Atair
[ ah ty EER ]
✬ eness ✬
▻ al hilal ♂ & al murzim ♂ ◅
He had been a part of failed missions before, of course. It was not that he had not tasted defeat in the past, that he had not been shamed by his inability to finish a mission given to him by those who trusted his skill. It was that everything had gone so VERY wrong on his watch. They had been lulled by the belief that Antares was untouchable. They had been lulled by the familiar twists and turns of their old homelands environment. They had allowed themselves to be coaxed into the maw of a beast they could never have beaten in such close quarter combat.
He was one stallion, the seven that came to take him after Antares’ departure were simply stronger as a unit than he was as a single man. They’d taken Rigel already and knew that if he’d been left to discover the betrayal, they’d have had hell to pay. Much less if he’d discovered what they’d done to his twin.
They’d beset him after tainting his food, the water he had sipped, with numbers he would have struggled against at his best. Even now his eating was stunted, the cramps of his belly and the burn of his guts too sensitive for most foods. They’d kept feeding it to him in shifts so that he’d never know what meal was poison and what was simply a meal, what drink would spur the tension in his stomach or relieve it.
He washes ashore to the Dunes half delirious from saltwater, mistreatment, and too long spent in a fog of detoxification on the road. He knew he had been with Rigel and Aldebaran when he was in that plateaued state - that he had probably made himself worse traveling back from the wastes to Mira to free an already vacated Antares. Aminah had told him what she had declared to her father, that spitfire of a girl. She had also privately informed him of her intent to turn their ancient world upside down. He had bristled, but he allowed himself to be turned away - promising his Niece that she need only call and the Sons of Mira would return to fight for her if ever she chose to leave.
It is the fire in his belly over that that led him to making it even this far - trying to make it back home after not knowing just how long ago the Dunes had changed hands and thinking to find his Wife and sons there. The shoreline he lands on is the one nearest Aldebaran’s oasis and he makes it almost halfway there before he collapses by the fresh water - seemingly ignorant of the greenery or shade he’d managed to acquire.
Starved, detoxing, thirsty beyond coherence, he would be infuriated to know he was not even the worst of the three newly released brothers. He lays on his belly, legs crumpled at first as he drags them back underneath himself - a hoarse call escaping him with some effort. "Eness!" But it is all the energy he has left in him and he is not conscious the next moment, his body and mind desperately in need of rest.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ ten years - arabian - black with birdcatcher spots - 15.3 hh ◅