He is awake and racing after her the second she passes him by on the outskirts of their number. He knows that Atair will not, and probably couldn’t have kept even at-pace with her if he had. His head shakes and tosses to wake himself more fully, his strides broken and unprofessional while he still felt the weight of Nephthys’ shroud hanging heavily on him.

He is not far behind her even as she slows, heaving great breaths as he slows after only just finding his stride and pulls up well outside the range of kicking or intrusion. He knew that he was not necessarily wanted and he was loathe to cause a further burn to her heart by invading her space while she swallowed whatever reality that she needed to so far from her charge.

He follows at a distance first and keeps a disinterested air to leave her the semblance of privacy in her pain, but there is a time under the moon for such things and he prays to Isis for her to soothe the aching soul, Nephthys for a balm for her lamentations, and Shu to get her too drunk on the gods own wind so she did not try and take her vengeance out of his hide.

“Come. Race me,” he says with a face burdened with more seriousness than it was accustomed to wearing. He has known the pain she feels, though it had not been as selfless a pain as she bore. His lady of impossibility had been born of a rank seen as too low and breeding as too impure to indulge him in his fantasy - his First Wife still unchosen and no Lesser Wife permitted until that place was filled. “There is nothing so cleansing than screaming muscles, sand-seared lungs, and air-drunk sleep. Race me.”

“Fight with my god Shu, he likes a good battle of wills, no matter that he never loses.”