Even when he can’t see her, turning from her to look at the waters as he was doing, he can feel her tracking his movements all the same. She is impossible to fathom, but he tries because he finds her to be everything that he had accused her of and plenty beyond. She was perhaps more inclined to believe Eness capable of kindness, but he hadn’t realized the utter revulsion she held for all others until he looked up at her blatant statement of opposition to his appraisal of her. Shouldn’t he be trusted to know his own mind over someone utterly outside of it?

He does not attack her claim of truth, for all that it presumed him a liar, and simply listens to her continuing. "My beloved has already been cast under the spell of your brother, there is no sense in trying to appease me for her any longer." His eyes darken at the misbegotten view she had of his brother, no different than him calling Eness a hussy to her in as flippant a tone. Under a spell implied that Atair had done anything but try to keep her well at arms length while she and Sayyida insisted on teasing and prodding at him for his seeming lack of interest in a pretty girl.

Sakhmet tosses her head, as though she were punctuating the thoughts she shares, but he is easily caught up to her in a matched extended trot to hers. He watches her display with the same favor as he would any well formed mare with spirit and enough sense not to be stupid - but now he does everything he might to make her hear reason. "For one, you are flippant in offending my honor, Sakhmet. Do you not think it a mite cruel to determine for another creature the will of their own mind? I say you are welcome to my kindness and affection and you are not Ra or Shu or any other such god to tell me that you are not."

His words sound firm, but utterly bemused by having to articulate them. "I have no patience for empty gestures or playing games if they are not games of racing or pranks for my brothers. I gain nothing by lying to you, so perhaps you should simply accept that not every creature is as cruel as you have met in the past. Eness, after all, is proof enough. Isn’t it stranger to think your beloved is the only creature who knows you for beautiful and admirable? Certainly in all the world, there has to be more goodness than a single creature - no matter how good that creature is?"

He matches her movements without hesitation, using his agility to swap sides if ever she makes a too-sharp turn. "As for your slight on my brother, I must ask you to take it back. He has been nothing but avoidant, Sakhmet. He has avoided her since the moment he saw her -- what spell could he have cast?" Then with a shake of his head, moving past it towards the accusation about him. "I do not come to appease, or else why be so argumentative, ey? No, I came because, as I said… I know your pain in this instance. I came because you are a beautiful woman and I am sad to see you in pain without a means to fix it. I came because you are more spirited than Eness and you looked like you could drink the wind with me. I came because whatever thing the world has made you believe of yourself, Eness is not the only one who finds your company to be intriguing or valuable."