(no subject)

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."
o from Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan

Sheeana had penetrated deeper into the city than ever before. Non Euclidean office buildings and apires that followed arcane rules of alien architecture enclosed her on all sides.

She buzzed in the heightened awareness Spice gave her. It guided her towards something that she knew somehow would have to be there. The Je'dai have their temple. Therefore... But what shrine would a Bene Gesserit have to worship?

She found the answer wedged between a bureacratic ziggurat and a hyperbank. Looming from the crush of hypercivilised buildings, as rough and out of place as a hobo at a cocktail party was a great crag of hard limestone. A scramble up the escarpment and she was at a circular ring carved into the rock, ten feet high by six wide. The shredded, crumbling remains of an ancient rubber moistureseal ringed it.

Sietch Tabr! The ancient Fremen dwelling, carved direct into the desert rock, so much grander than the grubby villages of her time. Once, hundreds, maybe thousands of her people had lived within its warrens.

A crush of memories intruded on her awareness, Fremen of so many generations entering and leaving that place. From its founding, the gate being carved...Its days as a proud sietch in the time of Muad'dib...Being used as a glorified tourist attraction by order of The Tyrant...To the days of the Famine Times and the scattering when it had become closed off, a legendary place full of the Tyrant's Spice hoard...And then her own memories, age twelve, with the mysterious Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade and a Tleilaxu master shorter than her.

All these things superimposed themselves within her, like transparent holofilm piled on top of each other.

In that time, she took a sharp breath.

Close My Eyes Forever [Open]

[cardsharkgambit.livejournal.com]

He'd been avoiding sleep just like a lot of other people. But everyone had to sleep at some point. The body demanded it. There was only so long someone--anyone--could stay awake before the body, the mind, rebelled and gave in to its most basic necessity. There seemed to be no way of escaping the Nightmare King. Sleeping meant dreaming, which meant terror being inflicted upon them by the beast that grew stronger with passing day. Staying awake, however, brought its own dangers. The mind wasn't meant to be pushed to such limits. It needed to rest. It needed the time to recuperate. Without it, hallucinations would begin to form, driving them crazy just as easily as the Nightmare King was.

It was the hallucinations that pushed Gambit to go to his quarters and get some rest. He'd stripped off his plantsuit and climbed under the silk covers and was out before his head hit the pillow. It was not meant to last. Deep sleep had been evading him ever since he'd been released by GLaDOS. He sometimes wished she'd held on to him. Even she was better than this.

Remy had no more than fallen and sleep--only for a few minutes really--before the nightmares began. He thrashed in his bed, his body jerking back and forth as he tried to fight against the terrors being forced upon his dreams by the dark entity in the city. He groaned in pain, mumbled incoherent protests against the darkness that had pervaded his subconscious. Each movement, each groan grew in intensity, becoming stronger and more violent than the last until the Cajun's eyes flew open and he shot up in bed and let out a shout loud enough to be heard throughout the crew quarters.

He sat up in bed, his body covered in sweat and his chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath. It was as if he'd just put himself through a grueling work-out. His muscles were tense and sore. Sleep, itself, had become an enemy that needed to be fought. But how did one fight that which you needed to survive?

Tossing his sheet back, Gambit swung his feet to the floor and cradled his head in his hands. "Get outta my head!" he hollered out at the Nightmare King.