It had been hard, keeping himself from her, trying to be distracted by the varying degrees of laxness in his brothers. He was not like them. He hungered for the constant rumble of hooves from their homeland barracks. He dabbled in brawls here or there in The Crossing when he could - but it only staved off the yearning for action. He was unfit in such a state, unfit to be Eness’ companion in the way Sakhmet had been. But he had sworn to forsake all but his First Wife until her Golden Year was waned into the past. He could not find her a companion to soften the blow.

So he was especially tender towards Eness, kind and even sometimes open about the man she had married and bound her soul to. He was accommodating despite his immense discomfort at such weakness being exposed to even his dearest. Her loss of Sakhmet gave him pause because he shared this loss, and he knew that wound was his to bear the blame of.

He knew it and so he gives her time, gives her room, because he does not know how to heal her emptiness any better than he knew how to heal his own. He had thought he had found his equal when he had found her Sadiq. He thought he had found the woman meant to burn as brightly as he in the eyes of his Soul-Sewn. He had thought--- oh, but what do his thoughts matter? Perhaps his lacking heart, seat of emotional awareness, was doomed to emptiness after all. It was perhaps folly to think such fulfillment possible when the gods turned against you before even your birth.

But blessings, she stayed. Eness stayed. Eness who was even that moment coming down to him now.

Her soft voice calls to him in that same way it had always done, despite his manifold attempts to reject it. She asks him things, asks after his following her, and it makes him feel found-out for some reason. “Forgive me Atair,” His eyes close and he sighs, something like a knowing exhale rather than a disappointed huff. "We yearn for what could have been, what might have been. I do it in my way, too, but you have only more reason to need the light of your Allat, Wife." She is like a nebula come to rest in the milky way of his coat, his rabicano bride long-since-been.

"I am restless for reasons beyond your longing prayers to your goddess. I was awake and simply trying not to wake you when you left." It was growing to be a greater and greater disruption to his self-control, the crisp breath of autumn breathing life into Min and Qetesh. "Your husband is mortal and more weak willed than he’d like for you to realize." It is a small game that he had begun to play, shy flirtation hidden in self-deprecation she never believed or agreed with. He was no romantic like his heart-wielding brother - but the raw power of his emotions were never in question any more.

"I have left Aldebaran to watch the Oasis and the others. He will come only if Antares cannot be summoned. The night is ours, if you want to walk the dunes with me.".