(no subject)

[worm_dancer]

Location: Station Sector 3
Who: Sheeana, OPEN
What: Sheeana meditates on her new responsibilities and wonders if she's a bit of a worrywart
Warning(s): wordiness

She stepped down from the crumbling plasteel blocks into the orange sand. After the built up optimized environments they'd all recently come from (crystal towers, togas, etiquette, all the things a desert creature sneered at), it was a relief to feel it under her feet. Small plumes of sand sprouted from all over the basin and tiny sandworms (no more than fifteen feet long each, yet carrying the heritage of leviathans) sprouted up before her and begged for attention like eager puppies. "Of course. I've neglected you lately, haven't I?"

So, while the rest of the crew was celebrating with Qhalavian liquor they'd just 'liberated', Sheeana danced for her worms, whirling and stomping rythmlessly until they seemed temporarily satisfied. They swayed with her too, remembered flames within frames made by little crystal needleteeth.

She sat down with them and let them climb over her. She poured out her concerns over the crew's growing overconfidence to them, not expecting an answer though she knew the man inside them could give her one if he could only speak. Ah, but would you want that, Leto?

And then she noticed someone coming through the doorway that only opened with a violent impact, blue irising open to reveal her sitting cross legged with her children/ancestor. I shouldn't be surprised. My sietch knows to find me here.

Comments

[restoresbalance.livejournal.com]

Luke stepped through the iris doorway, feeling the sand crunch under his boots. It was a familiar sound, one from when he was a young boy, and he stomped a couple times before proceeding across to where Sheeana was sitting, her strange sandworms around and on top of her.

"I thought I'd find you here," he said, smiling a little. Sheeana was something of an enigma to him and always had been.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The worms turned, hissed a pathetic, squeaking remnant of their mighty roar, attracted by the rythm of his feet. "Hush." She commanded them. "He's a friend." It was nothing personal. Sandworms of her time were far more territorial than they had ever been.

They crept to him, circling suspiciously around his legs.

[restoresbalance.livejournal.com]

He looked down, unsure of the sandworms but sure of the Force and his ability to get out of the way. "Hello there," he said, projecting toward them that he was, indeed, a friend; nonthreatening, calm. "You're all looking well."

Luke looked up at Sheeana, keeping himself from dancing from foot to foot in an effort not to step on one of the things. "You too. What are you doing hiding down here? Everyone else is relaxing."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

They seemed alright with that and rolled (though really each side was the same, so one might wonder at the point of the motion), showing plates they wished scratched and stroked. One of the most powerful minds in any universe they may have contained but they were still animals most of the time.

She turned to face him. "Aye. I should be up there monitoring the social dynamics, as is my duty. But I am disquieted by the sense of easy triumph."

[restoresbalance.livejournal.com]

Luke knelt and began obliging the sandworms, scratching one here, rubbing one there, according to the different vibes he got through the Force. It was kind of like having a whole herd of pittins demanding your attention at once. Pittins with big, pointy teeth.

"You think there's something else on the way?" Luke asked, keeping his voice calm as he gave the worms what they wanted--attention. Inwardly his mind was working. It was entirely possible they'd missed something...

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The worms made more hissings, this time pleased, and rubbed at his legs.

Worry (allowed, poised as with everything a Reverend Mother did) danced across her face. "I don't know. I wish I could look. I have Atreides ancestry, I know that it would be possible with enough effort. But then..." She looked helplessly at the worms. He knew the signifigance of that and of her dilemna. Look for danger and you could make an even greater one in the looking. "And you know how vulnerable we are after an easy victory."

[restoresbalance.livejournal.com]

He sat on the ground across from her, rubbing the last few sandworms that he hadn't been able to reach for the mass at his feet. They really weren't all that bad--at least, not at this size and not right now. Sheeana and the others of her world had told him that they could be quite deadly when they got bigger, and he had decided it would be good to believe them.

"When our guard is down. We do pretty much paint a target on our backs every time we get home from a successful mission." Luke sighed, stretching a bit. "Hopefully that won't happen though."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"If hope were water, beggars would bathe. An old Fremen saying." She sighed, a cynic, less content than her worms. Most of them burrowed down into the sands again, satisfied. "I should be monitoring the Bacchanalian flux though."

[ladyofthesands.livejournal.com]

It was Shai-Hulud that pulled her steps this time, and the buzz of worry she knew was Sheeana. She had not much been celebratory and had wandered aimlessly for a time. Aimlessly until she realized where she was wandering, then it had simply become a direction with an end point.

Sheeana.

"My Sister," Arha murmured and her smile as always lit up her features like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. She step-slid across the sand, the habit ingrained, and sank down next to Sheeana. My desert, she thought as she buried her fingertips into the sand. Warm sand.

"How do they fare today?" The worms, Sheeana's own thoughts, all applied and were asked after in a sentence.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh, that was a Fremen habit. No longer a meaningful one, but there. Like my habit of analysis? What use is this skill divorced from its context?

"They are disturbed and I do not know why." A multipart answer to a multipart question. The small worms came up to inspect her.

[ladyofthesands.livejournal.com]

For a moment, Arha considered Sheeana's words and then carefully lowered herself to sit down among the little sandworms, brimming with joy at being among them. They were pieces of her desert and pieces of the future all at once and she loved them the way she loved all things.

"Then we shall have to soothe them into calm," Arha said, tipping her head up to glance at Sheeana as she let the sandworms inspect her as fully as they wished.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The Leto-worms decided that this was indeed the same person they'd met before after Sheeana bade them to greet her.

"Sister, my training tells me to be calm. But my Fremen nature tells me there is danger in every crack, every shadow. I understand that the social organism needs Bacchanalian excess after a successful task. But I don't like it, and judging from you being here, neither do you."

[jed-eyed.livejournal.com]

"I find it frivolous and much too loud," Arha said dryly, running her fingers over the segmented hide of the nearest worm. "This is but one in a multitude of conflicts. Running around like a child in glee is not something I find conducive to planning."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"We should remember that not everyone shares our interior discipline. We would be irrelevant as an organization if they did...A hoped for irrelevance, but a very distant one." The worm hissed contentedly at the stroking. He would know the way to give perspective to all of them, if only they could extract that powerful mind from its shell somehow. Ah, but this is the body he has chosen for himself.

"Few seem to understand the magnitude of our situation."

[jed-eyed.livejournal.com]

"They are not all as observant as we," Arha said mildly, rubbing the worm with hands that flared warmth. "In time, perhaps we shall see them grow, but they will continue to be what they are until motivation is sufficient to force change. We can do little but provide some sort of stability in the meantime."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"I'm tired of waiting for the right time." Sheeana crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly very much like the petulant, vindictive child Darwi Odrade had picked up. "I waited for five years before this. Another five years of playing babysitter to human stupidity, on the perpetual run from a relentless enemy...Ghafla."

[jed-eyed.livejournal.com]

"We are all tired of the waiting, always," Arha said in a quiet voice. "But we cannot act on impulse alone. Such a thing you know, such a thing I know. To move in haste could mean our own demise, so we will wait and study and formulate if it takes us five more years of running and surviving before we move accordingly. We do not have much in the way of options."

Arha reached to squeeze Sheeana's knee gently.

"Patience," she said, her voice amused. "The Jed-Eye, they always say this thing and they are right. Do not blind yourself simple because you wish another path. Walk this one until opportunity presents other possibilities lest you walk yourself off a cliff."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The touch pulled her a bit out of her own egotism, and also the simple things which she needed to be reminded of. She covered the hand with her own. "And they also allow men into the higher levels of their order. Can you imagine that?" A bit of facetiousness. She considered Duncan her equal but many of her more conservative Sisters would find the idea ridiculous.

[jed-eyed.livejournal.com]

"Such is not a terrible thing," Arha said with a laugh, "depending upon the man in question. Different socio-evolutionary paths produce different ends, of course. One cannot point and sneer at stupidity when a people have not the life experience in which to see alternate means of progress."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"We are not of them, they not of us. One day, perhaps they shall listen, and in the meantime, we have much to observe and learn, no?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Well, not all males are stupid. And even the ones that are can be useful for some things." There were a multitude of implications in that.

"We do. Which means we should be watching their gathering, cliched as the experience may be." She tucked her feet under her and stood before offering Arha a hand up too.

[jed-eyed.livejournal.com]

Arha snorted softly and rose, taking Sheeana's offered hand. The little worms could wait. She would visit them later and sent a mental caress their way, the touch lingering as she smiled.

"We should always be watching," Arha said mildly. "Always."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Oh, sand. Her favorite thing. Of course that was when Motoko noticed the sand-worms clustered around Sheeana and realized what her new 'favorite' was. Then there was the woman herself— one could swear she was frustrating on purpose, in fact, she probably was. Motoko didn't enjoy being reminded of how very far she'd come from what she still sometimes thought of herself as: human.

So much for sightseeing.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana swayed and twirled and the worms were hypnotized, like charmed snakes in ancient times. She was using no tricks though.

Suddenly they turned to the intruder and hissed. Machine!

"Stop that. She means us no harm...Isn't that right?" It was a coquettish entreaty.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"Not unless they decide to try and take a chunk out of my shell," she returned. Motoko could be dry about this, with Sheeana making jokes and flirting her eyelashes as if it didn't matter.

Her footsteps on the sand were heavier than a normal humans because she was heavier than one. She could walk lighter, endeavor not to make any noise and in many cases she would succeed. But that took effort, and time, and it made her look like she was stalking someone with the intent to kill. To be fair, at times like that, she usually was.

"This is where you've set up, then?"

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"I think, of all beings, they could empathize with that." An enigmatic statement, but a true one if one knew the history of the beings crawling about on the sand now. The Major's footsteps were as loud as a thumper to them.

"I am a desert creature. My mothers-within counsel me about adaption, but I have my weaknesses." Now where had that come from? Yes, she had noticed that Motoko was a very attractive woman, in an outfreyn way. However...As easily the man who would become these worms noticed Hwi Noree's beauty; Because she was built that way.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Is a painting less beautiful because it was made by the hand of an artist and not the genetic dance of nature? Sheeana too had been built, though perhaps in a less exacting fashion that Motoko's shell. Semantics— what was the real difference between woman and machine?

"Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength," She replied, watching the creatures on the sand, "Your mothers-within? Shall we go diving?"

A double-meaning, if only Sheeana knew, and nearly a threat, despite the amusement Motoko let lift her expression. Dive the Net, dive the minds of all those connected, indeed, diving was Motoko's passion and past-time. In the water was the only place she was ever really alone.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Diving...diving... That was a concept she only knew the definition of, had never experienced herself. She could not place it in context, except to make a comparison to the interior diving she had to do to survive the Spice Agony.

"Into what depths?" She had to admit her confusion.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"Physical ones, unless you think you're willing to push past the basic incompatibilities of hardware," The idea of a newly ghost-dubbed Sheeana was like the thought of handing an assault rifle to a grade-schooler. Once she got past the basic control-systems, the unintentional carnage would be incredible.

"If we head down to Sector Four, there's no reason not to test your...adaptations."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Soon enough they were across the zip-lines and Sheeana was staring at the man-made pool, tiled and plasteel, a great chamber. Underneath were more and more tunnels, she knew, a labyrinth of untold miles under the waves.

Her Fremen instincts were going topsy turvy, heart suddenly accelerating until she forced it down. "This much water would be enough for the whole of Dune for years."

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

"More than seventy percent of the Earth is covered in water," Motoko replied, double-checking the compressed-air floaters that would keep her from dying a very quick death under the water. That done, she snapped the lines around herself and looked to the rest of the equipment. What she was wearing would do for diving— it wasn't as if she bothered with a great deal of clothing to begin with.

SCUBA would give them as much time as they needed to have a look around— and Motoko's shell couldn't hold enough oxygen to make holding her breath a worthwhile endeavor. She held out one of the rigs for Sheeana, wetsuit and all, having made sure of the pressure and estimated her size. All told it was at least a hundred pounds, but she lifted it as if it were no heavier than a paperweight, "Here. Put this on."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Less than one percent of people know the word 'Earth' in my time...And where I come from there is no native water."

She stripped and slithered into the wetsuit with surprising agility though. She'd grown up wearing a stillsuit, its complete opposite, but similar in composition. She forced her muscles to keep her upright. Different materials or no, she wasn't going to show weakness.

She watched Motoko closely, both memorizing the procedure and wondering at the things that kept a cyborg of her weight from dying underwater.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Motoko fitted the straps of the tanks around her shoulders and tightened them, then took the ventilator in hand and paced to the water's edge. The redundant compressors for the un-inflated quick-rise flotation buoys packed into the outer harness were secure, the air supply was adequate.

She turned to give Sheeana a steady look, "Do you think you can swim without killing yourself?"

Once they went under, Motoko would have a lot of difficulty saving Sheeana's life, if it came to that.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"This is like a stillsuit in reverse. I at least still have neutral buoyancy." She replied with slight petulance before donning the mask, sealing it and the tanks around herself, aware of the way the rubber skin clung to and outlined her, like bold strokes of pen.

She knelt at the edge of the water, looking back through Other Memory. Darwi's voice came to her, began to instruct her. Her predecessor had a childish part to herself called 'Seachild', she found. This quasi-personality had escaped Bene Gesserit discipline and was now a potent resource for her.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Motoko gave her a long, unimpressed look, evaluating, then decided not to care. She simply dropped backwards into water that had no shallows— this part of the floor stuck out like a shelf.

The Major sank like a stone and as she did so too did the inimitable buzz of contact. The signals cut away, one by one, infrared was useless almost immediately. Radio followed soon after. The water closed in above her eyes and she watched it turn ever bluer, feeling the layers to world imposed on her ghost peeling away, one by one. Only here could Motoko ever truly be alone, ever count her thoughts as her own. And still, she was sinking, weightless. A kick brought her face towards Sheeana's, to see her reaction. Only curious, for once, and not looking for cruelty's sake.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana followed slower into the great underwater chamber, regulating her breathing and heartrate carefully. It was a psychological, as much as a physical journey, she knew.

Her face showed pure astonishment, but not fear.

A memory came to her: twelve years old, being marched stiff legged into a pool by stern faced proctors. The other acolytes, all from water-rich worlds had giggled behind their hands.

And here again I plunge into this steel womb. She thought as she dropped past immense metal walls that dwarfed them both.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Bottom. Motoko's bare heels struck it with a sound that was audible and her eyes which had drifted half-closed, opened. For a moment she stared at the surface lit dimly above, and wondered what it would be like to die. Wondered if she'd even know she were dying...or would it simply be like turning off a machine?

Sheeana wheeled slightly above her, and the light rippled in response to the distortion her body made. A shadow-silhouette, like a doll made of paper. She reached out...

Touch.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana was quite a bit slower coming down but took to swimming with an unnatural facility for one who'd done it once in her life.

She did start at Motoko's fingers brushing her. She whirled a few feet above her, fingers grasping for a crysknife that was no longer at her waist.

Seduction attempt or threat? Her eyes made the enquiry.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Those were her choices? The threat in Sheeana's eyes, her grab for a weapon, engendered a twitched ghost of a smirk, and an immediate reaction. Motoko stood, suddenly no longer all but prone on the water's floor, instead standing, using her weight as leverage for speed in motion. She could not swim without adjusting the displacers, but she could balance on the bottom like a dancer, one hand darting to seize Sheeana and drag her lower.

Lust was a sudden thing, uncoiling like a snake in her mind. She let it and the processors whirled, dumping a simulation of endorphins into her systemic drives. Threat? Oh yes she was a threat, as she stripped Sheeana's breath-mask from her face with barely restrained violence and spat out her own. The Major's kiss was thing of dominance and restraint, as soft and yeilding as a natural woman's, but with a steel under it that made no secret of the fact that Motoko could crush Sheeana's bones like sugar cubes if she so chose.

Her systems were flashing red and yellow at her by the end of it, so Motoko took a hand to the pull-tab and her floaters inflated, rushing the cyborg up to meet her reflection in the underside of the surface. She was only so waterproof, after all.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

So a little bit of both. Sheeana thought and water flowed in as she found herself returning the kiss. She'd learned to trust these signals her body sent her. They were guides.

So much water. Their tongues mingled in it. I've entered her realm. She thought, Fremen instincts telling her it was mana from heaven, Other Memory screaming at her to break it off, and her own body wanting more.

She followed, up and up (the bends were no problem to her, quickly regulated) and broke to air, gulping it and floating.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

With death imminent, the water was no longer clarity and freedom, but instead the hand of time pressing from every angle. The warnings grew ever more shrill as the reflection, the other-Motoko in the rippled mirror the water/air barrier made came closer. She was looking down even as the Major looked up, and the feeling of layers pressing back into place was almost palpable.

Sometimes, I imagine I'm becoming a different person. It's probably the decompression.

Who had said that? Oh, yes...it was her. Motoko blinked, and found herself bobbing like a cork with he hair still in the water and her control systems markedly unhappy with the hydraulic pressure-readings that had fluctuated with the depth. She ignored them and pulled herself out of the water, streaming puddles everywhere, and looked to Sheeana.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana had one advantage here: A faster recovery time. Hers were all organic processes, though her control over them was more like Motoko's than either of them wanted to admit. She was over the plasteel lip first, grinning. She would've helped her up, but there was no way she could lift even a fraction of her weight so it would have been a futile gesture.

Speaking of organic processes, that kiss had started another one. She'd felt heat glow in her stomach for a second there and she wanted to feel that again. Grinning, she answered the challenge of another kiss.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

The Major let her, pressing back in return with practiced ease, and her lips were not cold, though the water wicked away her heat as quickly as it could. So, this is what it would be? Somehow she'd expected something different from the Bene Gesserit, infamous as they were for this kind of nonsense.

Then again, Sheeana was said to be different in that respect as well, wasn't she?