[an TAH rez]
✬ sayyida ✬
▻ jyeshtha ♀ (x indira), aminah ♀ | nashira ♀ ◅
At first, he is ready for a fight - for all that his daughter could not be an easy topic, he would not allow her to be taken against her will. It had everything to do with wishing to do more for her and knowing he’d never done enough. The tone that Rafe takes with him flattens his ears, thinking that this stallion had come to brag and not at all as a suitor, but then he says the very Jyeshtha line - throwing her mother’s name down like a gauntlet and instantly the entire posture of Antares shifts. It is relief, gladness, even in the face of the blatant animosity that this other stallion feels the need to express - bodily if not verbally.
"You’re Antares, then? I’m to tell you that the daughter of Indira has offered her favor."
His body relaxes despite Rafe’s own formidable self because if this stallion, strong and known for his dazzling coloration beyond even his own Badlands, wanted Jyeshtha-- then he could not have made a better match for her if he’d been bold enough to crush even that much more of his soulmates heart.
"I would pay the bride price you seek. Given your inability to place her yourself - an insult, Jyestha assures me - I can’t imagine you expect anything great." He feels the deflation of that guilt threatening to soften the iron rod he’d only begun to regain in himself after being so terrible in most things he should have excelled at as Sheik. "I cannot fault you the harsh tone, nor the less than politically correct assumptions."
He admits it because he had come here thinking that she had been lost to a knave and found instead a KING who meant to restore her pride and honor through battling her own father. He knew already that the spar would be his loss - he could never strike this man who would return to fulfill his firstborn’s needs, if not her heart. "I did not keep her mother against her will, nor did I force her to raise Jyeshtha amongst us, but I also only paid her what affection I could afford while my soulmate struggled with so many things not caused by our new world but by the one we had all left behind. It is a barbaric place so rigid in the Old Law that there is yet slavery and lawful abuse and much misogyny built into its fabric."
He looks down, "I tried to balance my love of my much aggrieved First Wife with the attachment I felt to my firstborn - and for much time - only remaining daughter. I did poorly. I am grateful that you would come with your guard and offense in hand for her sake. She has always done perfection and politeness far too well for what she has endured for my own young choices." He would not say mistake, not ever, when referencing Jyeshtha.
But he is sure that Rafe is uninterested in his excuses or reasons - not with the tone he had immediately taken. "I--" he chuckles a little, looking a bit sheepish, "I do not know if she informed you of quite what her sending you with that message to me - she wouldn’t choose those words or to send you here as a suitor if she didn’t have true designs on you." This time his tone is less fatherly and more man-to-man. "She could have sent you as a claimant without telling me of her favor. She could have simply said “has chosen her new House” instead of “has offered her favor”."
"I cannot say I am surprised she decided to go with you, a king of your own home - she would have been a crown princess of our people had we been less biased by our upbringing at her birth… I have always hoped she would hold onto that and love herself well enough to know her worth."
His red mane catches the wind and Antares adjusts his position to not be blinded by it. It felt like a great weight of shame could soon be lifted, although he knew better than to think he deserved such relief. "Bride price is normally something that benefits the family of the woman marrying away. Her status is her dowry, a king claiming her would normally demand alliance - but I can sense by your tone, you may not be entirely open to such a tight bond between us?"
OF SALEM’S EASTERN DUNES
▻ ten years - arabian - mulberry gray with bloodmarks - 15.2 hh ◅