Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ ◅
It is all very straight forward from the moment she demanded his voice and until the end of his talking. Sayyida was not a submissive creature, not really, but this was between himself and the actual ruling figure of this land. If his words were not enough, another stranger would not make Nyimara any more convinced - so it was easiest to allow one voice from both parties to make the metaphorical match in the air between them.
He knows that there are some things that cannot be easily accepted - especially an ambition ruler hearing that someone does NOT indeed want that place nor have that same level of ambition. He knows that simply making an offer was not going to be met with instant acceptance [it would have been more likely instant rejection if anything]. He watches the dark, silver haired, woman as he spoke and noted the way something swam behind her gaze when he admitted his former rulership or the way it settled into something that had a note of confusion and a flavor of disbelief.
All of it was fair, reasonable. His thick red mane is shaken as she speaks her suspicious first reply, "You are a wise leader of that I feel assured…" he had never needed praise, but he is glad what she sees is what is before her eyes and not what a mind could try and formulate between non-existing lines. "You are like I. You have lived many years and childish impulses are as much beyond your reach as my own." He laughs as she purrs at that, turning to Sayyida with amusement, "I don’t know, I have gained much through my childish impulses," the implication that his Wife was one of those things is so obvious by the look he gives her that it could not be misunderstood - "But I do not indulge in many - and none of them outside of my own household."
He provides personal information, allows a moment of vulnerability that would normally trigger the mad or insane - provoke a violence he would move to defend against but would also serve to prove stability in the mind of the one he might be giving lordship over them. "So you will remember that rot begins from the inside long before it makes its appearance to the visible eye." He looks at her with a serious air at that, looking as though the concept did indeed make sense to him and obvious hit a tender wound. "I know it all too well."
With only a small moment and breeze between them, she finally cuts to the quick. "Why should I trust the words of a stranger who seeks to come into my home with nothing to offer save patrols that will benefit him?" It was not as small a thing as she makes it out to be, he knows from experience, but he does not take offense - instead he hears from her that the price he offered was not enough to mitigate the risk. He would not argue with her, but posit a new position as to why it was, indeed, a sacrifice of his own.
"Because every woman, child, and follower in my care would be under your overarching rule. Because everything I hold dear would be vulnerable and open to that same rot from within if you were to turn on me. Because I am giving you the ultimate power to decide on the wellbeing of my people with none of the weight of managing them. Because you will be holding my very heart beneath the weight of your hoof and trusting you not to run mad with power, not to press your advantage and crush me beneath it."
It is an open answer with the kind of defenselessness that would only prove his point and drive it home. The one who had the most to lose, the most liability to cover, would be him. A leader who truly hadn’t the full might and power behind him. "And if that is not enough, there is also the knowledge that I have ruled and would know the burden of such a job. That I am, as you said, not prone to childish whimsy. I wish the happiness of my household and my people. I cannot maintain such a thing while screaming to the world that this corner of it is mine and to fight me if they think they can take it. Your rule, should you be fair and of good mind, would give to me the freedom to love and be loved and to focus on the needs of my people. I have lost enough in the name of crowns that were shoved onto my head, demanding me forsake family for its good."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅