worm_dancer | (no subject)

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.

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"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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.

"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?"

"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.

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."