Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
[ indira ]
▻ jyeshtha ♀, aminah ♀ ◅
He sees her, hears her, and it hurts part of him that she had grayed so much since they’d seen one another. Not that graying didn’t make her even more beautiful, it did in fact give her a more practiced appearance in the same way his own had begun to do. His bloodmark remained unchanged, and his mane had not taken up the graying factor as her own had, but the rose petal pink of his body had become a type of pink one might find in seashells at the lightest end of the spectrum. It was very nearly beige, but .
She gives him life, more than he had felt within himself since he’d noticed Rigel had been scarce in Mira and felt the growth of concern and dread rising within. She is everything he needed, his innermost soul told him so vehemently as to make him guess that it was desperate for him to let go of the shame and guilt he felt over leaving their daughter in the land of oppression he’d once thought to escape from. He could not argue, however, that if Sayyida was with him - all could be made well. She was irreplaceable in a way he almost felt guilty for. It was not that Aminah was replaceable, but that she had always been someone he’d known would break away from his care, would dismiss for her own Soul Sewn. Sayyida had been his since their marriage, in contrast, and it had felt as though someone had gutted him to know he might never see her again.
So all things considered, Aminah had been raised with inner strength and a sense of self that he trusted them to help insulate her. He would not have been allowed to stay either way - at least this way they had no hostages for the day that Mira would try and turn their teeth on her… they’d have found the fangs of Pahket there, savage and ready to strike back.
He can see what it does, though, to his Beloved. She had not been there to see the look, the gleam, in Aminah’s eyes. She had not been there to choose what must be done for the whole family… she had not the level of reassurance and acceptance that he now had built up over the time it took to reach the lost islands. He can see her confusion poisoning her with worries any parent might harbor, especially knowing where her child was now choosing to remain.
But as any worthy Mira, his new shaking drew out of her the desire to adapt and solve. She wraps into him tightly and he returns that with the cutting edge of his jawbone’s underside, with his less thickened neck. He begs her forgiveness and it is returned in kind, her mumbling drawing up a fire within him so that his voice and expression was one that might have been nearer to the ones she had in her memory. "No, you said nothing that I did not agree with - or we would not have gone so sparsely and so without caution. You insisted, but I was Sheik. I was your Husband and King, you would not have moved me so easily if I had not been as readily hoping to reconnect with my home as you had been."
"Aminah has those around her who did not approve of my treatment, nor that we were separated as we were. She may not understand machinations entirely - but Rigel was her uncle, and you know how easily he played us both for the sake of Varajakshi..." He sounds a bit reassuring, but there was enough in his voice to also tell her this was how he would heal from having to turn his back on her back in Mira. She pulls away then and shows the backbone, even if it was a falsehood, that he recognized.
"We will, Wife. I washed ashore on the Dunes first and discovered that things are much changed - but I also have discovered that it is quite open and without a secondary herd. Let us try that first. Our greatest time was spent not acting as rulers but making our family before Maslakhat’s death. Perhaps we can regain ourselves once more… and then perhaps word will spread and my brothers shall find us. I cannot imagine where they might go if not to these islands… but last I had heard, guards spoke of Aldebaran freeing the twins and racing into the borderlands between Mira and Mahgrib. There is hope yet that they will make it here."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅