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

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[thebonedaddy.livejournal.com]

"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."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"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."

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

"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.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"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."

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

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

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"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.

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

"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.