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[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Much of what we call art caters to an inner desire for comfort. Yet the most memorable artists created works which disturbed the psyche of the viewer. That is why the most important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone by questioning the society's values can force it to change.
-archives of the Missionaria Protectiva, unknown author*

Something had welled up in Sheeana in the past few weeks. It was an accumulation brought about by too much time spent around people whose secrets etched lines on sleepless faces. The mood had grown tense and the ship was starting to feel closed in. She knew she would have to express what she felt on this sooner or later. It was either art or snarky commentary that was sure to earn her enemies.

Thus she was down in the city with lasgun and crysknife, carving wood. It was far cruder than the shaper gloves she was used to, and she had not the time to create the traditional Fremen wind sculpture but she would have to make do. The beam sliced the heavy Elaccan fogwood with an impunity not known to any earlier carving instruments. The crysknife took care of any spurs. The sandworm's tooth knife was a finer carver than any before her had been blessed with. The cloying smell of burnt fogwood filled the chamber.



Gradually a figure took place. Born under eye and hand, emerging fully from her roiling brain like Athena, was a humanoid figure. Atop a deep bed of blue sand, he struggled on his stomach in an arch-backed pose. He was half sunk into this psuedo-ocean.

And emerging from the sand all around him were arms, frozen perpetually in the act of reaching for him. They emerged from the sand, their fingers open, questing.

It was an ambiguous sculpture. Was the man drowning or swimming? Was he sinking or emerging? Were the arms reaching for him to pull him under or to support him? To rescue him? The answer would depend on the viewer, and they would surely project their own psychic situation onto it.

It was a distressing piece, not comforting, but she hoped one that would provoke something within the watcher, stir parts of themselves they had not known to activate.

A quick wash of paint (grey for the man, vivid red for the arms), and it was done. She let out a sigh, contented as she felt herself relax from the trance of creation. Time gradually began to reenter its normal phase and she lost her tunnel vision. That was when she realized she wasn't alone.




*[OOC: quote is actually by Samuel R Delany]

Comments

[morphitudinous]

Billy wandered the City aimlessly, trying to shake that heavy cloak of dread from his shoulders. He was coming to the hotel to find help from Sheeana, right? Soon, he hoped, he would have a fighting chance against the encroaching nightmares.

Suddenly, he found himself in a room---and there was his soon-to-be teacher, sculpting a horrifying image with incredible focus. There laid someone sinking into the sands, drowning. Where could the inspiration for such a piece have come from?

So transfixed was he on the vision of madness before him that he failed to notice that Sheeana had finished. Oops. He hadn't meant to disturb her this early.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana spun on her stool. The transition back into regular time and her hair trigger Fremen instincts jarred her.

I became too absorbed.

"Ah, hello Billy." She watched his reaction to the piece. "I'm sorry, I must have gotten too absorbed and lost track of time."

[morphitudinous]

"I'm the one who should apologize. I intended to notify you first, but I wasn't expecting you here." The words sounded oddly dead to his ears, as if the memories and fantasies drifting across his imagination consumed his entire attention span.

"Should I return later?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"No, I was just finishing." She listened closely. There was a flat affect to his register. Human voices got that way when they were too exhausted for the normal social tones.

He's already been exposed to Voice. I risk weakening us by helping him. Yet there is always the outside enemy to consider. A mind taken over by this Nightmare King is surely an Abomination as much as Alia will become.

"You are stressed. You haven't slept enough. Something is weighing on you." She stood and crossed a few steps nearer to him.

[morphitudinous]

Sheeana's intense scrutiny was difficult to withstand for long, but he managed to attempt eye contact. Billy had come to seek her assistance in these matters, but it bothered him that his deteriorating condition was so obvious. Someone he worked with would start worrying soon, no doubt, if they weren't preoccupied with their own nightmares.

"Affirmative on all counts. I've tried to resist the dark ideations stemming from my dreams on my own, but it was considerably easier at home with an external, far weaker enemy and well-established support system. Here, I need to approach the problem from another angle. There is no external nightmare force that I can defeat---I need to fight from within, and I don't know how."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't have been obvious to anyone but a Bene Gesserit. She was pleased by his honest self evaluation.

"Ai. You are removed from your former support system. I understand." A Reverend Mother carried her support system with her like a hermit crab with its shell. "There is psychological ease to fighting an outside enemy. Rulers have known this for millenia...As i'm sure you noticed on the mission. So I will equip you with a few tools, though it will be your responsibility to figure out how to use them." She gestured at the grass in front of the hotel. "Sit." She did likewise, crossing her feet in lotus. "Are you ready?"

[morphitudinous]

Billy sat obediently and mimicked her pose, mind reeling with wild guesses about the nature of the process. For this to work, though, he guessed he had to quiet his mind. He exhaled, sweeping aside the uncertainty and focusing as though on a difficult problem.

"I am."

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

"Interesting piece. Does the artist care to explain in her own words, or does the piece speak for itself?"

He lifts his hands, palm-front, in response to her recoil. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you. My bad."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana slowly settled back into 'normal' time. She controlled her breathing and heart rate. "Fremen instincts. It's not your fault. I suppose you can have the former...if you first tell me what you think is happening."

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

"This is gonna be hard. I never took art history."

Really, it isn't hard. Really, he looks at the piece, and his mind turns it into math, into measurements and proportions and volume and those numbers grant each other significance supplemented by external colors and emotional symbolism. The hard part will be assigning it a meaning in a language not involving pi. The interpretation lends itself more easily to music than to words. If he hadn't left his guitar back in his quarters -

He delays the explanation. "Had a couple girlfriends who dragged me to the Met a couple of times but I bitched and moaned and made myself a nuisance until they agreed we could go to the Annex next time."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

There were several things she could say to his obvious stalling.

What does your romantic history have to do with this?

I asked about your impression, not your education.

And I slept through most of it.

But she just fixed him with a blue within blue stare. Silence as a weapon.

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

He stares back, rather more smirky. "What, no witty banter today?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Do you think you need to buy time with me? Take your time to think about it. But I want to know your opinion first." Partly because she found his opinions interesting and partly because she had that inborn tendency to the megalomaniacal.

[riseupnchargem.livejournal.com]

Jamie'd been observing her, dully - more because she happened to be doing something purposeful-looking than out of genuine interest in her craft or the object she was making. Once she came out of her trance and seemed aware of his presence, however, Jamie realized he'd better come up with something halfway intelligent to say, as justification for his mindless gawping. From a respectful distance he regarded the carving, eyes flicking between it and the woman who'd created it.

"That's, um. That's...interesting," he managed. And it was, in a disquieting way. It actually prompted him to try to examine it more carefully, as best he could from this distance, and the longer he did so the more unsettling the carving seemed.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana gave him an evaluating glance. A stripling boy, a few years younger than her it appeared. She knew better than to underestimate him though; Muad'dib had been like him when he was exiled.

"What does it look like to you?"

[riseupnchargem.livejournal.com]

Jamie ventured a little closer to get a better look at the figure. "Looks like someone trying to escape from something," he said - somewhat guardedly, as though he suspected he might be guessing wrong. "Trying to break free."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Interesting." She turned it on its base, offering new perspectives. "What he is doing changed in my mind as I sculpted it. He might be swimming. They might be reaching to pull him under...or support him. I am Sheeana, of the Bene Gesserit by the way."

[riseupnchargem.livejournal.com]

His brow furrowed as he tried, and failed, to see the figure in a more benign light. "...'s the hands. They look..." He trailed off and wavered between finishing his half-formed thought or giving up on it, and ultimately chose the latter, taking the woman's cue to introduce himself instead.

"Jamie Hemeros. Nice to meet you." He watched as she turned the carving around, presenting new angles from which to examine it. "So...why'd you make it?" he asked, glancing briefly at her. "Any reason?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"It's..." Sheeana struggled to articulate the welling up within her, the spilling over from that wild place that compelled these things to emerge from her. "The mood. The atmosphere of everyone's subconsciouses...It speaks to me. I have to articulate it. Or I will become unhinged. Do you understand?" Oh real great job there, miss calm and composed Reverend Mother. Way to not make yourself look crazy.

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

Khel didn't blame her her shock, but neither did he flinch or retreat from her startled reaction. He was used to moving silently; it was a common undead trait. "Milady Brugh," he said, sparing only a cursory glance at the sculpture, "I must speak with thee regarding thy pupils ... and thyself." Gone was the death knight's usual jovial tone when speaking to Sheeana. There was no pun, and his words and tone were quite serious, though not angered. GLaDOS taking him had been a stroke of fortune. It had allowed him tike to think and consider an idea that had barely shaped in his head the last time he and Sheeana had spoken together.

"I have a request to make," he clarified, hoping not to be misunderstood by this woman he cared for and respected.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

This was not as different a Khel as most around him would think. She knew he was a sincere man. More sincere than me, by necessity.

"If it's in my capacity to give, it's yours." She swiveled on her stool towards him.

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

"I have little that I can do to keep myself occupied, given that I do not require sleep, and that there is little combat tra spiring here at the time. I wouldst like to train and teach thee and thine in the use of weapons of my home. I believe that it may prove of use. If I am indeed fated to finally die here on this mission as well, I would like for the Paladin's art to be passed on. It should not be lost with I."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"I do, though. I appreciate this offer very much, but would two hours a week of instruction be enough? Running an order of five occupies almost all my waking hours. Hmm..." Khel would be the one to show this. "You may find this interesting, actually."

She picked the crysknife up, reverently dusted off the wooddust and handed it to him. The bone-white blade was milky and incredibly sharp.

[forced-unlife.livejournal.com]

Khel accepted the blade gently, but chose to answer Sheeana's question first. "I may have a suggestion. If I am to train thy order as a whole, milady, t'would be less time thou must organize the order. I know I am no Bene Gesserit, and I would never seek to steal thy order from thee, but I can train pupils in many subjects, and weapon mastery in turn teaches mastery of the self. The Bene Gesserit has much to teach students, true, but perhaps there is yet room for teachings of the Paladin's order to be taught as well. I believe there is much we might be able to learn from each other." Finally, the death knight glanced down at the knife in his gauntleted hands.

"A fascinating weapon, milady. I have rarely seen similar to its like. Minotaurs often use a crystal for their bladed weapons. Few know what it's called and fewer still know how to make weaponry of it. Tis said they are extremely sharp, swift, but brittle. Battle with them avoids blows against other weaponry."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Oh, you would take them off my hands once a week?" Grateful, she pressed her lips to the bone of his forehead. "Remember, you can't take that back."

Ah! He understood the crysknife's nature immediately.

"It is rare for an outfreyn to see a crysknife and live. They are made from the sandworm's teeth. You guessed its nature correctly: Shai-Halud is a mineral creature and his teeth are crystalline. It is both extremely sharp and brittle, as you said."