Somewhere Near Capricorn

He said: For you, I think it'd be a seahorse.

She said: Why seahorse? Why always aquatic animals?

He said: Aquatic because grounded animals are a little too understood and winged animals a little too flighty.

She said: Almost funny. Continue.

He said: Seahorses are magical but not mysterious, I think anyway. They live in the terrifying sea, but only the pleasant pale green parts of it. Something about their spiral shape. No?

She said: It sounds like you're describing yourself; if the metaphors mean what I think they mean. You're the seahorse, I'm the scorpion. I don't want to be something so fragile.

He said: Scorpions could be described as fragile, I think. Given their size and the fact that they're bugs. But seahorses aren't fragile. Small, but not necessarily fragile. I mean, they are, but that's not among the first things I think about when I think about seahorses.

She said: The first thing most people think about is that male seahorses carry the children. Like you. You're always the one with all these lovey-dovey false ideas about romance. Things girls usually obsess over. The things people think girls obsess over, anyway. In my experience, that's really not true. And not fair.

He said: Why do you have to say they're false?

She said: Because I'm the scorpion. I have little claws to pick apart ideas. A poisonous tail, too.

He said: To kill the idea in the end, you mean.

She said: The idea or maybe the ones who believe it.

He said: You'll be the death of me, then.

She said: You know seahorses and scorpions would never really meet. Ocean and desert and all.

He said: Maybe that's true.

She said: There's no maybe. It's true.