I had stayed quiet, as I was bid, whilst my Beloved negotiated a place for us within the Dunes. The whole experience had been surreal for me in a way that I could not fully explain, and I could not settle my mind after it. I kept seeing myself as a young filly at my mother's side during my father's addresses to the people, my skin twitching with the life inside my bones despite the direct orders to be still and silent. A child, robbed of their childhood.

To have once been their Mira, their voice of reason and judgment and advice, to then be reduced to a silent Wife, was a hard pill to swallow after so much time away. I was instantly transported to the early days of our marriage, before confidence had filled my lungs and lifted my wings. In the long hours after that conversation, after my family had gathered in our old familiar oasis and bedded down, when the moon was the only light bright enough to see in the dreary autumn sky, I could not quiet my thoughts.

We had agreed that it would be less threatening for only one of us to do the talking, but was it a mistake to have obeyed my Husband there? I had seen with my own eyes the wicked intelligence and shrewd calculations on the chocolate mare's face. More still, I had seen the look on her face shift and close down as he named me as my Wife, and I remained uncertain of what it meant. Did she wish to bed my Husband? I could not stop them if they wished it so, surely she must know that. She had hidden her reaction too quickly for me to tell it's true origins, only that there was something between the sharp look she'd leveled at both of us.

In my heart, I knew that my Husband held no ill-will towards me, and that if he were to know my innermost thoughts he would likely do his best to accommodate me. Even so, I could not shake the desire to be someone else any more than I could shake the fear that this same desire was what had lead us all into trouble in the first place. Who was I to wish to be more than a Princess of Mahgrib, cast out though I was now; or the Mira of my beloved family, even if they were all scattered? I was blessed, and to ask more of my life, to want more of my life seemed greedy.

And yet... the vision I'd always had of living the whole of my life as the quiet, obedient, dutiful Wife to a man that would make all decisions himself felt tarnished, the paint worn and chipped in places. Just yesterday I'd been preparing to take my first real step into the world to face an unknown future.

Now, I was home, with my Husband and the prospect of more family to return: the very thing I'd spent years dreaming of recovering. And still, I doubted. More than anything, I doubted myself and my capabilities. I didn't know if I could still be the woman my Husband believed me to be, much less the one he would need in the days to come.

I sighed softly and paced along the ridgetops of the dunes in thought, my gaze still lifted to the full moon peeking through the clouds as if the bright globe above would somehow tell me all of her secrets if I was just patient enough to listen.