Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ ◅
The share a bond over their families’ betrayals, the loss of their eldest child, their best selves hidden behind the grime of all the ill done to them and the loss of their home as a whole. What had come out of it but pain? A new openness to the world, unhampered by bias and self-aggrandized beliefs. No longer did they need titles - only family. No designation could appropriately describe who they were to each other or what they all meant to one another. Not even Family fully articulated it. His seashell rose body against hers is all he decides he needs until his child sent word to bring any hellfire he could rain down upon those that would oppose her.
It had to be enough, although he thought it might never be for himself or his Wife. No more First, he decides in that moment. He would not take any wife but her again, his thinking colored so much by the vehemence of finding his Soul-Sewn in his heart and mind. She was everything to him and he wonders why he had ever considered taking any wife not herself-- and part of him knows why it is this way, wants to hide away why it is this way. He would keep it from her, he thinks. Keep the atrocities his father permitted in order to try and punish and rein him in in Mira. "Then we shall hope, as we rest. I could not bear to watch you swim in this condition, my love. You look as if I could push you over, let alone the ocean itself."
He chuckles at the latter part of her assessment, not entirely offended by such an honest description of how he not only apparently looked but felt within him to the core. She strokes along the base of his mane, the ridge of muscle and flesh fluttering at the sensation only partly because of his rising passion for obtaining the single most important creature in his mind at that moment. "Come, let me bathe you, and you shall tell me of all that happened to you."
His face falls, but when she moves to guide him to a freshwater pool he does not resist. It occurred to him that he had not truly bathed in quite some time - a little bit of shame prickling at what pride he had left. When he enters the water, though, he knows it is not dirt and blood but salt that would wash free of his body. It soothes him to know she would not see the version of him that Miran guards and royalty had seen. That his daughter had not seen because they had done what bare minimum they could to make him presentable.
"They were..." he starts, the lukewarm water heated by the sun soothing enough tension to open his maw. "They thought that they could convince me at first, take my punishment and forsake you to marry again and hold it over Maghrib… That I would take another cousin of yours or daughter of a noble. They actually brought them to me at first," His lips pull back angrily, his teeth bared as he bit down at the water's surface.
"Until they finally discovered that no herb could insense me enough and no woman could entice me enough." It is clear that they had tried fairly hard, the way her touch making his skin flicker told the story well enough. "I did not so much as look at them, Sayyida." He hadn’t realized that his eyes had closed as he spoke, but now he opened them to look at her with every atom of severity he felt blazing in his eyes.
"But I am sure you know that my father is not as cruel as to threaten his eldest and once well-loved son when he can otherwise hand over responsibility for me to those who have no compunctions he might. He thinks himself kinder that he does not--- did not wound me himself." He shakes his head and calms down, reaching for a tendril of her tail floating near enough to lip and tug. "Then those I had slighted or punished in the past came to have a time of revenge - always under the guise of re-conversion or repentance or trying to convince me for him. He let them and did not ask about the state of my being when they left - as if it kept him clean of what they’d chosen to do." He sighs, the cleaning and warmth soothing him another step. "They only fed me well when I was to be seen at the court or by our daughter - and there were a few times I had almost made it free, but when I failed so near to freedom the first time, they didn’t give me the chance when you came to find me." He finally relaxes that touches do not cause him to shudder, that he leaned into anywhere she pressed.
"There were worse things I heard about my brothers, though. They would send poisoned or affected food to Atair trying to stem his strength and fog his mind. They tormented Rigel in less physical and more mental and emotional ways than I dare hazard to guess. It was all I could do not to scream when I heard Aldebaran had come to the gates after you had left, hoping against all hope he’d leave me and find you instead of staying and being captured." he chuckles as if the idea was folly, "As if the priests wanted to fight with a priest of Shu." His darkness was fading, his body twisting towards her with a little light in the dark that seemed impossible to wash from them both, "did you know that they actually consider him Shu in flesh, now? A gods own Avatar? He caused THAT much hubbub for them and hassle all throughout the places he visited..."
But when the fun story settles in the air, his eyes soften - once again properly facing the one creature in heaven, hell, or the firmament of earth between them that he would ever need beside him to feel hope. "Let me wash you, clean off all the wasted time stolen from us and cherish being able to touch you at all after all the trials the stars woven into our life."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅