Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ ◅
He watches her try to process his level of common autonomy, as well as peer-speaking, and it is clear it is not her idea of what his people’s leader should exhibit. He tries to reel in his importance, his autonomy a little more, but he is not a slave, nor is he a submissive man. He would follow imposed law as he had under his father and Maslakhat - but he would not be willing to vacate his charges to her rule entirely. He tries to find the middle ground both can accept as he adapts second by second.
"That makes sense… however if you wish to remain, I wish to make one small change." she poses to him with an intensity that dared him to deny her, "You seem wise, a leader among your people. It would be foolish not to take advantage of that. I would like you to become the second of my herd, an authority in the Dunes when myself or my consort is otherwise engaged. This will give the appearance of a united front even if we wish to lead separately." It is a reasonable request to those who were unaccustomed to larger kingdoms than a single herdland, large and vast as the Dunes may be, but he had been crowned to rule over a scale of thousands as she had proposed before-- so it offered even more perspective than perhaps her much longer time as a leader in The Lost Islands than himself.
"It will be important for our herds to interact with one another on occasion so I believe it wise that we come together on occasion to exchange news and ensure that everyone recognizes one another." She offers reasonably and he can see the subtext implied therein. She wanted to be seen, to be known, as his superior - and she had every right to claim such a thing from him. He was asking her leave, and she deserved to give it in the manner that solidified her place beyond his agreements in private. "Plus, I am sure your family will need to familiarize themselves with my daughter Rhaenys. I am sure you will find her crossing your path more than once in a day’s time and I assure you her name is much more effective than silent curses."
When she poses all that she wishes to add, he waits a moment, mentally storing information gleaned from her equally expansive communication and adjusting their obvious mutual bartering. "You pose a fair point, although I wish to offer an insight that might moderate that condition a little." He would of course wait for a sign she was willing to entertain his wish at all - as he had found she much needed him to do in order to keep from feeling challenged in her authority. "I propose that in order to be seen as an entity that deserves to remain untouched during an assault on you - too deep of a devotion or integration with your people and duties and power source will eliminate the safety of sending your vulnerable to me when disaster strikes."
He allows time for this to sink in, to be mulled over. "If I am simply a part of your kingdom as a Co-Leader, I am seen as an accomplice to your every enemy although I have done nothing to have earned that ire and attack. I would inherit dangers I did not purchase by my own deeds, taking on those of yourself and those you choose for allies, and thereby become useless as a non-aggressive safe haven for the injured, peaceful, young." He tilts his head, reasoning aloud so that she could hear where his thought trails led him, "I would earn no enemies from you or for you by simply defending the land that houses my people, however, as that is expected of me as a leader of any kind. And my defense of the incapable could not be charged as alliance in the social justice of the islands -- only a kindness and fairness to those who cannot support themselves against violence."
He does not plan to reject her notion entirely, however, for he is not so stupid as to deny her a single request outright. "Perhaps an agreement can be reached through this: I will do what I have promised - keep to the eastern portion to keep my family from openly troubling your own, provide you insulation from any incursion that might cross my partition of your lands or at least provide a warning of trouble to come, provide you any individual who breaks the law of the Dunes or provokes animosity within our borders, give sanctuary to any that come to flee disaster that cannot support or defend themselves… and we shall meet on the southern shores for an exchange of information and culture to better understand one another moving forward." He pauses, filtering through that elaboration of what he had offered her - preparing the final concessions with a careful eye rising to train on her own to feel out how she reacted as he spoke.
"As to appropriately address a unity enough to give outsiders pause without taking onto myself whatever politics and so forth you have already sown, I will also agree to fight for and defend the land herself as if it were my own when you are not capable of coming to her aide. I will not fight your personal battles, nor will you fight mine. We love the Dunes and so we share the defense of her..." He pauses though, his eyes suddenly darkening and his ears lace back into his mane so even a man of an average 15.2 hands seemed more like 17.3 instead. The beast in her might have reveled in the beast in his when he fixed his eyes to stare into hers firmly. "But as for the children-- we will both fight for their sakes, no matter what child or whose it might be. Of my people or yours, friends or enemies, the children are not to be touched."
It is his daughter, Aminah, that he thinks of now. The daughter he had lost to nefarious plotting and usage. She had been taken and he would suffer no others to be treated as she had been. Children were precious, were gifts, and it did not matter the origin of the child. "I cannot abide those who use or harm the young. I will not be party to it, nor stand by to permit it when I am able to stop it, so long as breath still exists in my lungs."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅