He is only too glad to leave the stallion Bahadir behind them in the conversation, jealous of Sayyida as he was and only the more jealous that she might have fancied him before. He knows her too tender of her oath to betray him, but he does wonder after her fancies despite owning her body and heart and soul as she did him. He begins to understand the qualms she must have over the Lesser Wives, but again, Isis was kind to women as Osiris was not kind to men. There was no amount of slaking the flames of Min that found a stallion lost for readiness in no time at all. Perhaps it was a curse, but he would not know it to tell Sayyida.

He is therefore glad to elicit a giggle from his beloved over the state of Rigel and his fancy in Shahrazad. It had come as a bit of a shock when he had mentioned a new Arabian who had a Teke travel guardian. Apparently he was amenable to her remaining with them, a part of their People as she was. He rather thinks that her future in acting as Voice of Wosret, her future in pairing his brothers to First Wives, be they Soul Sewn or not, will suit her. She already has the look of gears turning… but the bond between him and his First Wife does overcome him.

It is a treasure, the feel of her in the water beside him, the flow of it following the wake of her movements. He has a moment of weakness when she smooths down his haunch as she washes him, but he hides it with a pretend motion of dragging his upper lip across the surface of the water. He distracts himself by speaking to her about the dreams he held for their New World. He wanted so much to find a melding of hearts and faiths here, some place where there were none who felt they might never speak to their own gods again. A place where each pantheon was given a seat - and the gods who were owed supplication might find it from those who worshipped them. He does know, though, that she has found difficulty in some of his own faith and so he impresses upon her that he will change it - rewrite it - so that all might find peace.

He listens to his Wife, the Mira of their people, rapt and keen. Her wifely worship of his body does much to alleviate his worry, feeding it instead to the flames that tickle in his gut even then. She voices herself plainly and his ears perk as his head turns to her -- he knows in that moment that Rigel had not kept his shame secret.

"I cannot countenance the idea of our sons going to a Priestess of Min as she existed for you, my love. I would not be able to bear comforting them through such a loss, or through the uncertainty of not knowing." He looks away, the pain gripping him in his chest as he recalls his fight with his father, the wounds the nurses had needed to ply to healing with such sickening herbs and applications of paste. He is pained and he closes his eyes to keep his shame buried and deep. "I understand the purpose you place in such Priestesses, and the respite you have found in them here, too, but I will not stand aside to see such a loss of family perpetuated."

He nods silently, barring himself behind his closed mouth while his mind screamed for him to open it. To explain how he was no victim, could not be a victim as a Prince of Mira. He knows it to be a lie and knows he cannot lie to his beloved, no matter how he rails at the idea. "I will bear that pain, twice over. I will feel that loss, those losses, to the day I die. They haunt me and I will have no son of my blood ever to feel such anguish, nor the betrayal of unfeeling parents blinded by tradition, if my body still has breath to breathe."

His tone is dark, a remnant of the man that the one of two Priestesses had bleed mostly out of him. "But the office will remain. What the broken purposes did was hideous, but what learning was done benefitted all the women of my homeland. They will teach by word alone, explain the holy joining of Husband and Wife and teach the words to say before a Voice of Wosret or the Voice of Mut. As for the Priests of Qetesh, I value much in how your people covet the minds of their woman. They will be taught by mothers and aunties and grandmothers and the Lesser Wives who they trust - not any man that might see their office as fertile hunting ground. Even among those men who taught the daughters only through words, there had been enough failures to make me dislike the thought of their teaching our daughter to come. The boys will be taught by the Priests and Priestesses because I have found boys to heed another over their parents more often than to listen to a father or mother regarding their growing embers in Min or the fanning of the embers in a filly who caught their eye."

He looks at her, the pain and pent up anger bled dry by then. "Will that be acceptable to your Allah as I believe it might be acceptable to our Min and Qetesh?"