He is as much inflamed as she, but his shame about his behavior has come well before her rebuttal to his own commentary on her own people. He realizes, too late but not overall at a loss, that his having heard what his friends and family were thought of as by his own ears has made him harsher of opinion of those who came from her homeland. The unfairness of being treated as barbarian by those who had their own form of barbarism had turned him into them for these few unchecked moments where his having given way to feeling as a brother to her had left him unprepared to have a tender heart prodded by a needle he had heard too many times from her peers.

Maghrib had not been kind to the teacher of Mira, but would Mira have been any kinder to a teacher of Maghrib who had come to train a daughter to do that which others in the land had thought of as unthinkable sacrilege against her own Ra-given spirit?

He bears her ire, therefore, in proper repentant silence - gleaning her true heart from what she had to say in the earnestness of the offense he’d given. Her apology is spoken in the ire she had earned, and he finds himself rather glad of her upbringing in those moments that it was fully aflame. Then her rationalizing comes to light and he blinks in surprise at his very apparent misstep. She has much of it correct-- but only correct by what limited amount he’d spoken of. It is why he ought not have taught her in a realm as Brother to First Wife, but as unwed woman and teacher. He is trying to rush the learning, rush into the things that his brother most feared of their match -- he was being too much blindered by what had already become and what needed the swiftest banking.

He is looking at his feet when she returns to look at him, to speak to him in better kindness - and his attention snaps back to her with the apology plain on his face. “I spoke in pain and panic. It was unwise and unkind and utterly opposed to the relationship I wish to have with my brother’s First Wife.” he responds. “Hearing it from your view is enlightening and I hope you can bear to have me more peaceably explain as you have just opened the door for me doing.”

He gives pause, but not too long, thinking she’d know her own mind enough to be prompt if she wished him gone from her place in the desert. “I did not think you thought my brothers and I capable of rape-- but I did think you thought us so… like what your People would say of us as to covering the same mare in the same season for no more than a peace in our loins. It was that that offended, not that I believed you would think us rapists. Perhaps I am too tender in my oft battered honor, but that was terribly close to what your kinsmen and peers took my behavior for when I was living amongst them in your noble’s house.” He wondered if the unfeeling coupling having been done in front of him hadn’t felt a little bit taunting too, unnecessary in timing and place, of the mare he’d mentioned didn’t have something to do with it.

“For my part, too, I believe in my earnestness to give you the greater picture, I painted us in just the right way - sexmad nad utterly losing our faculties - to have you believe it of us. I thought the terms of wives refusing their husbands and that being a joy and not a pain would have spared you that thought of me or my brothers. I find myself properly corrected. I will not let my eagerness to assuage your misgivings about your lot to alter how I have tutored you in the past again.” He offers a hopeful tilt of his head, extending a muzzle and even clacking his teeth as a foal might to an adult in hopes that the ire he’d built in her might subside and leave them friends.

“I must apologize for my dismay regarding your way of life, it was no different than feeling the dismay you had over mine. I find myself still raw since my time in Mahgrib and was so often told in hypocrisy of my and my People’s barbarism that I did not think to look at how that colored their behavior and therefore my own thoughts of your lifestyle in myself. Introspection is the key to behaving as wise as one’s intelligence would paint them.” Then he tries whittling the anger over her belief of their said system out and translating for himself her misunderstanding of the Priestesses. “As for your birth, you might have been born to a Priestess of Min, but you would not have been raised in a household… it would have been with the Temple and as an acolyte. You would not have known any other life - and you would have been raised the better for it, in my opinion, than any of the children of royalty who were made to acknowledge their breeding...”

“You would have been given your choice of temple, though, Sayyida. You would have been raised among the gods gardens, freer than the birds in Shu’s embrace. There is not a child that would have been less constrained to station than you. You may have chosen to teach the nobility what a man might do to please a woman, how they might not hurt her or be too heavy a burden to her, how certain herbs might stifle them so that courtship would remain civil and good in the eyes of a father. You might have decided to train in the herbs that help a woman bear her beloved the son that their coupling had denied them, to comfort the women that were barren in spite of the burning of Qetesh in their season, to be the womb they needed so that they might yet have a child of their Husband - if the scholars did not find purpose to bar you - or to be the supplicant of your sisters who might instead offer themselves to that office in utter selflessness.”

He tilts his head, mimicking the idea of shifting view, “Or maybe you would become a Sister of Pakhet, chosen among women to hold a man to his Vow of protection and fidelity to his wives. Maybe you would have become Justicar, presiding over the sentences of men who did wrong or mares whose behavior was not of the gods divine instruction. Maybe you would have chosen to be a daughter of Thoth and learned histories and rites and vows and claims -- guiding those who come to you for the truth of law. Maybe you would have even found yourself in the military, a Priestess of Maat to hold the fragility of the soldiers together and offer advice as to how to unburden their souls before battle might take them and so allow themselves entry into the Afterlife or a Priestess of Pakhet hunting the enemy in stealth or Daughter of Sekhmet defending your High Prince as he led from the front and charged into battle.”

“Neither you nor your children would have been forced into that service. The temples of which I speak were interchangeable or else only the Temple of Min or Qetesh would find safety. Sometimes too, sister, a child would be born so of a mind to be a Wife or a Husband that they were relinquished to the parenting of a family who wished a special boon of their Patron god. Your mind tells you that you would have been doomed to teaching sex and giving pleasure, but what I tell you is that you would have been freer as a child born to a willing Priestess who was so moved as to choose that life - selfless and even in the earnestness of hoping to do good in that office - and given your head to make a mind for yourself what god your might serve or what life you might wish.”

His voice falls softer, his sigh clear enough in his tone that he needn’t sigh in truth. “I am pained that our upbringing has caused you only further dislike… know that Antares was young… all of us were. We did not learn from our parents because of much the same sacredness that we perceive in it that you hold to it. That office is performed only by those consecrated to a goddess, Sayyida, and there are many rituals and rites meant to treat it as such....” He settles into that tone for the length of his words, ears moving to the sides in discomfort for having to push on. “Antares spoke to me of his, and our experiences were much the same. We were to be dedicated to Min so that it was the god who took the priestess chosen for us and not we ourselves. Only a Priest or Priestess of Thoth would know their birth name, should the priestess conceive. We knew only that we were then learned enough not to cause our Wives harm or disservice. Antares is the only one of us that even knew what became of it - as his station demanded the right to know if he were fertile and virile as the inheriting prince from among my father’s sons. He flew into a rage that surprised even my father when the identity of the child was kept from him, when he was told that all the child was allowed to be was proof of his ability to get a mare with child. It was that proof that was provided to your father that he was worthy of being the binding tie of Mira to Mahgrib. Your father made a good deal of grief for terms regarding his assumption that we would not be able to prove that you would get with child… and that Mahgrib would lose the honor of it’s princess for nothing other than a rutting eunuch.”

He smirks, clearly not at all making words up for himself on that last. “Please forgive my own bias and ignorance causing this rift between us. Or perhaps widening the one our people and lives already created. I understand that I am not a woman to understand how it must be for you; it was only having seen what he had done to Lady Indira and his shame for having done it at all, much less done it so savagely and poorly… I thought that you might find relief that it was not an act that he willed on her or chose flippantly in some idiotic defiance of you. If you are not yet tired of my attempts, so clumsily as theyve been, imagine standing beside Antares or a crush from your home in your youth. Every day for years, that drive that consumes you when you are beside my brother… That burning flame that Qetesh gave to women to meet the fires of Min-- every single day branding you in the belly and you must never touch, you must not even think of it, because if you are distracted you are dead. You are dead and a brother will be made to marry outside of love. You are dead and your people will maybe lose the war for the loss to morale as your death will bring. You are branded day after day by the ache that comes with the season, embarrassed to even think of being too weak willed to withstand, forbidden to take the doping herbs because you must command your army, feeding passion into battle day after day to try and make the burning subside a little, taunted -- I saw it enough times -- by women warriors who find sport in your pain and think perhaps they might disgrace your betrothed who has no hope to compete with them because she is forbidden to see you until the war is won.”

He looks at her, not sure if he can read her face. “He kept it all at bay in the only way he could, and then despaired because he did not remember how it was meant to be when the heat was on his betrothed. I half think he ran for fear of himself touching you disgracefully or falling on you like some barbarian your people took him for - though I do know for certain that his heart of hearts craved and admitted that he yearned for his Soul Sewn. His indiscretion with Indira was one born of two broken warriors who had seen too much war and were too angry to be kind or gentle - flung into the office they believed was all they had left… and then finding themselves entangled for an utterly unforeseen purpose until it was done.”

He shakes his head, “But I forget the pain even that might bring you - and I wish to bandage wounds, not pick at them. Instead, how about we discuss how your people became admirable, rather than abused my tender Miranian sensibility?” He smiles, settling back onto his belly with almost childlike excitement in his face. “I have never seen a more noble creature than your mother’s brother. I had been in quite a state in the nobleman’s home that I described - stamping my hooves in what I thought was a private place to feel myself outwardly… He took me aside, having found me near to a fury and talking myself into challenging for the young woman despite my clear lack of training, and when I asked if anyone-- if he --would take me in… He called me his Guest and I realized what true honor was to Mahgrib.”