Practices had not gone well, but then he had hardly a mind to really throw into the ring with Sayyida on his mind almost every second. She was perfection made flesh and it ached in his breast when he did not have her in his sights-- but his duty to her superseded his amorous devotionals. He had to properly prepare for her a place where she might thrive as she had been bred to, raised to, destined to. She needed a proper home and a proper entourage. At the very least a proper companion in a First Wife for his brothers, a Lesser Wife for himself, or a Lady-In-Waiting to aid her in her whims.
It is perhaps not an attractive prospect for the wilder females, so strangely as they were brought up here. To be thought of as ‘Lesser’ or ‘Maid’ seemed to utterly disgust a majority of them. Sayyida was born to it and destined for being a First Wife, the highest honor bequeathed to a woman of sound womb and rare beauty, and even for her it had been a struggle to tie herself to a man that would never be able to forego marriages of legacy and national merits. He would need sons and daughters, more than he wished to burden on her body, and so the need remained.
He wonders if one day she would appreciate how his heart was so entirely of it’s own mind to love her, despite his body being given to others. That Lesser Wives and Ladies-In-Waiting and Harem Courtesans would never be able to dull her shine in his mind, in his eyes. How they gave her reprieve from having to ceaselessly slake the thirst Min had woven into stallion’s bodies.
He had felt that guttural pull, that wild need for the taking of a mare, in the heat of the storm with Indira. She was a mirage, to him, of the wilds - thunderstorm to his sandstorm. It had not been a kind sort of taking, either. There had been little cherished and less left over after the great burst of his strength within her - Indira and he had a bond in his mind, true, but she was not His. Was not bound and embraced. She was not beloved, only wanted, and that had suited her well - her freedom unfettered, her body well satiated.
As he ruminates on his needs, on the needs both met and sought-for, he comes across the very sort of gem that could wrest him from his yearning. A black mare, like the night hide of his brother Atair and yet with the milky-way of white beneath her like his brother Aldebaran, stood there basking in the morning glow with dancing feet -- almost seeming to call out to him, by the words she spoke opposite his direction. The mist had hid him, perhaps, his lily-petal hide easily masked despite the burgundy tousle of his mane and tail.
She is made like the finest sculptor had taken a chisel to the night and breathed life into her.
“Your are the very kohl that spares the eyes of Isis from Ra’s radiance, Daughter of the People.” he says in the common tongue of this land, only saying the last portion in proper Arabic as he and Sayyida spoke together not but a night or two ago in the first heated throes of their flirtation. “Though, I dare say my heart aches to hear you speak into the dark and know you were not intending such a cloying phrase for me.” He looks into the shadows too, staying well away from fiery hooves and potential tempers. Daughters of the People never did lack for spirit and flame, the Desert heat searing them straight into their soul and bones, sometimes.
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