Gods, I hated arguing with him. I wanted so badly to make him happy that seeing these storms cross his face caused my heart to constrict with pain and guilt and terror. And yet, I needed him to understand that I was not enough for him. That no matter how much grace he wanted to give me, how much leeway or tolerance or latitude, that I would never be what he needed. What our people needed.

I had once allowed myself to believe that I could be his only wife. That I was enough to be the only one to stand at his side, that my breeding and my pride and my bearing were enough to shoulder this weight alone but I was miserably failing. Could he not see the obvious? That I had withdrawn from all of our peoples, turned into a hermit of myself despite the joy of a second daughter's birth? Despite the rekindling of our people? Could he not see how far I had fallen?

He names Eness and I cannot hide the flinch in my expression as he presses into a sore spot that he likely had not known existed. I had never spoken of it, could not debase myself so as to voice the severe jealousy I felt at the many clear indications of Eness' fitness as a wife. She, who had never wavered from her Husband, never from his side. She, with the god's blessing, had granted Atair twin sons not just once, but twice. Of course, he did not see Eness expressing doubt at her relationship; the gods had provided her with the evidence over and over and over that she and Atair were truly meant to be each other's partner.

I had granted my heart two daughters - whom I loved with every shred of my being - but no sons. None to carry his legacy, our name, his people. Nashira and Aminah could, of course, we'd rewritten that history... but it did not stop the feeling of failure. Antares had no son to show the land to, to teach how to court and how to govern and how to advise.

It's all I can do to finish my plea to make him understand, and it is obvious a moment later that he will not see me. That he cannot fathom my position from where he stands, and that whether through lack of capability or desire, he might never. It's not that simple! A voice rages back at him, caged inside my mind. I do not know how! I do not know how to be enough! To love you how you deserve! I am telling you, I do not know how to be enough. Not for you. Not for me. Not for our daughters, nor our people.

I am broken.

We are broken.

But I say nothing, despite the way that a sliver of pride (from whence I do not know) threads itself through the bony nodules of my spine and neck and straightens them, drawing me back up to my husband's height. I cannot be broken, I am not allowed to break, is that not the lesson every mother must learn? A decision that must be made when the penultimate point is reached: a mother lifting a car off her child's leg, a mother shielding a newborn from the falling ash of a volcano. That for the sake of her children, she cannot afford to crumple entirely. Even if her spirit is broken, her bones shattered, her will gone. If she is all that is left, she cannot afford to fall.

If all that stands before my family's ruin is my own spirit, weak and frail and useless though it may be, I will hold it up as a shield for everything I hold dear.

I had not realized the depths through which my Husband waded, feeling myself alone (another notch against me, for me to examine later), and I recognize that he needs a liferaft as much, if not more, than I do. He has hidden this pain from me, locked it behind the stoicism I knew so well, and I, too wrapped up in my own morose nature, had missed it. Had nearly allowed him to careen over the edge of the waterfall without even extending a hand to help him back to the safety of solid ground. Had assumed that with the reunification of our peoples, he would thrive in the ways that I had never learned how to do.

He chastises me for misunderstanding what Mira means, and I can hear his words and feel his emphatic wish for them to be true, but they ring hollow in my ear. Loving our family, my people, is not enough. I am not enough, but I do not try to fight him. If I cannot be replaced, if he will not see reason, if I have no other path, then what choice do I have but to try? I cannot leave them.

I cannot leave him.

If I push any harder on the glittering edges of my beloved's fractured heart, I might shatter him entirely. And I cannot take him away from them.

When does my punishment end? He asks, and I have no answer. Mine has not ended either, and yet I drew breath each day. When do I get back the love that gave my breath any meaning? He queries and I have to grip my temper to stop it flaring in indignation at the implication that my love - battered and bruised and umimpressive though it might be - had wavered. Even when I was certain he had abandoned me (as I deserved then and now), I had accepted that my heart would always be broken without him. That I would never be whole again.

Shouldn't you be running TO me and not AWAY? He challenges, touching on the heart of the matter. I didn't know how to face these things. How to sort through the mountains of words that he throws at me and form any sane response that did not involve me bowing my head and taking it, accepting his authority like a yoke instead of a gift. Exactly as I'd been doing for his whole rant, as I'd been doing since our return... since we had come together.

"Stop putting me on a pedestal," I snap, the words sharp as glass in my mouth, cutting me as much as they might him."I will not leave you," I mutter through clenched teeth, my learned helplessness waning as the realizations dawned. He would not see me. Not see my plight. Any more than I had seen his before this moment. And what was a wife's purpose but to be the boat beneath his oars, holding him up, keeping him afloat, even if she might drown in the rapids? It might not be the idyllic past he sought to restore, the one that had existed in memories, if not reality, but it would be something. Something to hold him together, and something for me to tether myself to.

"I will not leave you," I say again as I do just that, pulling away from him just enough that I can slide against him, my frustration coalescing into a quiver of long suppressed rage that hummed to life under its new leash. I shoulder against him, pushing against his body roughly and raking my teeth across his hindquarter if I can. "Until you come to your senses and send me away." Again, I reach for him with teeth that were neither kind nor cruel. I wanted something. I didn't know what it was or how to get it, if it were his anger or absolution or something I yet had no name for, but I wanted it. Need it, to anchor myself.

Tears pooling, I nonetheless continued my "assault" if one could call it such; I was no more than a child taking it's first swipes in a sparring match and we both knew it. Even so, my voice held it's edge, the glitter of that sliver of pride holding true. "But you will not ask me to make myself small again," I say, thinking of the way he'd asked me to stay quiet while he spoke to Nyimara, while he determined our futures. "Ever again." Of the way I had allowed it.

"And you will stop waiting for me," I hitched an inner hind up, lashing it toward his own forelegs, and then stumbled around his rump, raking my teeth over the perfect swath of paling skin I found. "Tell me what you need," I all but pleaded into his coat, my muzzle tracing the proud line of his spine backwards, because I could not voice what it was that I needed, because I had no words for it. How did one ask for their Husband to need them in a way that was not just through words? Not just telling me what he wanted, what he thought. I needed him to show me, to stop treating me like a fragile flower that could do no wrong.

I had and I would and I would do so again.

A plea as much as it was anything. "Show me."