He is so sure of having been so clear by the end of his speaking that he is almost relieved to have had the room to speak it all in one go… only what he finds himself sensing is not finality. There is no overriding relief in her eyes or some notable change in tension in the air that he had noticed growing like a swell of a wave waiting to wash ashore. It does not irritate him so much as bemuse him, but once again he is a patient listener, once again he hears her out for his own sake and to give her room to ruminate aloud so that he might better fashion explanations.

"No. Such things are not our place. And even if they were, surely my Husband would hate such a heavy hand to chafe his being!" He is surprised by the vehemence initially, but then he thinks of the ample years that had been taken to carefully carve out the womanly flame in here tongue by tongue. He already has much to say on this accounting, but he bides his time as she takes her moments to refute him, to trouble herself aloud over what he had brought to light. She spills her insecurities as though he were a priest of the vagabond tribe in the wilds where Antares had always taken leave of his authority and ran rampant through the dunes.

She turns away again and he can tell that there must be done something for her shame, her self-reviling. It is potent in him, the urge to savage the flesh of whoever it had been that had stemmed the keen claws of Bastet in her. Did the little cat ever shun the will to protect her kits? Did even her lioness form not take up arms if the male was cruel or not to her liking? Did the lioness in greatest position not chase off offensive females who did not make her home a happy one? He wonders how her Mother had ever lived so long and had such great grace in the faces of men. Their Mira was the most beloved of the people - so beloved that she was given the very name of the Land that she bore Kings unto. Not because she was unimportant but because her own earthly name could not meet the importance of the name Mira.

He notes how she presses on without him, but he is not so easily manipulated by wise courtier tricks of curbing the appetite of his intended speaking. He marks her and focuses on her question first… but he would answer that which elsewise needed deeper contemplation in her. She instead asks him what he meant of an Untrained Woman - a surprising fall-back to his statements. His mouth twitches with humor, his head shaken. “No, dear sister. Only that you are not blooded in war and if he should have wanted you - and had been the barbarian painted by your People - he should have found no true battle to take as he liked. He has killed, dear, and broken princes equal his rank and study in the behaviors of war.”

Perhaps it is jarring to think of her Husband in that position, so noble as Antares had always attempted to hold himself. “There are other trainings, perhaps, that you would have received in our country that would have been given if you were of our People, but I assure you that Antares was well prepared for those things to be foregone in your case, once he knew you as Sayyida and not the happy accident of his desert wandering made Wife.” He rolls his head on his neck, nose doing a near perfect circle to the left, effectively waving off a topic he did not think pertinent or helpful - and reverting to the purpose of all of his babble. “I will speak it plainly and as unflowery as I might. If he can battle warbred brigands and overcome their bodies beneath his hooves, it would not take much to fight a mare untaught in combat into taking whatever wanton desire he might wish into their flesh.”

He does not dismiss women outright - he emphasizes a lack of knowledge in war and battle and other physically aggressive pursuits. “Your men are not seen as fit for daughters of our People often because we know that they have thought to breed out and snuff out any semblance of spirit in their women, to render them merely waiting victims to others who would prey on them for spite or selfish gains. They do not earn your love, your open womb. They take it and tell you it is by their leave, not yours. They take because you do not know how easily your own teeth and hooves could be made to defend your honor against your own husband - because they tell you that a husband owns your honor after your marriage. They take this way and we accuse them of having lost the ability to draw their Wives in to them… to interest them longer than the first courtship, the first tail moved aside in eagerness of youth.”

“Do you realize your jealousy makes him only the more potent for you? You fear his chafing because your men are so brittle in their ego and they have created a society where they need never put effort into their wooing. I watched the courtship in your home, Sayyida. A man went into his concubine while I rested in his home - took her in animal disregard for his decidedly few moments and went about his business, her left sweaty in midday heat. In my own home, she would have refused for me to milk her best energy meant to be spent on her child in the heat of the day. She would have had the right to turn me away or to bid me offer some affection or boon to prove the heart she gave to me was still beating strong.”

It is clear this woman had been important to him, though there is a clear shame in him over having left her to the man she belonged. “Used and left, so simple as though she had no mind and no will - no worth beyond flopping his horrid self atop her back for nothing more than a few grunts and satisfaction of his own self-importance.” He refuses to think on, his ears pinned so tight into his mane that they disappeared. “Did you not bite my brother? When you found yourself harsh against his words, did you not put teeth in his hide for the abuse of your tenderness in the topic he chose?” He shakes his head, a small atom of amusement filtering back into his face and his ears slowly returning to his neutral position.

“He relished your freedom in that, Sayyida. He was pleased in your jealousy of him because it means that he had won you with his effort - because you cleaved to him despite your ire, naming him a good lover who could overcome that with the offer of his body in recompense.” He scoffs a little. “Chafing. Hah. You should have heard how pleased he was in himself, the dolt, that you had a wish to keep even his exhaustively everlasting self to your own body and none other… no matter your hitching stride as you parted company. If only he knew it was because you hadn’t the thought that you might refuse him for your own pleasure or make him do more.”

He chuckles now in better humor. “My Mira, beloved of our father, told me once that it was the women who gave rise to the greatness of our nation -- not only because they could choose to fight in our armies and thus swell the ranks, but because the ones who stayed home puffed up their men so large as to crush ten enemies with a single step of their left front hoof. Women of our country may not yet be the head itself, but the neck does decide what way the head turns.” He softens his expression of glee, however, because it can be a serious thing to not understand ones strength. “He would not chafe because he would be able to win you and that would give him more pleasurable office than to take simply because ‘it is his right’. Your men are lazy and we are not. We crave the approval of our Wives, not their utter submission - for how does on determine the truth of their desire if one can just take the body without the mind and heart with it?”

“Yet you did say that you feared more that you would not be enough to quench Min from out of him on your own body. That he might go into another because you were not enough. That he would take wives because you could not fulfill him.” He sighs, “I can understand the fear as you speak it, but I wish I could better understand your place in it.” He looks at her consideringly, “I would tell you that I have seen in some of our men the fire of Min blaze so hot as to break a mare with the taking when they had no Lesser Wife to spare her in her weariness at his perpetual affections. I have seen some so mad with Min’s heat that they use and use a mare until her back swings low as if to flee the shape of his belly atop her, unwilling to be seen as not enough and yet unwilling to hear the cries of her body for peace. Our stories of Warning even tell of a stallion who took his newly pregnant First Wife, Only Wife, in a heat of their common passion -- stealing from her the fruit already taken in her womb. She had wanted to be his only and he had no desire to dissuade her favor in him, so he vowed that she would be the only one for whom he would lift his feet from the ground. He was almost run mad with living beside her passion without feeding his own flame and so shamed in himself that his body would not find peace despite her protests that it were only natural… that she thought he might die of it. She took him because she did not want another to do her office for her even when she had begun to lose the haze of Qetesh with the life he had tried to keep safe within her belly. She ignored her womb, the precious beginnings of life traded in, and the child was born without breath.”

He sighs, saddened by the tale in the same level that he had been infuriated by the one of the negligent stallion who had housed him while tending to her tutelage in her homeland. “It is not that we cannot control ourselves, for it is clear we will at the bidding of a Wife we love. It is not that we cannot take only our First Wife, or that it guarantees that there will be doom for children budding in the womb. My brothers and I are especially well learned in what can keep us from the madness that crept in on the stallion of that story… but can a King take leave for an entire season to spend his energies racing the sands and fasting to remove his mind from an Only Wife?”

He teeters his head, as if finding proper words to express himself. “The Lesser Wives are not because you are not enough. They are because the taking of Min’s heat can utterly spend the life your body would give to a child, or fracture the budding life of one trying desperately to take root. They are there because no matter how you may love him to your soul - when the Love of Isis is on a mare, the flames of Qetesh are well and fully banked.” He sighs, his tone changing to wistful. “I wish I were my Mira to tell you what she told me so that it might be more believable, but I cannot be so I will try to do her justice. They are also, as you called them, helpmates -- even beyond sacrifices for protecting your womb or feeding the fire of Min in your Husband when Isis’s own Love takes Qetesh from your gardens. They can provide you someone to hear and to give into hearing that knows your Husbands manner and therefore can relate without exposing yourself to one who does not deserve that knowledge. They can provide you with a companion in your birthing, a comfort in your ear and a protector to stand watch while you bring life into the world. They can pull a breach and save you agony, they can weep with you if the child takes no breath - because a man may grieve but we are not so selfish as to believe we can grieve the same as the one who bore the child from it’s conception.”

It is dark, that thing he speaks of, and it clear on his face that his Mira who had told him this had said it in experience and not in imaginative thinking. “She relied so heavily on Wife Nayeli when my first sister was lost in breach. Took too long, they said, to right her and pull her. We were told she was a pretty thing, to leave my mother until her grieving had abated. It took three months before she would even be seen and the whole kingdom rolled in ash to grieve with her. Wife Nayeli was the backbone of our mother then. She fought my own father twice to preserve my mother’s will to remain unseen by the grave. My sister now lives proud to bear the name of my mother’s first daughter, to have such a beloved name is an honor and she relishes being Isis to revive her sister’s life by bearing it.”

He looks over at his sister by oath, realizing he had transitioned into companion and away from teacher in having spoken of things so personal. He looks almost surprised, but that surprise does not become shame -- he turns warm with a gentle smile. “Thank you for bearing my pain so patiently. I lost myself for a moment as your teacher, but I am glad to speak it to you, anyway. Simply take from that the lesson, if you will, that Lesser Wives are not to cheapen your bond or lessen your happiness. They are to build a kingdom of your own making within the home he provides for you. You are his First Wife and the highest of his regard. They are given pieces of his heart -- I believe he said he spoke that to you… what he did poorly is not explaining that he gives them because not only do they give him the whole of theirs, but they, in becoming Lesser Wives, vow to love you as they choose to love him. We do not speak prettily in vows. We mean one mind, one body, one flesh. To love him, they must also love you, as you are every piece of him and he of you.”