trans_9 | [Intended for Ghanima Atreides but open]

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[Intended for Ghanima Atreides but open]

Thin Ridulian microfilm crackled under her fingers. The light from the shifting, slurry haze of celestial bodies through the great window shone through the letters on the page. It was the thinnest paper that could still be hand turned and preserved the sensuality of reading.

Something drew her to Leto 2's words. Parts had been played, the conciliatory figure had appeared, and the vote was soon to be called. Her setting of the whole debate in motion now crippled Sheeana's ability to persuade during the vote itself. I am Other now more than I ever have been before. She observed.

And this was a potent wisdom for this situation. Leto 2 had built a sprawling edifice of an empire, held it together with religious fanaticism, organizational genius and prescience, all to teach humans a lesson about trusting leaders. He gave them the kind of peace and safety they'd expected from a leader, all they could stand of it and more and more...

Her mind relaxed into the words as her body relaxed into the fleshy, bloblike 'chair'.

The social-alarm signals which put societies into the postures of defense/attack are like shouted words to me. As a people, you react against threats to innocence and the peril of the helpless young. Unexplained sounds, visions and smells raise the hackles you have forgotten you possess. When alarmed, you cling to your native language because all the other patterned sounds are strange. You demand acceptable dress because a strange costume is threatening. This is system-feedback at its most primitive level. Your cells remember.

Flip.

When you are together, you can share a common catastrophe. You can be exterminated together. Thus, I demonstrate the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless mediocrity, a movement without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire civilizations can do this thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without fuss or stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you the false happiness and the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the real happiness?

Flip.

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.

Flip.

Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the disheveled flights, the leg-aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic specs where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.

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Once again, the Obs deck had drawn Ghani to it. Perhaps it was the thought that there were suppose to be stars outside the windows. Even though there was nothing more than ever shifting haze out there, she knew there were stars and perhaps that was enough for her.

A large part was the quiet of the area, and she needed that. She needed time away from the people who were wandering around the city trying to restore it. Needed time away from the bickering, from the misunderstandings others held for each other. She knew she could be classified under those people, but she never actively set out to talk about her misgivings. She had for the most part remained silent.

Sighing she stepped inside the large room and an eyebrow shot up seeing Sheeana there. Sheeana might not have been her favorite person, in fact she was pretty low on the list - right at the bottom to be exact, but she tried her best to remain civil and not let their differences in opinion cause any problems for others on the ship. She thought it had been pretty successful so far.

Tilting her head, Ghani moved further into the room and only came to a halt when she was a few feet away from where Sheeana was seated. "What are you reading?" she asked finally.

Now that was someone she hadn't expected to see. Leto's sister had always made her a little uncomfortable. She was a living reminder that she was a latter day Fremen.

She gathered the pages back together and offered them out to her. "Your brother's journals. My ancestor stole them from his citadel."

Ghani nodded slowly and reached out and took the pages from Sheeana. Holding them carefully, she looked down at them for a moment and really wasn't sure she wanted to read them. She didn't want to know what Leto had thought, what he had done. She wanted to keep him the way he was in her memories. "I'm sure it'll be an enlightening read."

Glancing away for a moment, Ghani bit on the inside of her cheek as she thought. "My brother wasn't always the way you remember him."

"He was fully human in your time, yes? I have spent a long time in service to his Golden Path but I know nothing of that aspect of him..." Only what the histories said and what she could glean from in Other Memory...And Siona had always hated him. She was not the most objective source.

She studied her posture, noting that she was still standing. Tension there. It had to be deliberate though. She was a Reverend Mother too.

"Yes of course he was," she said, allowing a smile of amusement to flicker across her lips. "Leto was perhaps one of the most intelligent people I've ever known. I think he disturbed Alia with the things he knew... Actually we both probably did. He was always able to find a way to make me laugh, but then he had a way of making me realize how serious something was too." She sighed and looked down at the pages of her brother's stolen journals and ran a hand softly over it.

"He was always the stronger of the two of us. Which was why he was the one to start the Golden Path."

She laughed a moment at that. Disturbing Alia Atreides was no mean feat. "I wish we had that mind with us now...But then, if wishes were waterdrops, beggars would bathe." A bit of Fremen folk wisdom. "He talks about you in every volume."

"I know," Ghani shrugged her shoulders. "I feel like I'm missing part of myself," she admitted. "Even though he lives in your worm in a way, it's not the same." Her eyebrows perked up and she looked at the journals again. "Did he?"

"Incessantly. He may not be here, but his twin may produce some similar gems, no? Tell me what you think of this conflict." Her teasing was hesitant and awkward, mouth crooked up in her best ingratiating smile.

"Perhaps one day," Ghani replied dryly only partly answering Sheeana's questions. "Does the Sisterhood still take such interest in our Genes so far in the future?" Her head tilted a little to the side, and it was hard to tell if the young Atreides was being serious or perhaps even mocking the Sisterhood who had manipulated things for such a long period of time.

"Considering one Darwi Odrade was Mother Superior before me, I would say the Atreides still interest us in many ways." You're a smart girl, Ghanima. Figure the etymology of that out.

Her eyes narrowed, hearing the familiar sounding name. Odrade. Was this Darwi a possible Atreides decendents? "Let us drop these games, Sheeana. Why is it that you mock me at every possible turn?"

That was unexpected. But then, she's an Atreides. Never forget that. "I invested a lot of myself in being the last Fremen and the God-Emperor's beloved reborn. You are more those things than I am and it makes me uncomfortable. And the worm, your brother inside, he..." No, it wasn't time for that now. She shook her head.

The thought that Sheeana was jealous of her had never even crossed Ghani's mind. And once it did, it was a very foreign idea. Her head tilted a bit and she stared at Sheeana, allowing her confusion and curiousity to show. "Why? I cannot help what I was or am anymore than you can. We come from such different times, don't you think it would be more productive to learn from eachother than to waste time circling eachother - waiting for the other to make some move?"

"Conditioning. I have had conspiracies swirling around me since I was a child. Surely you of all people can understand that?" Sheeana didn't like this raw emotional exposure, but if it won Ghanima over to her cause, she would be honest with her.

Ghanima couldn't do anything but nod her head in agreeance. She understood growing up with conspiracies, she afterall had grown up not only known as Muad'dib's child, but she'd also been called an abomination. Leto and her had always had guards somewhere around them... When they'd stayed where they were suppose to.

"I understand," she said after a moment. "But this is not Arrakis or anything we'd been raised to even consider as a possibility." She paused for a moment and it was evident she was struggling with what she wanted to say. "I think it is past time to put such things behind the two of us and try to come to some sort of mutual understanding."

"We four are the last Fremen and the last Reverend Mothers. If we die, these traditions die with us." Reluctant agreement. She glanced meaningfully at the other sponge-chair nearby. It will be difficult to parley with you standing while I sit. It's a Bene Gesserit trick.

"Then I will put my cards on the table. We are not the same Bene Gesserit. Five thousand years, your brother, the scattering and the Honored Matres have changed us. We have no interest in your genes, nor do we wish to harm you for what your father did."

Arha had been quiet, intent upon her training as a Jed-Eye, a pilot, and learning what she could while she helped clean up those who needed a healer's touch. With another session in Medbay finished, she let her feet carry her to the Observation Deck.

Now that she was used to it, the colors and movement no longer bothered her.

It was there that she found Sheeana flipping through a book and she folded her arms behind her back wordlessly, the soft white leather she wore creaking almost soundlessly. Her fellow Sister would either acknowledge her presence or not. Either way, Arha watched the interplay of colors for awhile in silence.

Sheeana took her time about it. Or maybe it was just that she was so engrossed in reading that her normal alertness left her.

She silently acknowledged her, and beckoned her to sit down.

As usual, she was patient about waiting, which she could have done for an indefinite amount of time. When she did sit, she folded her hands across a knee and peered at Sheena for a long moment, then settled against the blobby plantlike chair.

Her blue-within-blue eyes remained fixed steadily on those of her Sister.

She tucked her legs under her, sitting crosslegged and finally set the journals down next to her. There was a lot she needed to ask her, but first things first. "What happened."

Something had gone terribly wrong during the Nightmare King's attack. They needed to find out what.

"Too much, too little. Everything and nothing," Arha said with a shake of her head. "I may have training, I may have everything I need before me, but still, I make mistakes." She spread her hands. "I am imperfect and blocked out what I needed most. But I overcame it once I realized what I was doing."

She frowned slightly.

"Nanoha nearly blew me to bits until I was able to get through to her. Such did not help the matter at hand. One may prepare all they like for events, and still, something will go wrong."

I make mistakes... An oblique commentary on her latest troubles with public relations?

Regardless, she wanted to reach out to her, but not before getting to the bottom of it. "What you needed most...That means..." Was she saying she blocked out her Mothers Within?

"Yes," she said in a quiet voice. And they'd get to that. "As to the larger realm of things...I have had precious little time to contemplate things. From what I can tell, it seems that trust is still a major issue--such is obvious. At the route of the matter is the fact that this is a war we have been thrust into. It has not been something which any of us has signed up for and there is quite a diversity of morals, attitudes, and opinions to wade through. Again, such is obvious."

Arha was quiet for awhile.

"I believe my own thoughts are occupied with personal failures during this last engagement. Clearly, I have not yet worked them out. Noting the political and emotional climate of this crew seems to be secondary."

"And look what war does. In the name of expediency for the war effort, of preserving the human species, we sacrifice the freedoms that make our species beautiful." It was an upsetting thing and she didn't bother to hide it...Not that she could after they'd Shared.

"I do not understand why you would reject your Mothers Within at the time you most needed their protection. I need you whole and here, to be my Sister, not applying the Amtal Rule in a way that endangers yourself!" She snatched her hand up and held it, distressed, raised up on her knees which dug into the spongy mass of the chair.

"I am not sure why I did either," Arha admitted. "But I am both whole and here now. I have also confronted what I needed to confront and while it was a dangerous path to walk, I did so and survived. I am stronger for it now. Like I said before, I have made my own mistakes. I think I was deeply unconsciously afraid of their rejection of...this thing I share with the Jed-Eye. But there is no rejection, only synthesis. Out of this nightmare, out of the sleep deprivation, out of the danger, there was a lesson to be learned and I have learned it well. I cannot shut them out, for they are part of who I am and who I shall become. It is something I knew and needed to be shown once more."

Arha squeezed Sheeana's hand gently.

"I was afraid, but now I am not."

"I am glad. I told you, you are an amphibian." A teasing, non-Fremen metaphor to go with her grin. She meant the Latin, not calling her a frog but one who lives on both sides. "But never do that again."

"I believe once is enough," Arha said, not bothering to suppress the slight shudder than ran through her frame.

Obi-Wan wasn't eves-dropping. Of course not, the Jedi never spied. Call it instead, prudent hesitation on his part, which was a much more diplomatic way of hearing what they had said without being forced to make himself known where he stood, watching them from the doorway.

When Arha shuddered he touched her Force-presence gently, like the warm breath of a hand on her shoulder, lending support, and cleared his throat softly to make Sheeana aware as well. He didn't speak, not yet. It didn't feel like a moment for words, only for regard, and waiting.

Something ran soft fingertips across Sheeana's awareness too and her hand went automatically to her crysknife. It is really unnerving when they do that.

Obi-wan was standing there in the doorway and she mulled over the wisdom of conducting this intimate moment between Sisters in such a public place.

Well, he'd seen her at worse.

She sat back on her calves and gave him a questioning/welcoming look.

Obi-Wan. Arha's expression eased as she let herself sink into his support. It mattered little how much he'd heard, she had a feeling she would have eventually spilled it all to him at some point. Arha disliked withholding important things from her Jed-Eye as it was.

In this case, she had simply been too busy to take time out and sit still long enough to get a proper discussion in. Such was the level of activity when it came down to cleaning up the mess left behind after the Nightmare King's defeat. It was the healing that did her in most of the time, anyway, though the need for that was quietly tapering off as of late.

His smile warmed at Sheeana's wariness, and at its fading. Good to know he hadn't lost his touch— perhaps another talk with Luke was in order.

"I thought you might need company," he greeted them both genially, coming close in a way that somehow asked permission to sit without making any overt motion, "But I see I've come a little late. How have you been recovering?"

Ah but which of us does he mean by 'you'?

She made room for him a little bit. A Reverend Mother easily picked up on those nonverbal requests.

Sheeana glanced at Arha, who had the worse time of it. She'd explain more if she wanted.

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[Intended for Ghanima Atreides but open]

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