"It may not be as we grew up with, but it seems to me a happier wife would grant a happier time overall. As First Wife, chosen as the first mare of one’s house or chosen later as sometimes happens, they might be given peace in the knowledge of their importance and an initiation into the rights they do hold. We will not be amongst women of Mira who know they have say -- who knows what customs they are used to, what rights they had in their homeland. It is best if they be given them and be shown the respect due their position even from their own Husbands… though I do not know if every Husband might be as patient as Atair in being made to wait a full season as well be bound to a single mare the next. She is in a glorious position to have a stallion made of stronger will than most." he grins, amused, but Sayyida is quick to mention Shahrazad and of course his long-windedness is diverted.

He notes her smile widening, suddenly noticing the bigger grin and the implication in her amusement and glee over his having found someone so alike in nature as he was. How does he explain that she does not, as yet, call to him as Eness to her Atair? How does he express the very real likelihood that happiness was not for him. Atair’s and his own deficiencies were known both to others and to them. He for his soulless hunger for knowledge so that sometimes he seemed most callous. Atair for his heartless bloodfever that consumed much of his youth so that he was seen as nigh a monster.

"As long as we are ridding ourselves of old and dusty notions my brother, I know in my heart that you need not worry. You were born together, but as two separate creatures. Neither Allah nor Tawaret would be so cruel as to leave you without the potential for your own Soul Sewn, brother." Her youthful hope heartens him some, but there is some real emptiness that moments like this expose to him and he cannot say he believes her wholly. "I will pray to Tawaret to show me purpose in being born and made to doubt her ample goodness - or perhaps pray to Ma’at to show me her intention of balance among twins."

"In truth, after you told me of your experience in Mahgrib as evidence of your gentle heart, I would have thought you would be the first to find your Soul Sewn." He chuckles, known to be a vast romantic and therefore prone to romantic notions like she shared tonight. "I think though, that Atair needed it more. It is a fearsome thing to believe yourself unlovable."

"He was fed to the demons of Sekhmet before he knew what it was to have a heart. He learned war before he heard his voice grow deep enough for the warrior’s bellow. He learned to kill before he learned to cover a mare to create life. Whatever shards of a heart were given him, they were seared out of his chest. I think his soul made him stable, offered him the chance to survive it through the sheer magnitude of his will and his spirit. For me… it was much the opposite. The solitude of learning, the emptiness of other people save words recited without much inflection or room for movement of the mind, the protocols to obey beyond ones own will - it is likely the same had been done to my own soul. Maybe that is why we both chose to help our brother flee. Aldebaran to be freed of his rank, Atair to find some heart, me to find some soul, and Antares to become who the gods had intended outside the stranglehold of the Temple that turned from the gods slowly but surely"

She basks in the night and he closes his eyes and lets his face lighten in the moonglow. "I fear I will not be able to sleep tonight Rigel. If you will be up longer still, perhaps you can teach me of the other rights? So that I may know of all the things I should consider before I am called as the voice of Worset again."

"There are many, too many almost, to expect you to learn them all - and perhaps learning them at all will bar you from becoming the Mira that this place needs. Antares has spoken to me of your talk, seeking my guidance for creating a world anew for those who come from here on forward. I know you have a new purpose in the wives and the Priestesses and Priests of Min and Qetesh. Such freshness of mind makes me hesitate to teach you more than that which might hurt you to be kept from." His two-tone tail swishes idly across his hocks, but he tousles his own mane with a shake and looks back to her. "I am surely the last you thought to hear that from, but I will not deny my Mira, should she insist to know of her husband’s former culture. I only pray you will allow me to make them brief so that you may not be colored by a system that has so many flaws when you seek to make a world anew."

He smiles, then, looking at her with conspiracy in his eyes and a grin spreading his lips. "I do have one thing that Antares has mentioned… The name of king… he looks to put it aside and call himself Sheik instead. He does not bear the taste of stagnation that title gave him back home. And as for the kingdom. He plans to call you Mira as a respect for his mother and her mother and every mother of Mira before -- but the Kingdom itself he has chosen to follow the term used by the Tribes of the Wastes and the Vagabond caravans to label he and his siblings. Sadim. Nebula. The wash of many stars and the dust of stars in one place, a place of forming and creating and newness."