Rigel
[REE-gehl]
▻ dhaniya ✮ varajakshi ◅
▻ mṛgaśira ♀ ◅
She is more than he could have hoped to salvage of that one-time home he’d been born into, raised respecting and loving. She was also his first defiance. Her Husband had abused her, treated her so ill in his shabby home. Tormenting Rigel by using her ill had been that fellow’s mistake. That was when he’d first realized that rules and traditions could be used to bastardize life rather than fulfill it or give it meaning. It had been a jarring thing to realize, even though he was no innocent in the ways of the world by then anyway. She had been so gentle, so kind, and it had made him sick to know what life she led in that stallion’s home.
He doesn’t even perceive the much larger stallion that’d claimed her now looming in the background, his eyes only for his once-lost Wife and the fact that not only can he see and smell her - but her voice crosses the chasm between them just as sweetly as it had ever done. "Rigel?" She seems surprised and it is only right. When the brothers had left, it had been in eagerness and leaving Aldebaran behind to inform them they were getting Aminah, Antares’ princess, formally accepted and recognized by the priests of Mira. Aldebaran had said only the minimum, for which he was now immensely regretful, and it had taken years for the brothers to be broken free after Aldebaran finally realized that it all had turned pearshaped.
But the fool hadn’t told his charges why he left… had run headlong into the world beyond the islands to rescue them. "It is me..." she says and there is almost a physical crumpling before he catches himself, his eyes only [and suddenly] recognizing the stallion beside her then. "Wh- wh-what happened to you?"
He hesitates now that he realizes there may be a reason that he’d followed her to a home-island instead of the common lands. "They separated us slowly… incarcerated us so that we could not return…" He cannot help but try to posture a little, for all that he would not be great in a real fight with the stallion beside his long lost Wife. "The priests tried to brainwash me, though they called it ‘reconversion’ as if I had left the faith simply for my choice in wives - just as you knew they would when you refused to flee with me. Then they handed me to Mahgrib for the crime of coveting their noble’s wife…" Her, he doesn’t have to articulate. "He was terribly cross at me for having ‘corrupted’ you."
His ears split now in uncertainty. His head lowers to the stallion at last. "I beg your forgiveness, I am Rigel… I-- it has been a long time since my incarceration and I was not fully aware of anything other than my Wife. It was rude of me not to recognize--" he can scent the permeating presence of this stallion in the lands, "the Lord of this place." He lowers his head further, "I hope you will not hold my insolence against me, sir."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ ten years - arabian - black sabino rabicano - 14.3 hh ◅