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space & creatures [closed]

Arha leaned over the tub her Little Maker had been confined to and hummed something that wasn't exactly a tune and yet was. It was rhythm-less, but it seemed to help ease the Shai-Hulud's distress. He was uncomfortable confined like this, much in the same way she was. Her fingers, too, helped, as they brushed along the sand-smooth hide.

Arha did not feel well. Unbalanced was a good description for it. Hot was another. It was not illness.

Yet today, the racing flipping colors outside that had fascinated her made her wish to vomit quite violently in the utmost of non-Fremen ways. She, like one of her training could, ignored the impulse and sat with her back to the lightshow, with her fingers gliding over the Little Maker's head as he bumped his tri-sectioned mouth into her hand. Arha closed her eyes and lay her head against her arm.

She was not so sure she liked space.

Perhaps it would pass.

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"You're told whom to breed with?" Luke repeated, somewhat horrified. Reducing beings to animals and breeding them like they were prize nerfs went against his beliefs as a Jedi. "That's... I can't believe it."

He realized how lucky he'd been to be able to make a love match, to marry Mara because he loved her and respected her, if there were places--universes--where marrying for love was a rare thing. "Were you asked to make such a match?"

"It is what it is," Arha murmured, then shook her head. "I heard of no such matches for me. But that does not mean that I was not intended for such. We are whatever is required of us and have much training in many areas. Some are lucky enough to be concubines to kings and lords. Some find love as consorts, others do not. Some find nothing at all. We preserve and enhance, doing what we can to make sure humanity survives. But, as far as I know, I was not given to a particular man, Fremen or otherwise."

Her expression was calm.

"I expect love is not one of those things I shall find. Affection, perhaps. Love would always be too much to ask in a world full of so much uncertainty. It takes a rare sort of person to find something so elusive that all poets speak of it and all people crave it."

"But don't you ever want to be your own person?" Luke asked curiously. Arha had initially struck him much like Mara, or Jaina perhaps in personality. She was strong-willed and didn't take any flak from anyone. "Don't you get tired of not being in charge of your own life?"

"I am my own person, still," Arha said quietly. "My Sisterhood believes me dead in a Guild Heighliner malfunction that took out...several thousand people...on its way to Arrakis. I remember everything up to the point in which Sister Kalim died, but I cannot recall what happened after. I awoke in the desert, on Arrakis, in a stillsuit with limited supplies. The desert gave me everything from shelter to food to water and I survived in its depths. It has been a year, perhaps more since I came to that place in the midst of its trouble."

Arha turned her face 'skyward' and tried to find a breeze.

"I am my own self and I protect my desert and its people the best I can. That objective no longer holds in true fashion now that I am here."

She gestured.

"I am at a loss as to what it is that I am supposed to do now, but I am, and always will be, my own person."

Luke was quiet as they walked, thinking back on the days of the Rebellion, when he'd just begun to learn of his heritage as a Jedi. Had he really been free then? Obi-Wan and Yoda had groomed him to be their weapon, the saber that would cut to the heart of the Empire and strike it down. His destiny had been what his father's should have been, and he had not truly been free until the end of it at Endor.

Even for years afterward, he'd struggled with the thought that perhaps he hadn't been adequately trained--that he wouldn't be able to instruct the new Jedi properly because all he had learned was of warfare and fighting, not the finer nuances of the Force. Eventually he had found his place, and realized that he could do a great deal of good regardless and for a Jedi to continue to grow and study on their own helped them too, but it had been a looming thought.

"I think we just have to carry on as best we can. There is something about each one of us that Stacy saw and decided she needed, whether it's a fighting ability or something else." He shrugged. "We can't do anything else, really."

It was better down here, in this place. The wretchedness was less, her skin less threatened by the moisture above. Shai-Hulud, you give me the desert and poison my skin to heavy water-filled places. Must I change again? She forced herself to keep moving, listening to Luke's voice as she closed her eyes and sensed her way forward.

"I am here," Arha breathed. "Not anywhere else but here. When I am needed, I shall still be here." She was coming to it, the point at which she would normalize. It was an agony of itself, one she wished to curled into a ball for while she endured it. Her worm let out something of a rasping cry of a roar.

Here.

"We may stop. It is time to turn him loose." She dropped to her knees, her expression weary for an instant as she shifted into a meditative position, her legs crossed and back straight. Arha wished to sleep, but would not.

With a twitch of his fingers, Luke gently set the bin down on the floor, and dropped to his knees beside Arha. "Are you all right?" he asked gently.

"I'm better," Arha said, taking a few breaths. Less laborious. Clearer. Fix this. The sweating stopped and some of the paleness faded. "I've been realigning my cells. Fixing the imbalance. It is not an easy task." She closed her eyes and reached out to the worm. He felt better as well, not as watersick.

Arha forced herself to stay upright only through sheer force of will and the worm twisted and thumped against its container. She moved toward it and pulled itover with a soft grunt. The worm tumbled out and she managed to brush its segmented hide before it reared and let out a hiss. The Little Maker nudged and curved itself around her, trying to support her.

"I'm fine," she murmured. "It's fine. It'll pass, little one. I promise."

He sat beside her cross-legged and smiled, watching her with her worm. It would have reminded him of a favorite pet, if he hadn't felt the intelligence coming from it. "Realigning your cells?" he asked, curious. "Why?"

"I am trying to force my body to accept the water-heavy air," she said quietly. "Every week or two, or as little as a few days depending, I have to do this again. It may have something to do with the Shai-Hulud I absorbed." Her fingers brushed soothingly against the warm wormhide and he rumbled. "It is almost as if I am part-worm in some ways, yet still who I am. Still me. When I am in my desert, I am content and it is home. The place of my birth was not Arrakis, but nowhere else do I feel more at peace than on my desert world."

And Sheeana had said that world had been obliterated.

The thought made her heartsick.

"The worm senses water as poison. One would think it would not bother a Bene Gesserit trained woman, yet it does. Most diseases and poisons would not harm us, but I am not so sure about water in my case. It is fine to drink it, but the air? It upsets the balance." She shook her head. "I do not know why."

"Well, if you absorbed that worm and it changed your body somehow, then that would explain why, wouldn't it? You said water is poison to them." Luke held his hand out to the worm again, letting it decide if it wanted him to pet it or not.

"Mm," Arha said, the noise thoughtful as the Little Maker moved a little to let Luke pet him. He didn't move far. "It might be part of the reason why, but I don't exactly know how. That bothers me. I suppose it always will. I'm not even sure how I absorbed him to begin with. He was in pain, dying because he was not where he belonged. I killed him."

She glanced at her hands, holding them up.

"I laid my hands on him and there was nothing but pain. I woke a week later."

Luke scratched the worm lightly, wondering if it might be itchy, as he thought. This wasn't anywhere near his realm of expertise, but Jedi had always been thought of as sophists, and it was something for his mind to turn over, like an interesting stone he'd found in a canyon while exploring once.

"You took his pain into yourself so he would not have to experience it anymore," Luke said softly.

"He was trapped," Arha whispered. "And they would have never let him go. Never. I gave him what peace I could." The worm was pleased with the scratching and fairly vibrated, though he kept his place, curled snug against Arha as she started to list. "He was withering. I came to him when I was five years old, unafraid, and I was sixteen when he asked me to have mercy on him. I took the pain and I took him home inside me. His teeth are my blades."

"Then you did a very good, kind thing," Luke said gently, reaching up with his other hand and putting it bracingly against Arha's shoulder. "Mercy, compassion, empathy; these are all important traits to have."

He watched her carefully, worried. "Arha, you're tilting. Why don't you get some rest? I can keep an eye on this little guy."

It was not so bad, here. Shai-Hulud even felt better, free from his pen. He would not leave her and,if necessary, he could take a limb or two off anyone attempting to harm her. She could sense he would if it came down to it. While he was not as Sheeana's worm, in his own desert way, he cared a great deal for the woman he had watched undergo the Agony. Arha herself didn't know exactly why, but she accepted it.

She closed her eyes.

"I will sleep for a little while," she murmured. "And then I will be better." Arha paused, thinking. "I think that the Universe is full of things that go wrong. Putting things right? This is a good thing."

Luke smiled; in so few words, she'd gotten to the core of what it was he'd spent a lifetime doing. Putting things right; a Jedi's task.

"I'll stay with you," he said softly. "So you're not bothered while you sleep."

"That would be a good thing, too," she murmured drowsily, the beginnings of a smile flitting across her face as she laid her cheek against the Little Maker's hide. He rumbled softly and shored her weight up so she was comfortable. Arha had slept worse places than the ground and her fingers against the worm's hide were more for desert connection than anything. He was a connection to her sands and the cinnamon scent of Spice filled her with a sense of comfort and home.

Her Little Maker was getting big. Seven and a half feet in length, now, and thick around. He was perhaps a little longer than Sheeana's, slower, too, but he was growing. This Thinking Machine was a tiring place when all she seemed to do was fight with it, to some extent, on nearly every level.

"I will not sleep long," she added with a sigh as her eyes close. "Just...just enough."

"Sleep as long as you want," he said quietly. His fingers idly stroked the worm, not wanting to disturb it or Arha. She looked like she could use the rest badly. "I'll be here when you wake up."

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