Rigel
[REE-gehl]
✮ dhaniya ✮
[ varajakshi ]
▻ mṛgaśira ♀ (x varajakshi) ◅
His daughter had thrown him for a loop when she’d insisted she join his return journey to the Bay. It had been only a couple days of his arrival to Salem at all and he’d hoped to be more a part of her life now that he was back… but time had escaped the brothers and he had seen the most of all of them that the world was now different. Shahrazad was gone. Dhaniya had lived what felt like a whole life without him. Varajakshi still couldn’t be found in her cavernous hideaway. Mrgasira was old and while she’d held to the faith, she’d demanded he wed her to a strange stallion he’d never be able to save her from.
Aldebaran had never truly had anyone to lose in the first place. Atair had been so focused on Eness and had regained her to himself and, with her, his twin sons. Antares had been the nearest to his own sense of loss in having lost Aminah - but even he still had his Mira beside him and his other daughter present for his revival.
Dhaniya’s willingness to follow him from the Bay to the Dunes was not guaranteed when Mrgasira had gone, had driven him hard with her bargaining skills. She wanted to be wed to a man that was strong, that might value her without troubling her with an evil purpose. She wished to wed, bear children, and find comfort in the duties that many other mares balked at without great devotion and doting returned for their effort. Fell would not have been his choice - but she played with his heart full of duty and honor. It was his duty to wed her and he’d been gone for far too long to do right by her. When he’d offered her the truth of what was to come - she had only steeled herself against him.
He had told her he would not buy a heart with his daughter, but she said that the label of ‘purchase' was his business - the right to go was hers.
In the end, when they had parted, she had whispered that she wished his heart fullness and healing - and that Dhaniya might be the love that could cure the ghosts he’d brought back from Mira in his eyes. She’d heard the story of Dhaniya from Aldebaran, of course, that Dhaniya had been wed to an evil man before Rigel had fallen in love with her and he with him -- and that he had been made to leave her behind. The tragedy of their love had apparently made an impression.
Finding her positioned here at the new main oasis makes some part of his daughter’s wish come true. She was not broken, her spirit not withered, but her presence was somehow stifled and it rankled him that she might feel that for any reason. The sun glints its last off of her bay pangare hide and he closes the distance as best he can without touching her. "Dhaniya, you do not need to be silent here. Our time in Mira has changed a great many things for life under Antares’ watch." His voice is soft, the words are spoke only for her, and then he turns back with a greatly warmed smile for Sayyida across from them.
"You are beautiful, Mira." Then, because he could not abide the raucousness from his younger brother he clicks his teeth in a missed bide as Aldebaran flurries by. "I know better that you are no gods Avatar, Aldebaran, so you best settle down before I find reason to provoke Atair into giving you hassle." He chuckles, though, as he sees Al Hilal speed over the dunes towards them and greet the more visible members of the family. "Way is here too, Al Hilal." Milky Way had always felt so long and before they’d parted ways, he’d finally gotten his nephew to call him Way instead.
"Dhaniya is with me, Mrgasira, Shahrazad, and Varajakshi are both out of my reach." He doesn’t say that there has been a great change in his household, but he does look at Dhaniya and then waits for his eyes to meet his Mira’s own. He would need to see her soon, he felt, if Dhaniya opened her heart to him again. He would not tolerate any further hesitation from the universe in giving her her rightful place beside him if she’d allow it. It was years ago they’d found forbidden love and were made to withhold themselves from each other… now they were greater for their trials and only in need of rediscovering one another in their evolution.
OF THE EASTERN DUNES OF SALEM
▻ ten years - arabian - black sabino rabicano - 14.3 hh ◅