Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
[ indira ]
▻ jyeshtha ♀, aminah ♀ ◅
They had done a good job of trying to transform the former crowned prince into a vagrant, stripping him of dignity as much as they could without leaving him irretrievable in the eyes of his daughter. Just starved enough to tell his little girl that he had only refused to eat because he wanted to see her. They didn’t lie about him, at least… but they didn’t feed him even as well as others who were incarcerated, they didn’t stop groups of those being held from ganging up on him, they didn’t protect him from the sun or the winds when he was forced to be out.
Not irretrievable, but something in Aminah’s eyes told him that while she was more than happy to stay - she was not entirely fooled by their performance. It was why he finally agreed to leave her there. There was an intellect in her eyes, a knowingness, that had him relieved and even a bit proud as she told him to go and only to return upon hearing news of her wedding when she had acquired a Husband. He was to be exiled, the Priests and King had said, until that time. No longer Beloved of Hathor, Eyes of Horus, or any of that nonsense. Stripped of it all until his child became what her parents had run from… and only then permitted to don the titles he would be given as father to the Mira.
He looking at nothing, seeing nothing, wrapped up in his mind and beginning to shiver for the bite in the temperate air - when he hears hooves approaching. He hasn’t the energy yet to rise to a fight, too travel and abuse wearied, but there is enough life in him that he slowly shifts his neck so his head is angled to view the approaching individual.
"Belov-" the voice starts, stopping short as if the mare had choked on it…
His eyes, though once dull with his tiredness, seem to find some shine as soon as they lay across the perfectly featured face he had been so sure he would not see again. "Antares, my love, is that you? Really you?" His ears finally perk, his heavy head finally lifts, and though his first step towards her is half stumbled, he cannot withhold the nicker that rumbles half-disbelievingly in his chest and up his throat. He is too detached to actually perceive what his suddenly wide nostrils could have told him - too eager to touch the hide of his once-lost Wife. Desperate, deprived of so much more than necessities.
"Sayyida! My Beautiful One," he almost groans, reaching his chiseled (and gaunt) face out so he might touch her, at last. "I had not hoped I could find you again when I saw what had become of the Dunes." Her mane had since grayed, the years incarcerated in an attempt to brainwash his too-smart daughter having parted them so very long. "I am not the man I was, but oh you are more beautiful than the gods could bear, my love." His face crumples a little, beguiled by the familiar face and presence of his-- was she still His? --Wife. "They had told me they turned you away… I fought them but I was one against many and they had already taken Atair and Rigel away to the wastes… They would not let me chase after you--"
He grows still, still aching to touch her but afraid of what came next. "Aminah has chosen to stay… though her face told me she knew I was going to die fighting to free her and that she wanted to fight her own fight. She was not fooled, love, but I was too weak to even stop our little girl from taking up our mistakes to solve." His shuddering intensifies in that moment, feeling weaker by the admission of his failure, "She told me to leave until she was well married; I think she intends to topple the whole kingdom by herself and mold it after her own liking… I was so angry, so proud, so afraid for her..." He looks at last into Sayyida’s eyes, "I have failed you in every possible way."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅