[an TAH rez]
✬ sayyida ✬
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ | nashira ♀ ◅
He has meant to reach out to the new mares in his care, Guinevere and Caria in particular. He had been hesitant, of course, worried about their answer in light of the rift between himself and his Mira. He had always been faulty in his duties to Sayyida and it had left them rather tattered in their bond to have had their daughter abducted and left behind in their old homelands.
Nashira had been a godsend, a small healing moment, but then she had begun to grow and those many milestones had begun to remind them repeatedly of his defeat, of Aminah’s absence, and he supposed he should have released her from her obligation to the Sadim-- but it had felt wrong. It had felt wrong for one loss to breed a second, to break his heart without her to tell him she wished him gone from her life at long last.
Had they been doomed? Had it simply been their destiny from the start to be each other’s ruin?
It had felt not early on, newly arrived and owners of this whole land of Dunes. It had felt not until it became clear that habit and new points of view were colliding. Now he wondered if he were only to find loneliness in his future. He took no new wives, knowing that it would hurt his Mira. He did not acquire allies for the same reason - bringing in political wives just as disruptive as the former idea. He fell stagnant, only sparring with their land leaser and trying to keep the Sadim from getting wrapped up in too many troubles from the outside world.
It was on the day that he saw Nashira staring out after the golden son of his brother’s one-time wife and the guardian Teke that had come to leave her among her own kind… that he finally grew more of a backbone. Sayyida and he had to speak soon about the plans for her upbringing, for her marriage, about if she was their true heir or if love would still find them compatible…. About if Sayyida wished to remain at his side or find greener pastures.
So he tentatively nickers low, knowing Sayyida had likely awakened and could hear his quiet call. He stares from their oasis and over a few low Dunes to where Nashira had already staked out her place to spot her laddybuck love. "Her first crush," he murmurs to his wife as she arrives, "She seems rather smitten of the young man… I have caught her looking into the water when he was coming with news of Rigel, tossing her little mane into place." He chuckles, looking over at his First Wife and Mira with an ache but also with a longing.
"We must talk of her future, our future-- it has been too long that Sheikh and Mira have been mourning and avoiding one another..."
OF SALEM’S EASTERN DUNES
▻ eleven years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅