There is a real part of him that regretted her flight from him, her abandonment of him so soon after he realized their delightful irony and blazingly obvious tapestry of fate. The hunt for her makes him predatory, a stallion on the trail of a mare who has caught his unwavering interest in a competitors herd, trailing their every this way and that as if the fight at the end of it would bear fruit sweet to the tongue. Today his prey was Sayyida, heart of his heart, and when he does come upon her -- he speaks in such words as hobble the wildest spirit when they understand their meaning.

He claims her, by her concession of her maidenhood and by her oath to him in the night, so that her speed is stolen from her and the weight of Isis’s expectations would hold her still. It succeeds, of this he had not held any doubts, and leaves her looking utterly lost and forlorn for his presence. Whether because she wished him gone or nearer, he does not speculate before divulging his workings-out of their predicament. His mother Mira, named thus by the position of Great Mother and having forsaken her own True Name for that place as Sayyida would have been made to do had they remained, had taught him of the minds of women and of their tribulations beneath the oppressiveness of their beliefs and society.

To never look his wife in the eyes, to forever be bound to wounding her when he would go in to another woman because it was his right not because it was his gift to her free will. To bury her in the dunes where no other might see her beauty, rather than bring her forth to dance her dance in the fluttering sands of a festival - her delight in the dance drawing him up to join her to the merriment of his People. To temper and scold his own children until they too feared to look a man in the eye, till they also saw no worth to the fire that Ra had set into their blood…

He does know, however, that there were harsh rumors told of his own people - that she may not have seen through the eyes of a believer of the Old Gods and instead thought in the ways of her birth and upbringing. She would have heard of tactics that won many a Prince the hand of a woman he’d loved, only told from the view of the stolen-party. The weddings were spat upon because they were not given by their Ali, their father, freely.

It was for this reason he had begun to negotiate the faith of his people - to try and find some balance between the Old Gods and the New One. He had bartered the free will of his daughters only so far that he might chose the suitors so that she might chose her love among them. He bartered the freedom of his sons to toy with all whom delighted them, exchanging that so that he would be the one to come with them to choose their First Wives among The People. Even now he had a mind on who it might be that would be Priestess of Min to him, though he dreaded speaking of such things to Sayyida who was as much a virgin to the practices of the Temples as she had been to the calls of her body before he had taken her in the night.

She would, he thought, need more time than this to hear of all that he would build for them in these Dunes. Foremost of them all - he needed her to see reason in his choosing her and refusing to lose her to her own self-doubt and self-flagellation. She dances and skitters, waffling and wavering between one resolve and another - though he nickers rough and deep in appreciation when she chooses nearer. He craved to claim her again, to perhaps awaken a part of his Princess that was less inclined to flight and more inclined to cleaving. Never to stifle, of course, only to convince to remain. He would never bear her being given over in the same way to another that he had possessed of her last night.

When she begins towards him, words of regret relieved flowing, she seems to find his purpose to drawing her near at last too difficult to resist. She rushes him, his overeager reply coming from a reminding pinch of teeth at her marital mark that transforms into a headily thorough progression of grooming and boldly flirtatious touching. He hears her, reads her sorrows over other mares that might part his satiation from her giving it. Her buried head bars her from seeing his concern. “Foolish enough for centuries.” He laughs with her, shaking his head as he preens her perilously close to the first hairs of her tail before rising to the climbs atop her haunches and circling himself back around from behind her.

“First, I was to be King of Barbarians to your Queen of Saints, my Beautiful One. You could not have ruined me and in fact I believe our actions may in fact have put together two much more easily pliable souls. My brother was not yet weaned and already was more malleable to the priests-- and I believe your mother was well in foal when last Rigel had seen her. We may make a home of Ra and Allah here, a haven for our two Faiths.”

He lingers with a sliding muzzle following her barrel til he was at the swell of her shoulder. He lingers in quiet only long enough to gather a thought. “It is true enough that there will be others - for that is the way of The People, but they are not my First Wife. They do not possess my soul, do not bear the children of my throne or crown, do not bear the power to turn my head or my throne to their need outside the duty I owe them. You are as breath to me. I could never love another as wholly as I have given myself in love to you.”

It seems uncomfortable to him, suggesting there should be others, but it was common in the newness of Sewn Souls to get so caught up as to doom an entire Lineage in the womb of a single, albeit beloved, First Wife. “They are your own body, Sayyida. They give to you the freedom to choose yourself in a season of Qetesh’s temptation and Min’s madness, should you wish it. They provide purpose under Isis and Osiris - and we should love them for that gift alone. You may love them as sisters, as companions, as confidantes. You may come to value them as helpmates so that children do not overtax you - or as governesses so that you alone might chose to claim the Rite of First Wife.” He does not know that Rigel had never gotten so far as all these notions as a whole and does not, therefore, explain such rites.

He nickers so deep in his throat that one might not even have heard the sound without his throat and chest placed so firmly against her. Even now, explaining of the necessity that others might come to find their home with him, all he can think about is her -- and the wistfully distracted sound of his voice was all he needed as a testament to her Place in and with him. “You will never find your equal among them, for you are already set above them in all matters, in all manners, in all things. I cannot say you will not be bound to me, but I can promise you it will never be loveless. I cannot forsake my duty to The People and my forefathers by barring my heart, but I can promise you that you are the only one whose touch will ever reach my soul.”