Antares
[an TAH rez]
✮ sayyida ✮
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ | nashira ♀ ◅
Suddenly the world was still.
The family had gathered, the prodigals were home, the world spun just a little slower.
What that left in him was a chasm in which he started to fall deeper and deeper. Stillness reminded him of the idle captivity he had endured, the way his days consisted of time spent only in his own mind, reminded him of Mira and permeated his every cell. Once the ‘work’ of regaining a place in the world for the Sadim had slowed to a mere drip… he could see the evidence of their history left in its full weight on their present. He could feel every scar in much more vivid detail - mental and physical.
Her too. That beautiful pink haze on the periphery of his vision even now, glowing with a bare sliver of moonlight breaking the palm canopy above them. When his beautiful Wife was asleep, when he stirred too late in the night for even her still to be fighting in her own heart and mind at night - he could evaluate the drawn lines of her body and face. He could see how his failures had written themselves into her poise, her confidence, her comfort. He loves her so much, the fact that she is with him gives him so much more strength, but he can see what his mere existence has sown in her life. Her belly swells with evidence of their little remaining joy, their bond made tangible and real a second time - but part of him now wonders if that joy is more bittersweet for her like for him.
They had a new child incoming, a joy and gift, but their other daughter was trapped in dangerous waters. He had not missed the hiccup in her expression when she’d seen Jyeshtha, although he did not know whether it was his ignorance of youth that still wounded her or if it was because Jyeshtha was not one captured and enduring Miran law that had brought the flash of pain to her face anymore.
His brown eye glances back towards her, his hips flex to stand him once again on all four feet. He needed to talk to her. He needed to confront what it was that they both tried so hard not to say. He had tried to ignore, push through, believe that it was all going to come back around for them if he just patched their family back together. It wasn’t so. Without her shoulders beside his, he simply wasn’t enough. Not for himself, not for them… having duties and roles was not having a bonded Sadim.
He lets her sleep, his eye keen as he watches her in silence. He had been too selfish, too desperate to find some way he could make up for his failings -- so that he’d simply failed her again.
He waits until she stirs of her own volition, opening and blinking her eyes, and drew near -- suddenly scared to touch her in spite of having done so every day since their re-arrival home. He had taken the yoke onto his shoulders and dragged her along for the sake of sanity and it was time to stop. It was time to see the wounds and not balk like a spoiled prince too desperate for happiness to finally find him to see the negativity of the world. Damaged and wounded did not mean broken - only needing a bit of tender care.
"Wife," he chokes, looking at her with every stamped-down self-flagellating feeling filling his eyes, "how do I lead anyone when I cannot even protect our precious--" He wonders if it is selfish to add his woes to hers, to remind her of his sins against her in such vivid admissive terms. Was it not a sin to otherwise lean on her, not on his own strength? His ears flatten against the words that’d been fed to him like the poison fed to Atair to cripple his strongest self. "I cannot keep pulling us all along-- but it is the only way the stillness doesn’t swallow me up so entirely that I simply evaporate."
The ‘almighty’ crowned prince is absolutely absent from him there in the haze of morning, looking to a younger and already burdened woman as if even a drop of dew from off of the canopy could collapse his back. "I tried to simply surge forward until the weight was simply gone and it all was fixed-- but I think I am only going to fail if I keep trying blindly." He swallows, throat thickened with shame but at the very last vestige of capability he possessed, "I know Mira and Mahgrib would never demand this of you - that I am only failing you again by asking this..." Another failure for the saddest excuse of a prince Mira had ever seen after such immaculate breeding and upbringing…
Aldebaran had once spoken to him about what it was to ‘burn out’ and that he needed what racers had -- pony horses that drew up your stride at the end of the race, that stood beside you to keep your heart from bursting over the mere excitement of waiting for the race to begin. He needed someone who pulled his mind up from its race, that took some of the weight of being Sheikh so that he didn’t fail so badly again. They were all new to it, this leadership thing, and he’d seen what relying on his own ability had gotten for them all. "I think I am far more inept than I was ever told by those who taught me to lead and rule. Too hard, too soft --" He shakes his head, it was not time to whine. It was time to ask for help. Finally. At Last. Help.
"My way isn’t working just as it hasn’t worked in the past. I need to break the old rules and start borrowing some of the wisdoms of this place." He finally looks a little less lost, like finally asking for help has mended even a small piece of him in how fitting it felt - how right it felt. "What fool decided that a woman can only run the inner household? If you were deemed more than capable to navigate the notorious bed of vipers as a household of one of our Royal Houses, then it seems foolish to decide such a person cannot handle the politics of the whole Sadim. The two are so similar, even if the problems themselves are a little different."
Saying it aloud only makes him more sure that the observation was right. "If you are not irreversibly ashamed of me," because he half believes himself worthy of abandonment, "or tired of my… selfishness..." because he sees now that their love was put second to his spiraling out until now, "can we make a world where Sheikhs and Miras bear the harness of leadership as equals?"
OF THE EASTERN DUNES OF SALEM
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅