Meadow

There is something grotesque about seeing my beautiful Husband brought so low; a contradiction to the tableau before me that I cannot shake. I have seen him bloodied from his spars with his brothers, but never starved nor so downtrodden. He looks as though the weight of the world has not just been laid across his shoulders but dropped upon him like a boulder.

It doesn't feel real.

But his voice is the same, and the sound of my name on a familiar tongue (especially one so beloved to me as Antares) brings the tears spilling from my eyes. He was real, and he was here. I didn't understand how or why, but such trivial matters seemed far less important than the fact that I could touch him again. As he reached for me, I did the same, drawing in small, frantic breaths of his familiar scent.

I found myself mute as my Husband began to explain, my mind whirling with too many questions to allow any single one to rise to my lips.

Where was Aminah? Where had he been, and where were the brothers now? How had he even come to be in such poor condition? Further, how did he know about the Dunes? Had he come here before me, as the officials had claimed?

He compliments me far more than I deserve, and the praise brings tears rising to my eyes, although I do not think they come from a place of vanity. While I feel rather much changed - my mane and tail salt and pepper, and my body nearly as pale - his recognition is enough to pacify any fears I might have had of my appearance. Rather, to hear him speak of me so gives me hope that the love we once freely shared remains intact, and that I may once again be able to hold my Beloved close to me and face a future - together - that was not bleak and lonely.

He speaks again, offering me a brief explanation of what had happened and my heart broke for him. I had had my suspicions about the official's story even when they had fed it to me, piece by piece, but without proof what was I to do? I could not linger outside of Mira's borders for long, nor would that benefit me if they had been telling the truth. To know for certain now that they had lied to me stung, but not so much as what came next.

Aminah has chosen to stay.

To stay? Our daughter decided to stay with those that had abused her father so? With those that had turned her mother away?

I could not hold the tears this time. Not even hearing that Aminah had done it for our own benefit could lessen the guilt and pain that buried my heart and I shook my head silently. I wanted to draw away from my Husband, to throw myself into the sand and weep at the tragedy our life had become, but I did not. I saw his shaking, and threw myself into that instead, wrapping myself around him so that by holding him, I might hold both of us together.

I believed in our daughter's strength, but she had not been raised beneath the machinations of our respective cultures but in a blend that we had adapted for her. Who would be there to guide her through the minefield of politics and policy? I would feel better if Rigel had been able to stay with her, to guide her, but I knew that was a foolish notion. If they would not allow our daughter her father, why then her uncle?

"It is I who has failed you," I manage to mumble, tears dampening my cheeks and his neck. "I should have never insisted on going home; I should not have separated us."

At the time, I had been so homesick for the familiar that I had convinced not only myself, but my Beloved and my brothers that my family would be happy to see me. That they would hold no grudge for my disobedience given that it had worked out in the end and the alliance had been made.

I had been wrong, so very wrong.

While Mahgrib had never officially blamed Mira for my disappearance, the public opinion had definitely shifted that way and had increased tensions between the two nations to nearly their breaking point. I wasn't entirely certain of what all had happened in the interim, but Mahgrib had certainly not fared well during this tumultuous period and both public opinion and diplomatic relations had faltered. After all, why would any kingdom trust an alliance with my father if he was just going to send his daughters away the day before their weddings? And thus, my father resented me despite publicly celebrating the return of their Princess and the solidification of the alliance between Mira and Mahgrib.

A part of me wondered if all of this - my "quest," my Husband's capture, Aminah's decision - were not just ways for him to get back at me for disobeying him.

In the end, it did not matter. Our daughter was locked into a future that I could see no way to free her from without also putting her in vast amounts of danger. Further, I needed to make sure my Beloved was healthy before he let his ambitions soar too high or too far. I still needed to learn how to accept my fate; and while the direction of my fate had shifted exponentially in a mere matter of moments, I knew that I needed to stop fighting for just a little while. To rest, and recover, before pushing on.

"We will figure this out, Husband," I said, with far more conviction than I felt, and I pulled away enough to search his gaze (still in awe that I could, again). "We need to find somewhere to rest first, before we can undo what has been done."