trans_9 | through the tempest, be it deluge or sand [closed to friends of hers]

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through the tempest, be it deluge or sand [closed to friends of hers]

Gore dripped from the magnificent body of the worm, running in warm gummy runnels down the thick leathery hide. It wasn't its own gore; the creature's body was mineral. But water was poison to it. Its internal fires burnt out of control to compensate, raging and magnificently hot. Celluler water, black and stinking but still dangerously wet from the zombies....

The pearl of Leto Atreides' consciousness within the scaly body reached out. Sister...daughter...wronged one...

Sheeana arrived just in time to see the great body dissolve into sandtrout. She dashed onto the sand in the converted swimming pool. She could only hug the body of the magnificent dyer. She collapsed onto her side as the last of it flowed away.

No. Not like this. No. What if it's poisoned the sandtrout? They'll try to encyst the necrotic water and...then i'll...be... This had been the man/worm/hybrid who had taken her village from her, had been her constant companion, who she had mothered back into existence in those years on Chapterhouse, who had looked out with her from portholes at the burning of her homeworld, who had accompanied her into exile. Without Leto and his Golden Path, it had all been for nothing.

She let out the Fremen wail of grief: Lalalalalala... a repeated 'no', painful to the ears.

She shed water for the dead.

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Obi-Wan could feel her suffering and grief from half the ship away. Sigh. Dammit, he was tired, but a Jedi's work is never done. He'd never expected to see Sheeana, of all people, lying in the sand, wailing out her agony.

"Easy, easy..." Ben soothed, kneeling beside her and reaching out to touch Sheeana's shoulder with both hand and calming Force, "What's..."

Oh.

Oh! The worms.

"Oh, Sheeana, I'm so sorry."

The other worm let out a wail of distress at its brother's apparent death. The sound was unearthly, a roar that owed much to screeches and the cries of orcas.

She scrambled up to clutch at his robes. Damnit, not now, he can't see me like this...Damn their sensitivity. "What...happened." She managed to croak out.

"I'm not sure," Obi-Wan replied honestly, curling one arm under her in an automatic gesture of protectiveness, "I felt your distress and I found you like this. I—"

He hesitated. This was not good news, "I'm not sure what happened to Shai-Hulud."

Sheeana was proud, despite the distress radiating off of her and the two small tears making slow progress down her cheeks. Fremen did not show emotion easily and they almost never cried, were practically physically incapable of it.

She pulled away from him. "You were there during the battle. Did he come into contact with water?" Years of training gave her the sheer willpower to gain control of herself.

"I'm afraid there was no avoiding it," He murmured, and frowned thoughtfully, some trivia niggling at the back of his mind. He dismissed it, "Though I'd hardly call whatever it was 'water,' he must have."

"...He must have joined the battle." This was a realization that hit her in the gut. "Always the sacrificer. Now...Leto has left me too. Even if those being's blood hasn't poisoned them, it will be decades before the sandtrout...can..." She in fact desperately wanted a hug, was projecting waves of hug-neediness into the Force. She was Mother Superior though, not one to let people see her break down and cry like some acolyte in her first year away from home. "This is the fourth time I have said goodbye to a home I know to be destroyed."

He took a deep breath, unable to stop the sympathy that reached out to her like a palpable, living thing. He slid an arm over the shoulders of this fierce, intense young woman and leaned her a little towards him.

"For every ending, a beginning," He intoned, softly, "Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into—"

He stopped and shook his head, "Perhaps Master Yoda's lessons bring little comfort, but they are all I know how to give."

For a moment she had the urge to push him away. Save your hackneyed folk wisdom! But tendrils of feeling found their way across her chest to her heart and she knew he was sincere.

"Thank you. They will do." She said, accepting the embrace but refusing to cling to him. "I suppose he must have foreseen this too. It is a silly thing but...I wish there weren't so many sacrifices that have to be made."

"I disagree," He soothed, leaning into her with a comforting conspiratorial edge, "Good Jedi have gone rogue for less reason than grief. These are extraordinary times, filled with death and loss. If you can bear it, it will make you stronger."

"There's no secret to balance. You just have to get in tune with the waves." Even if her voice hadn't suddenly changed, becoming older, that she had used a water metaphor would have been a tipoff that she had accessed Other Memory to dig up that quote. It was an unsettling thing to most who had never seen it. "My mentor taught me that. You are right. As long as one sandtrout remains, there will be hope." The old Sheeana was back, unflappable and always ready with a pithy remark, no longer seeming only her seventeen years.

...and if Obi-Wan hadn't seen it from Arha, or had it explained, by now, he would have been quite startled by the shift. Instead, he smiled and leg go of their embrace with a gently encouraging pat.

"There is always hope, Sheeana," said he, "Even when things look their darkest, never give up hope."

"You are a good man, ObeeUan Qenobee. How is Arha? I did not get a chance to see her since the fight." And by his reaction, she'd know how (and who!) her Sister was doing.

Obi-Wan couldn't help the rising flush. Dammit, Bene Gesserit! It wasn't fair, it'd been a long damn time since he'd felt this way, and he'd rather not be teased.

"She's...tired, still," He made a valiant try at civility, which improved as he spoke, "I meant to set her in some minor exercises, before I detoured here, but it can wait. I haven't the faintest idea where we'll find the components for a Lightsaber on this ship, let alone a focusing crystal with the right clarity."

Oho, nice job Sister. He's a fine catch, will make a good man with a bit more sophistication.

Mercurial as the desert wind, her mood changes to curiosity. "Is that how it works? The beam is reflected through a crystal?"

"Not precisely, no, but without a crystal to focus the beam, the blade will only barely function," Obi-Wan replied, "Most people look at a lightsaber and assume that the amount of power produced by such a thing to be enormous, but really it's the crystal that gives a Lightsaber it's color, power and stability. Only a Jedi can create such a thing, the amount of fine control needed in it's construction is immense."

"Mm." Sheeana filed that information away for further reference. There was an inkling of a test she wanted to do. But first there were more important things to know. The subject abruptly returned to Arha. "I hope she is happy. Our order wronged her. It was one of a number of mistakes we made in that era."

"One thing I'm very sure of; there aren't many in this place who are happy," Obi-Wan replied morosely, picking up on Sheeana's mercurial topic changes deftly, by now, "But as far as anyone can be, at the moment, I think she is. She seemed at least pleased with me, this morning, which is all one can hope."

Funny thing when you emit a pitch like that. People with better-than-average hearing catch notice. While not superhuman, Slo's time as a blind man had enhanced his to a certain extent, and he found himself following the noise to it's source. Sheeana. The girl he had recently seen clobber Static. Was crying.
... There were those pesky compassionate emotions again. He'd have to ask Tim if there was a way to get them removed. As it was, however, he knocked on the nearest solid object.

"You okay, Bright Eyes?"

Sheeana blinked, and there was a small, grey form resolving through the wetness in her eyes.

Damnit, he can't see me like this.

She managed to pick herself up at least to a kneeling position. "I am fine." She croaked.

Slobo did that thing that, honestly, only Sheeana made him have to do. He took a sniff in the air.

"No, you ain't. Ya been cryin'." He stepped forward. "Yer kinda my friend, Bright Eyes. I don't know what that means for you, but for me it means I gotta try and help, or at least listen. So spill." He stood, oddly stalwart, at this notion.

"I don't just leave friends ta their fakin' when they obviously need help."

Alert even in grief, Sheeana noted the sniff. He must be looking for pheremones...He has keen senses. Or perhaps his species does. She would have to conceal that too in the future.

She sensed a stubornness in his stance. She was stubborn too and they could have stayed there for a long time.

"My oldest friend may be dead, and with it the Path i've been serving my whole life."

Slobo was only beginning, in essentially, his infancy, to be a kind being. And years of entrapment had taught him that there was good and bad to it, which was why it was coming so slow to him now. He simply stood his ground, albeit in a sympathetic stance.

"When someone takes a path from me, I find a new path." That was all he said, and all he felt needed to be said. He cared about Sheeana, she was a nice person by the standards he was used to, though she wanted to be 'cruel' by the same standards.

"And when ya find a new path, one ya ain't used ya, there're always people who'll join ya. I'm livin' proof."

She made her wobbly way to her feet. Sheeana looked him over for sincerity, found it in the unconscious cues he gave off.

"This Worm has followed me as I fled across the galaxy. I believed in the man whose consciousness resides in it. If he is dead, all that work has been for nothing. And I will have a terrible choice to make." She was gathering herself back together, withdrawing holes in her defenses.

Slobo eyed her suspiciously. All her talks of plans within plans, and apparently those plans involved building walls within walls.

"Well, if ya need anythin', yanno ya can count on me. Terrible choices are easier ta make with someone backin' ya up."

"Not this one..." She said under her breath. If she was going to continue Leto's choice, she would have to avoid attachments as much as possible. The few he had made caused him endless anguish as he watched them grow old and die, suspended within the timelessness of his worm body. "Thank you, Slobo. I sometimes wish...there weren't so many to make."

She was tired, but heard Sheeana, heard Shai-Hulud, and knew in a flurry of images that the Leto worm was gone--or at the least, had fallen into sandtrout. Arha forced herself to move, though her body resisted and protested fiercely. She would go to Sheeana, even if it made her burn.

It still took too long.

She did her best to project strength and comfort, wordlessly wrapping her arms around Sheeana even as she reached for her mentally. There had been little she could do for the worm and her own roared enough for her own expression of loss. She knew what this meant--all of it.

And she was there.

Sheeana leaned back into her Sister's embrace on the sand, shoulders hunched and shaking. "Five...thousand years...of sacrifices...My family...my village...Rakis...Chapterhouse..." The words came out broken. Full sentences were unnecesary. Arha alone knew the signifigance of the Leto-worm to her. "You saw it. How?"

"Shai-Hulud," Arha murmured simply, cradling Sheeana in her arms. This world of thiers was a cruel one at best, leaving them with little to stand upon--and less, now, with the Leto worm's dissolution. There was nothing right to say here, nothing that would ease the suffering. It was not an ailment to be cured, though she had wished she had gotten to the worm earlier (she was not sure it would have mattered, not even she could heal a whole worm from such a thing without killing herself).

"Had I been able, I would have done more," she said.

"It couldn't be helped. Shai-hulud responds to vibrations and Leto...responds to human need. I know you would have saved Him if you could." Fatalism wasn't a Bene Gesserit response. This was a statement of cruel facts.

"If He is truly dead and there is no way to revive him...You know what I will have to do. Will you still be my Sister even then?" If the man who was the worm was dead, it would soon be time for a woman to replace him in that capacity.

"I would take it for you, if you would let me--is this not why I was struck down, for the possibility?" Arha said softly and then was silent for a long while. "Sheeana," her voice was a soft whisper as her fingers brushed at her hair. "Sheeana, I shall not abandon you, no matter what course of action you take. I shall be as your own until you yourself direct me to go, and even then, I will not name you as anything other. I am, as always a Heretic for such ideals I suppose, but I am myself."

She rocked Sheeana gently and laid her cheek against the top of her head.

"You are my Sister well beyond the point of my own death and you are loved. Both are such that I would never forsake. You know this, but you shall hear me say it if it helps."

"I would not. The order has already asked too much from you." She said, nestled in her shoulder. It was hard to believe they were related, one was so much taller and blonder than the other. "I know it, but it does help to hear it." She raised her communicator and tapped in a few buttons. Sisters rotated a few inches high: two sleek white figures in robes, the taller one with her hands at the other's shoulders. The bases were long and stylized, spiraling into a helix. "If I ever find this sculpture I will dedicate it to you."

"I would do this thing for you and take that path because you are my Sister. You are my family and I know it is perhaps a selfish thing, but I do not wish such a hard thing upon you," Arha said the slight shift of her cheek against Sheeana's hair a shake of her head. "But, yes, I know...this is your choice. I cannot interfere."

She watched the statues turn and murmured wordlessly for a moment.

"That is a beautiful thing," she said quietly. "I would be honored with such a dedication."

"I absolutely forbid it. If I have need of you, I will say it, but for now I only want you to be as happy as you possibly can be." Sheeana was gradually starting to come back to herself. The hole was still there, that place where purpose once dwelled and she would fill it with the self-destructive sandskin if she needed to.

"I am so very tired, Arha. I haven't slept since a day before the fighting started and during most of that I was using the Weirding Way at its full power. You must be as well."

Arha let out a soft noise.

"I can but take in what happiness I can find," she said, murmuring. Arha felt gritty, still, and as weary as she had been after the battle. It came and went in waves. "And yes, I am very tired. I do not sleep well, but I do try. If you do not wish to be alone, I will stay with you and perhaps we shall both sleep. It is time for rest."

Khel knew well the sounds of grief, no matter what the language. It was something he had become well-versed in over the last several centuries, and when he heard Sheeana's voice let loose the cry he heard at that moment, he wasted no time in seeking her out. He would not let a friend be alone in their time of grief. It simply would not be right.

The skeleton approached slowly, his head hung in reverence for the woman's sorrow. "Milady Brugh? Tell me of thy troubles,' he invited, turning glowing pinpoints of light to the woman. All he could do at the moment was offer an 'ear', and hope that Sheeana would accept it.

Sheeana looked slowly behind her. Oh no. He can't see me like this. She had grown somewhat attached to how their current relationship was: She helped him, assured him he was human. This was a sudden role reversal.

But then, (she looked down at the water on her palms) a necessary one, for now. She knitted back together some of her self control and patted the sand next to her for him to sit. "The worm has been my faithful companion since I was a small child. After one destroyed my village, I learned that I could command them. A long dead God-king lives inside them. Reading his works and worshipped as a holy child by his priests, I dedicated myself fully to the path he believed in. When the Bene Gesserit rescued me from our homeworld's destruction, I spent years reestablishing them in a new environment on Chapterhouse. I left Chapterhouse when our order went through a schism and brought a worm with me. With this one having dissolved into sandtrout, I fear I will have to embark on the same path he did...Accepting a transformation that will make me immortal and unable to feel. I will have to be, in a way, like you."

"And thou wouldst choose this path willingly? Must there be a being such as the one thou speak?" Khel was not shocked at her admission; he was growing used to the differences between her world, and his own. What he did question was that such a creature must always be. Mortal things died, and if an immortal being was laid low, then perhaps it was not so immortal.

"I have always believed, milady, that there are no coincidences in life, and unlife doubly so. The patterns of reality are often cyclic, though individual threads may reach their end. Art thou, then, so certain that this is not the end of a thread for thy pattern? Should the pattern carry thee to this end of which thou spake, then I shall say no more, and support thy decision for making it clear-headed and with eyes open.

"I understand not what it must be like to have been through such a life as thine, but I have offered what knowledge and scant wisdom I can. If thou wouldst desire to tell me more of this, then I shall listen, Lady Brugh. I am ... thy friend."

Friend. That warmed her inside. "You are right and your words are wise but you do not have the full background of why such a thing was neccesary." She gestured for him to sit again. "What do you know of prophecy? What do you think life would be like if you had prescience for your entire life? For the whole universe?"

"I wouldst think myself very arrogant, to believe I knew the course that the river of time would carry my own nation, let alone a universe of infinite choices, and even more wonders." Khel's perspective was not as a Bene Gesserit's, that much was obvious. He had never believed in prescience or divination, except as a sign of potential outcomes.

"Life is too infinite in its variety, and individuals too unpredictable in their potential to ever be bound to a single course of action for eternity."

"Oh if only it were always that way! But the Spice is unpredictable. Someone did it. He bound the universe to his vision. That man was Paul-Muad'dib Atreides, the father of Leto." She picked up a handful of pink sand, held it between her palms. "Leto loved surprises. He would not see his father's vision lock the universe into place. At the end of that path lay extinction for man. So he decided to take us all on a different path...The Golden Path. But for it to work, he would need to live a long time." She clenched it in her fist, let it trickle out like sand in an hourglass. "So he allowed the sandtrout to crawl over his body and used his bodily control to make sure they fused correctly to his skin. And so followed three thousand years of painful metamorphasis as he enacted his plan. He became a hybrid with the creature's adult form...The great maker I showed you earlier." The last bit of sand flowed from her hand. "I am his distant descendant. I found this out after a worm destroyed my village. I ran up to it in a rage and found I could command it. His priests took me in and worshipped me as their holy child...Ah, but i'm digressing. The point of this is that for his Golden Path to continue, to preserve all our future, I may have to accept the same choice."

"I understand. But all things end, milady. Thy great worm hath proven that now. I wish not to speak on that which I do not know of, yet I cannot help but think that perhaps this, too, is a sign that the Golden Path thou speaks of has reached its conclusion, for good or ill." Khel had lost such fidgets long ago, though his eyes dimmed until it was hard to tell there was any light in them at all.

"He intends me to take this option. He was always a careful planner. Ever since he ate my village, he has been preparing me for that. And I...have been having dreams. I have the prophet's pedigree too." Her eyes looked both determined and sad. "We Bene Gesserit are servants of humanity, as was he."

"So it is a matter of fate and duty even more so than want or desire."

"Yes. I'm sure you understand that." Ah, pouring her problems out to an animated skeleton. The tears are a defense mechanism, she thinks...She cries, because if she does not, she will laugh.

"I do. But you," the word sounded unusual coming from Khel, as if he rarely used it, "are so certain that this course must be taken? If the God-King's consciousness resides within the ... Shai-Hulud, then surely he saw fit to prepare for such a thing. Doth not his consciousness still reside within the larval creatures? Protect them, and they may yet grow to be this Leto still. When I was king, Sheeana, I knew my weaknesses. I thought I did, at any rate.

"This Leto must have certainly known the weaknesses of the creatures he fused with. He wouldst not fail to plan for it, if he planned out the history of all the universe." And there was Khel's logic in all this. Any man capable of guiding the universe onto a path chosen and directed by himself would surely have known how to plan for his eventual attempted demise.

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through the tempest, be it deluge or sand [closed to friends of hers]

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