He wants to touch her, though he stops just shy of anything other than ornamental brushes of rose to rose, side to side, as they walk with one another. She is a creature of every desire within him, fashioned for his own personal agony - little did he know. She is what he had always desired in the one who he would bequeath the title of First Wife. The woman who held the whole pride of his heart, no other taking but the crumbs that he shared from her table to further produce masters of the sands and mistresses to find studs worthy of their great lineage.

Concubine was a term he could never have used for what the Lesser Wives were -- it implied too simply their use for bodies. He would have them, true, but he could never hold them as he would hold his First Wife. She would needs be the very vision of his innermost spirit, the tender guardian of all he was when he was not Prince, was not King. They would not share her place beside him in rank, would not be heard in the councils and catered to in the feasts. They would be welcomed, of course, and even with his joy -- but they would not be given the Mother Tongue as she would.

Even now he imagines her speaking in the Oathing, claiming the knowledge of his Ren. She would swear to be guardian of his Ka, lifter of his Jb, treasurer of his Ba, priestess of his Swt, proof of his Shm, worshiper of his S’h, and companion of his Akh. She would be his own private Sanctuary, a temple of his whole self. That is why she had to be Arabian. That is why, even with their cultural differences, his family had chosen the princess Sayyida.

This mare could have been all the things the princess shan’t have ever found such delight in - he can see it, scent it, on her. He hasn’t missed the glances, the thrill that ignited her blood to such a heat as he could tell the coming of fall by its potency. He can hear it in the tone of her voice, in the glossy nature of her eye as he keeps her pace in even strides, arching his neck finer and craning the dock of his tail fancily. He vows in that moment to forget his heart-bereft princess for this desert rose of innocent, and yet more and more emboldened, intrigue.

Her soft exhale at his affectionate wooing is a drug of no comparability. She floats on the air he breathes beneath her wings, gaze softened at the edges again so that it is a hard temptation to touch her - gentle and coercing - despite how uncouth such an act might have been. He barely refrains when she offers him a sweet kind of return for his poetic phrasing.

“The moon could come to this very earth and never earn any finer admiration nor closer attention than you have now -- and it is yours for as long as you will find favor in it.” It is perhaps too forward, too grand a gesture, but there is no fluctuation in it’s tone or his gaze as he says it. “I would sunder crown and land, moon and sun-- Isis herself could fall at my feet and I would shun her every brilliant feather if you were to just whisper my name.” His voice is low, huskier in it’s noble octaves, speaking their shared mothertongue as if a priest in a temple.

She is finer than any amount of nobility, sweeter than any professed Daughter - and he is addicted to his own affect on her, on how innocently she responded to his gestures of admiration. In some form, he is high on himself - at least what part of him appeases her, appeals to her, so that she became only more desirable in his own eyes. “You make my heart race faster than any creature can run, bird can fly, and fish can swim--” He closes his eyes and lifts his head with a sigh so deep it almost turns to a rumble. “ⲁⲣⲓϩ̀ⲙⲟⲧ ⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲡⲉⲥ ⲡⲱⲓ.” he groans in a deep prayer to Osiris, to Horus, to Set for all he could stand it. ‘Please, make her mine.’ and there wasn’t a more soul-rending prayer he could have made nor ever would again.