His mother had been regal and firm, but there was a side to her only her eldest son knew. There was a fire in her belly that she stamped down for the good of her people and only let out when there was a great battle that called her into service in the absence of her Husband. He had been witness to it once. Once and once only. Sirius had been called to the front, her third son’s life in jeopardy with a Tribe of Sobek hitting the left flank of their troops in a costly war.

Atair was in the bloody thick of the fight, terribly far for his father to get there before massive casualties. Aldebaran, fierce in his need to save his brother and the men nearly broken - his companion’s heart burst and his own lungs and heart in dire straits, not mentioning the desperate state of his legs and hooves. Rigel gone off to a kingdom to teach a tamed woman to be her eldest son’s bride - the Temple thinking to bridle him using her… Her fury had found its peak.

He had never seen his mother run before - but he would never forget it. Wild with the rage of impotence to save her children, she extricated herself from her daughters and Lesser Wives, her sons and her Ladies in Waiting. She slipped away in a place even he might have missed if he had not been taking to the same sands for weeks after his betrothal to the then yearling Amira Sayyida bint Abdullah.

Wild. Wild was the only word for what she looked like - possessed of every fiery creature in Set’s great army. She shrilled and screamed her bellowing challenge to the gods. She raced the wind and trampled Shu underfoot. Such was her well of emotion that he utterly still as if in the presence of a lion or a leopard or a hyena; he stood there and he thought he might drown in the wash of it pouring out of her. It was there that he recognized the demon in Atair. It was there he knew where the speed of Aldebaran came from. It was there that he knew where the passion of Rigel originated. It was there that he understood why she knew he could hide what he felt when he gave all the right answers despite every cell of his being screamed out.

It was a memory that spoke to him when he saw his mother for the last time. It was the memory that stirred him into obeying the pleas of his brothers - to free himself and hide himself no longer. It was the memory she revealed she knew he had, though not straight forward. His embrace turning him rigid as her voice bid him to run mad in the sands and never regret what was behind. To look beyond, she said, was always her Gift of Sekhmet’s fate.

He thinks now she knew he would never return.

"My beloved, there is nothing to forgive. Who else is therae to bear witness to the base feeling in your heart?" She smiles, but he knows what she wants is him to forget his poor, coarse, handling of her in the tension of his altering his obedience to his gods. What the Temple had tried to do for so long - she pulls from him with nothing but a short stint of harsh tone. "Your heart hurts, my love. Kindness and gentleness do not come easily or without work, and we are still finding one another." He nods, acknowledging his own pain - remembering now that it was safe to feel it rather than turn in feigned anger to avoid seeming weak. Here, with his First Wife, he could afford to be weak for those precious moments.

He begins a soft exchange of washing, though she needed none of it. She is so beautiful it makes him feel rich with blessings, even without the passion that had fed him so fully many nights in succession before. She buries his face into him and she is weeping before he knows what to do with it. "Besides, you are no man of stone. You carry far too much passion for such a thing to be true." He is quick to reply, smiling gently, confusedly a little too, "Then only pretending to be, never so with you if you can help me remember it, Wife," he coos.

He washes her, both during silence and in her questions regarding their guests. They trade touches and rushes of water, him describing his thoughts so that she might know his mind the better for it. He is easily removed of Eness and his brother’s flaxen woman, easily ignorant of the tricky Bhaskara with her unusual brother. He breezes over the fiery mare Sakhmet because she was not keen on him and had shown no signs of interest. Her lack of interest had made her easy to overlook for now, but he did not voice much in knowing he’d need to offer a lie or to deny her if he spoke much more.

They were touched of the same god and she was a mighty one that might have made his Household stronger for her addition to it -- but that had never moved him before, so it did not do so now. If he was honest - he thinks there is something yet to be uncovered in the strange bond between Eness and herself and he was never one to bet on a wild card when such an office was better taken to by Rigel or Atair.

She gives her word on the two that visit, but it is a passing interest that does not offer much more than his own thoughts, so he does not choose to dwell any further on someone so mired in mystery as those two.

He feels her rest against him, leaning and he hums satisfaction for her more extensive press of her hide to his. They are a beautiful pale pair and the moonlight makes them only the more pale seeming. Two ghosts of the afterlife swimming in the Nile. "The lesser wives do not have to be pure, do they? Is she soft like our Eness or fierce as Sakhmet?" She asks, seemingly out of nowhere, and he perks his ears as he hiccups his washing of her over her haunch.

"We did have quite a time in negotiations with your people when they realized your household would include the impure of Arabian breeding. What they did not want to understand is that we bred with those of the desert - those who submitted to Mira - and gained in size and strength and alliance… and we even broached into the breeds of the Steppes and the Peninsula beyond the Dunes and Wastes. We were smarter in tactics of war - but there were such horses there as made you think of thunder when they galloped - even over sand. The Tekes we largely left alone - they have a madness about them regarding purity… or at least the ones nearest to Mira did and Maslakhat does not seem to break that trend."

He chuckles loudly after that, though, "Oh goodness - it seems that I turn into my brother when I worry of your jealousy of me. Yes. Yes, Lesser Wives are not turned away from even the royal Households. They will not inherit, like in your country, but in ours they may hold stations as high as they deserve through merit."