is when his smile fades, for he, too, is thinking of war; even as his pale eyes study her movements he thinks she is like one of the spears of the northern people, crafted from bits of fallen star, gleaming silver and sharper and truer than ice.
Oh, but her eyes are dark, the sea beneath the new moon. And she is not smiling at all - her mouth is a slash like a black crevasse, her wolf is becoming a monster (for this he spares a quick glance, and measures the distance of the sea from his back), and then she is before him, all bold, and her horn falls like the flat of a sword against the bone of his.
That is when she smiles.
And Amaroq’s mouth stretches wider, until it is almost a grin, until it shows a promise of teeth. It covers his surprise. They stand in the moonlight, silver beacons in the fog, and the sea breathes beyond them in the mist, and ice groans as it grows from his horn all along her own, reaching for her brow, reaching for the stars unfeeling above them.
“Unless,” he says softly, and his breath is white mist against her throat, “you are like me.”
It is almost a question - one it pains him too much to ask in full.
@Avesta |
