the test of techniques/the forms/and stances/the flow/the rythm/the internal answers [open]

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

God knows where she'd gotten the blades.

They hovered in the air, little menacing antigravity buzzsaw shuriken. Violence lay coiled within them, not directed outward but in, at Sheeana who stood poised with her arms spread. This was the attitude with which she called the great worm. Her toes curled in, feeling the strange, unfamiliar grass (coarse, yes, like the rare poverty grasses that sometimes grew on the leeward side of the dunes but still far too thick for her liking and multicolored). She opened her awareness, allowing herself to become part of the place and her of it.

Seven, a warm up. Their timer finished counting down, they converged in on her

There was a series of contortions that blurred in and out of visibility. She leapt. She hugged the ground. At one point she found herself poised on one hand, feet thrown up into the air like a Minoan athlete over the bull.

For practicing the Weirding Way, no artificial lightshow would do, no matter how real feeling.

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[deep_sky_diving]

"I'm sorry," Tess says, and in her voice are all the notes of genuine regret. "I didn't mean t'distract you." That's one of the things about her—when she says something, she really does mean it, even if it's only for the moment, until the tracks of her thought reconfigure into something new.

There's no panic in her voice, though: she can already see that the bleeding is slow enough to be controlled, and that Sheeana's manner is such to consider the wound no threat. For one with a suit like herself, an inner protective layer would have sealed the wound in suit and in skin without even a touch of blood getting out, and so she wonders about how Sheeana's wound is knitting itself...

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana noted two things about the way the girl spoke. One was the strange accent: vowels got flattened out, words said with a more open mouth. This combined with the subtle waterfat at her cheeks (difficult to tell but there behind that transparent membrane she always wore) led her to believe that her native land was hot and moist.

The second was that she spoke with complete sincerity. She was sorry for interrupting her training. So she rewarded her with a smile.

"It is quite alright. It was my fault..." And by then the wound had sealed off. "...for allowing myself to be distracted." She lapped up the thin line of blood, a gesture from a Fremen childhood. The wound was now closed off.

[deep_sky_diving]

That blood-lapping—a gesture of recycling. With what little she already knows of Sheeana from their previous encounter, that fits into the mental image, with the thoughts of extreme recycling of everything. To even lick up blood suggests every drop of free water as a precious result of work-hours.

And it was, though Tess would not have presumed to say so. It seems like a strange place to practice to her, though the intent might have been to keep any danger to others obvious and public rather than risk someone stumbling into it by exploring a private courtyard or alleyway.

"It's nice t'meetcha again." And she means that, too.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"And you as well. What brings you to the city? Are you trying your hopping?" She regarded the girl (she thought of her subconsciously as younger, though they appeared about the same age) with amused interest.

As she asked, she stacked each blade, keeping them safe from accidental activation should someone else wander in.

[deep_sky_diving]

"Oh, nah," Tess says dismissively but cheerfully. "Wouldn't be anythin' near safe in here. Don't wanna get an angle wrong'n..." She makes a gesture with her fingers squishing together. That's one of the difficulties of having a system like that without some kind of direct mental interface—but at least she's well aware of the limits, and of the reason it's set up like that in the first place. "I was just gettin' a walk n'takin' a look around." That might almost qualify for the term by itself, but— "Ain't like there's anythin' really native to lookat."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"I see. A no-ship in my universe works much the same way but it is much larger." She had, in fact, put grasshopping on one of her long list of things to think about.

Something was poking at her from her subconscious, some hidden impulse that was the fetus of an idea. "...There is one piece of fauna here you might be interested in. If you wish to see it, remain here and keep your eyes closed and all your suit's sensors passive. I will be able to tell if you don't."

[deep_sky_diving]

"...all right," Tess says, curious—a little bit suspicious, but she makes no particular effort to hide that from her voice. "I don't s'pose you'd be willin' to tell anythin' 'bout it in advance?" she asks, but dutifully closes her eyes. Her throat twitches as the subvocalized commands turn up the dynamic gain on the suit's microphones a little."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Only that it won't harm you. And if I wished to, I would have attempted it already!" She called before putting her boots back on, running into an alley, taking a loop around in a wide arc that took her to the worm pen.

A few minutes later, she returned with two worms in tow. Two leviathans of the sands, one small, grey, as long as either of them. The other twice as large, reddish brown, but slower.

"Meet shai-hulud, the sandworm of my homeworld."

[deep_sky_diving]

Tess' eyes open again, and the subtle movements of her jaw suggest that she's returning the suit to normal settings. She looks at the worms—and her mouth parts in surprise. Pleasant surprise, though. Familiar and yet different all at once in shape and purpose... those teeth suggest to her more than just a predator, they're far too complex for just that, but a powerful driller of some kind.

"Shai-hulud," she repeats, careful to try and match the pronunciation. Her body language suggests she'd like to step towards them but isn't sure if it would be safe.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

She sees the hesitancy in the girl's movements. "They will obey me. Due to a set of circumstances which would take some time to explain, I was born with the ability to command them..."

The smaller one came slithering towards Tess, opened its tripartite mouth to squeak, but took no aggressive action. 'Hesitant acceptance' was how she chose to interpret the emotion of her wormy god-emperor.

"...But even if I couldn't, my people have been riding them for thousands of years. It may not be as quick as grasshopping, but nothing can compare to the feel of riding across the open bled on one..."

[deep_sky_diving]

With that reassurance, Tess steps forward, crouching to look closer at the sandworm. It's not her she was worried about, that much was clear in her manner—it was the sandworms and how they might be affected by what she'd to do defend herself. A little twitch of her throat and she—and whatever chunk of attacking creature was caught in her radius—would be gone, but doing that makes her feel guilty.

Slowly, she offers a hand forward, staying up and past the mouth to try and touch the sandworm's hide. "There's gotta be bigger ones, right?" Tess asks. Riding... no, these ones don't look like they'd be able to bear a person's weight comfortably. And how would you even harness something with a body structure like that.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The smaller worm reared up to her, blowing cinnamon scented breath in her face. The larger one joined them too. It was a real worm, not the temporary construction the smaller one was, and its interior blazed with its internal fire.

Leto approves.

"From the Worm comes the Spice. The Spice extends life. It expands consciousness. In the old days, it was the only way we could travel between star systems. The Guild Navigators used it to fold space around them. And it is also what allows one to become a Reverend Mother."

[deep_sky_diving]

Tess breathes in the cinnamon exhalation, the membrane on her face quiescent and letting the scent pass without incident. "Oh, it's beautiful," she murmurs, looking between the worms. She can feel the heat off the second, and her suit's autonomic functions automatically key up the heat-regulation.

"Like handlin' a jump drive, 'cept without somethin' to run the numbers for ya," Tess says, more to herself than to Sheeana. "It sounds pretty amazin'."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

To run the numbers for you...yes, exactly like a no-ship in miniature.

Sheeana gave her a diabolic smile. "These are infant specimens here in an artificial environment. Nevertheless, would you like to ride one?"

[deep_sky_diving]

"I would!" Tess says. "If I ain't gonna hurt it by sittin' too hard, anyway," she qualifies, glancing down at herself. "I'm heavier'n'I look... how much weight can it take?" Despite her reservations, the idea seems to rather much delight her, and the heat coming in sharp waves off the second worm doesn't seem to phase her enough to even blink about it.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana's laugh was like the wind over the dunes. A human concerned about harming a maker!

She gestured and the big one lowered its head. She hooked a hand into a leathery segment and vaulted up until she sat stradling it, an attitude noone before had yet succesfully taken with the Worm. She waited for Tess to climb up behind her. "An adult sandworm can shrug off blasts from vehicle mounted lasguns. Now without a set of maker hooks, you'll have to hold on to me."

And the worm took off.

[deep_sky_diving]

Tess climbs up behind Sheeana, grip ginger until she's sure the extra weight she carries in her reinforced muscles and bones and in her suit won't cause any problems. Her gloved hands slide forward to grip onto Sheeana's sides, and then a little further, unsure of how much of a hold she'll need.

And the worm goes—!!

Her arms slide forward, reflexively clinging more, to the point where she's almost clinging directly against Sheeana's back. "Woah!"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana leaned forward, grabbing one of the segments to steady herself. The worm was traveling down the widest avenue, between strange buildings, followed by its smaller cousin.

"Tell me, Tess: Besides traveling, what is it a Grasshopper does? What is your role in society?" She had to raise her voice over the wind.

[deep_sky_diving]

"We help people," is Tess' instinctive first response. There's much more than that, certainly, but when it comes down to the main thing they do for society—yes. Strange, anarchist helpers, but helpers. "We share info'n stuff we find, and we introduce ourselves to new kinds've folks." Aliens, that is.

She moves forward with Sheeana's motion, still clinging to her to keep from losing her balance on the worm.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Help people... That was certainly a tip-of-the-rock-formation response.

"Will you tell me more? Because..." She dodged a tipped over wreck of a hover-van. "...that sounds like what the Bene Gesserit do."

[deep_sky_diving]

Woo! This is fun, even if Tess is rather out of her element. (But, being out of their element is part of what grasshoppers do—dive in to the strange and the new and learn as much as they can from it...) "Mostly we teach folks 'bout what they're missin' out on," Tess says, calling it over Sheeana's shoulder to be heard. "Tellin' the Good News is enough t'break up some've the nastier claves'n'cans out there, by itself. If y'gotta get more'n slingshots fer anythin' there's crickets. They ain't all nice folks, but a lot've'm don't mind gettin' involved if there's anythin' really bad goin' on."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"The Good News? A religious publication?" She gestured to the right and leaned. The worm leaned and turned with her. She could feel the softness of the girl's body on her back...waterfat her Fremen instincts told her.

[deep_sky_diving]

"Oh, naw," Tess says, with what's almost a laugh, and tightens a moment against Sheeana. Soft, certainly, but there's something harder underneath: with a suit so slim and elegant, her body's been subtly reinforced for the rigors of space travel, too, with harder bones and stronger muscles and ligaments, with more-efficient lungs and a larger heart. She and the suit are a system meant to work together. "It's the book fer makin' yer own jumper, and how t'set it up so you can land somewhere without goin' smush."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Like the Missionaria Protectiva...But not nearly so sinister. She thought of the planets that would never rise up with the banner of the cult of Sheeana. She could not help but feel this was for the best. The Missionaria was a dangerous instrument.

"So you insert information where it will do the most good. That is a laudable goal. We Bene Gesserit are charged with one great task: help humanity to mature. Tyrants have a soothing effect on the psyche of their subjects. We work to make humans mature enough to reject them anyway."

[deep_sky_diving]

"That sounds like a great thing t'do fer people," Tess says. "Yer religious at all?" she asks. After Sheeana's own assumption about her, it seems like a safe thing to guess at.