lucetilogs | one foot in front of the other, one foot back to counter it

Entry tags:

one foot in front of the other, one foot back to counter it

Who: Leto Atreides 2 (

bernardelli), OPEN to anyone who might be at the ruins
What: mutual angst about missing their deserts
When: Friday, late afternoon
Where: the desert ruins
Summary: Leto's taken an interest in the "power plants" from Meryl's homeworld. Meryl's come out to the desert to inform him and recover from her cold
Rating: PG13
The place reminded Leto of Jacurutu. Embedded in the walls were circular patterns, a code even his considerable religous expertise could not puzzle out, ancient oil lamps long since burnt out and the thick scent of secrets. It was an eerie place, undoubtedly, but Leto felt more at home here than anywhere else inside the Malnosso's bubble.
He sat crosslegged on the second floor of the steps, in meditation, trying to puzzle out the secrets of this place. The dry desert wind played over him, rejuvenating him. He could almost forget what the Malnosso had done to him the other day. Almost.

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Meryl felt better the instant her lungs filled with the hot, dry air of endless sand and sun. She had stretched her limbs and further worked her way through, with ease, feeling much more at home. If it weren't for the need of human interaction, she would consider making a home out here. Alas, she was a human, and she enjoyed the friends she'd made so far too much to forsake them for a familiar environment.

Though, she was fairly sure Leto would agree to the arrangement.

She was lucky to be good with direction, when she wasn't under stress, and soon found herself approaching the ruins, relieved to see Leto seated on the steps. It meant she'd found the right place.

Seeing Meryl cross the sands, he could almost believe she was a fremen, with the ease which she crossed the sands. She even had the signature rythmless walk which didn't attract the sandworm. The only things missing was a stillsuit.

Leto waved and stood up, feeling cramps yank at the muscles of his legs. The head of his robe fell back, revealing a gash where a sandtrout had been incompletely reattached. How long had he been there?

She looked him over, perplexed. She wasn't sure what to make of that gash that she could make out more and more as she approached. She moved a little faster and waved.

"Are you alright?!"

Fremen genetics and his sandskin made Leto bleed much less easy than most. Still, he could see how it would look alarming, red and raw from the reverse of his symbiosis the Malnosso had subjected him to. He did his best to look nonchalant about it.

"Just a remnant of the...experiment." His hand tightened into a fist befre he forced himself to relax. "No complications getting here? Didn't have to flee the worm?" A lame joke, but it contained another lame joke within it, like a Russian doll: He was the worm.

She smiled a bit, falsely, but enough to show she understood. "Oh, I see. Well, hopefully, it heals soon," she replied, letting her hands drop. Her face twisted in fear or dread at the mention of being chased down by a sand worm. She'd had enough of dealing with them for one lifetime! "Uuugh, don't even joke about that!"

Leto almost laughed. "Hehhehe...I'm sorry. It's just that, to my people, the worm is a benevolent force. Only offworlders fear shai halud. There's a simple method to avoid them, you know..."

He made an expansive gesture toward the building. "These ruins are fascinating. Look at the open windows. This building was never designed for a desert environment."

"Usually, the ones in my world stay underground. Still, it might not work on the ones I know of, anyway," she replied, shifting her cape on her shoulders.

She turned her gaze to the building, or what was left of it, in interest. She nodded in agreement. "You'd never see a structure like this on Gunsmoke. I wonder what this place was like before it turned into a desert."

"You never know. You just have to walk..." And he demonstrated the jerky way fremen moved across the open sands as he climbed the steps towards the shadowed entrance, their movements and sound blending perfectly into the background noise of nature "...without rythm!" He was obviously feeling a little better after his ordeal, even regaining some of his smart-aleckyness.

"Gunsmoke? That's quite the telling name. Well, it must have been lush around here. This place appears to have been abandoned rapidly at some point. I wonder if this was Filial architecture..." He was suddenly self conscious of the wings on his back.

She watched, interested. It might actually be something to come in handy later. "And it really works?"

"I don't know how it got that name, to be honest. I'm not a huge history buff, beyond what I need to know. I'm more focused on the present," she explained, with a motion of her hand. She glanced at the structure, turning a frown. "I wonder what their culture was like before the Malnosso started all of this."

"Fremen don't..." Step shuffle step. Slide step step. Freeze...Step. Ok, back to normal "Don't get eaten by worms." He looked down jocularly at her.

Reaching the top door, he pushed it in. The hinges screamed and rust showered from their joints. Light made a big square on the floor, illuminating carvings. In the center there stood a platform, rough hewn stone. At its base, the remains of many pieces of pottery with mysterious, spiraling designs.

"We could know, if we only knew more about the Malnosso themselves. The customs of the conquered people are often absorbed by the conquerors. Yet here we are, just as clueless as when we first came here." Leto was patient. He had a sandworm's millenia long lifespan to look forward to, after all. This confinement, however, irked him profoundly. "At least we have a desert..."

"Good to know, then."

She winced visibly at the notice the door made. He hadn't warned her, after all. Still, it was impressive, once she looked to see what lied beyond.

"And it's practically impossible to get close and find out about them," she added, with a sigh. It really was disappointing. She was almost curious to learn more. ""It's a relief that we do."

Leto watched her flinch, recalling something he'd heard about women being more sensitive to high pitched noises. Since the he'd accepted the symbiosis, he'd become more sensitive to basso vibrations, echoing the nature of the worm.

He leaped onto the platform and turned around to face her from a crouch. "This looks like a place of worship. One can imagine the commandments they heard from here. 'I, thy god, command thee to be as creepy and patronizing as possible'." He picked one of the piece of pottery up. "This spiral pattern repeats itself everywhere. It...It's representative of both the journey towards enlightenment and of the feminine. Which is strange because, well, as far as we can tell, the Malnosso are all men." Which only made him think more of the Tleilaxu, the all male race of geneticists who'd once tried to assasinate his father. "I'm sorry, i'm rambling."

She watched him leap up before walking near the wall, looking it over. She was looking for writings, wondering if she'd even understand them. Ancient texts were never the same as modern speech.

She covered her mouth, laughing faintly into her palm before smiling. When he apologized, she shook her head. "No, I think it's interesting. I'm more of a technical person. I never paid as much attention to theology or anything like this."

"Religion..." He stepped down, throwing up a little puff of dust in the process. "...Has its own technology. The person who manipulates it can force others to do their bidding. Speaking of, do you want tell me about those 'plants' on your homeworld? Were you a technician on one?"

They continued in the eerie silence, though Leto didn't seem very much unnerved at all. His eyes glowed blue as the ambient light from the skylights dropped.
Everything was visible, if shadowy on the upper level but if they wanted to descend and see the holding chambers..."Did you bring a flashlight?" He'd completely forgotten about that, needing less light than her.

"Hm, I guess that's true," she replied. She waved a hand before touching her chest. "I just have the same common knowledge as everyone on my planet, plus a little extra. That wasn't my line of work at all."

She didn't notice his eyes. Or maybe, was making a point not to really notice them. She knew if she did, she'd get jumpy about them. "Always prepared!" she replied, reaching into her cloak and producing a few items: A fair sized stick, a small container, and a box of matches. "There's not really any flashlights around, so this works. Just give me a second."

Wait a second. Where did all that come from? Leto stared with blue-within-blue eyes. "...You'd make a good fremen."

They passed glass bulbs, most of them broken, slotted into little alcoves next to the platform. Something was formerly inside them, it seemed, but whoever had cleared the place out had taken it with them. So, she didn't have the knowledge to bring out her world's central conceit. Too bad. He'd have to try it with the others as well then. Still, he was glad of the company somewhat. "And what was yor line of work?"

She was a wonder at tucking and hiding essentials in her cloak. She crouched down, getting together her little torch and lighting it. Whatever she'd put in the small container, it took to the fire quite well, and the top of the stick lit up.

"There."

She stood up and straightened her back. "I was an insurance agent."

Leto surpressed a laugh, a halting motion that surpressed the air from expelling. Normally it woudln't have even got that far, surpressed by Bene Gesserit training but...well, he was considering adding Meryl to his small list of friends in this place.

"Sorry. It's just that I usually think of insurance agents as phlegmatic, middle aged bureacrats and you couldn't be any more different."

They passed an open doorway. Rusty iron hinges were still visible but the door itself was long gone. Inside, another stone platform, but this time it was the length and width of an average human. There were metal buckles and locks that could have once belonged to restraints...and two slots in the platform, the perfect size for wings. Its purpose was obvious: An examination table. "This...should look familiar."

She smirked, waving her free hand a bit to accentuate her words. "You'd be surprised how many of those are on staff back at headquarters."

Meryl moved and held out the torch, stepping forward towards the table with little fear. "It's.." she swallowed, "It's so disturbing to see.."

"If we don't confront the past, it becomes our future." Leto said to her trepidation. He knew this better than most: his past talked to him. Liet Kynes whispered in ancestral memory, talking to him of what this place could signify.

Dust swirled as they walked into the room. On a hunch, he paused in front of the table and ran his finger along the dust. Where it cleared there was something brown and still faintly coppery smelling. Ancient blood residue. "This has been going on for a long time."

She drew in a deep breath, trying to calm down. Something about the room was just prickling the back of her neck. She stepped closer and held the torch out to light the table better.

"I wonder how many years these people have suffered like this..." she said, softly, feeling sympathetic. "Decades? Centuries? I wonder..."

Who were the Filial? Leto couldn't tell. If it were all a matter of genetics, he'd know already, since he was presumably already part Filial.

"They suffered..." He turned back towards her. "...Like my people suffered." And from his memory, his Fremen ancestors spoke to him, of how the Sardaukar would offer brutal reprisals for Fremen guerilla raids, how the House Harkonnen troops would hunt them for sport from the air. The brutality of the Fremen regime didn't make up for the way they were treated for thousands of years. "My father once said 'Atrocity merely
arms the future for more atrocity...Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.'" All things considered, that probably made him a hypocrite.

Trying to keep his mind off the past, Leto dug his journal out from his robe, but looked a tiny bit embarassed as he tried to cycle through the various functions. "This needs to be documented but...There are no thinking machines on my world." This was the closest his pride would allow to asking Meryl for help with the picture function of the journal.

She sighed, listening quietly. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but it was true, in ways. She thought of the Plants, of Vash, of everything he'd told her. She shook her head. "Unfortunately, you can't change the past. Only learn from it."

She looked at him, watched him struggle a moment. She didn't catch on, at first, but then realized just what was wrong and held out her free hand. "I can do it if you can hold the torch."

"The future on the other hand..." He said, quietly handing over his journal and taking the torch. It made the room flicker, as if they were in an unreal place.

Leto waited patiently, disliking the humiliation, but knowing that it was neccesary. This had to become known.

She flinched, just a bit, at the flicker into darkness. A heaved sigh left her and she switched the setting for recording. Then, she started to slowly pace around the room.

Something had seemed different about Meryl since they'd entered the complex. Leto mulled it over, puzzled, looking for whatever it was that made her tense and jump. He could rule out his own presence. She'd seemed fine when she arrived. Then what common factor...Ah, she must fear the darkness. To a Fremen, used to moving by night and sleeping in a sietch carved out of the rock, darkness was a protective cloak, just as useful as the one draped over her narrow shoulders. Like grandfather said, when strangers meet, great allowances must be made for differences of custom and tradition.

He had no desire to scare her, though knowing his own nature combined with her fear of sandworms, that must be inevitable. "We should get some footage of the worship platforms we passed. That...could be enough for today." He said.

"Alright. I think that's a good idea," she replied. It really wasn't the dark that was bothering her. She was fine with the dark. It was her empathy that was really getting her hackles up. She couldn't believe knowing something like this, though she knew she and everyone else needed to be aware of it. They needed to understand the original filial better. It might just help with their future.

Leto handed her back her torch. "I think we've done good work." He had no way of knowing the true nature of Meryl's sensitivity. All he could make was elementary guesses. He was glad to know, however that she didn't find himself scary. He was from such a vastly different place than most of the village's other inhabitants, and he himself was so different from his peers...Not being feared was good, if superficial.

As they walked back towards the entrance, Leto was struck by the flash of a vision. His eyes rolled up in his head as the premonition took him over. A needle in the ground, a rock falling from a cliff...Something normally only in the background was dangerous. His arm shot out to stop her from moving forward as a panel in the wall opened. There was a sound like thwooooing and thock...An arrow trap, activated by the pressure of their feet on the floor. But the arrow itself had long since rotted away, so nothing was launched. If they'd moved any farther forward, they'd be in its path. "No doubt something to make sure the prisoners here stayed that way." He said, nonchalant.

She nodded, heaving a sigh, a bit of relief mixed into it. She glanced at the examination table, lingering on it a moment. It was twisting her stomach into knots. Her wings twitched and almost stung with invisible pain. It was bothering her and it took Leto starting to move to click her back to reality.

With quiet steps, she followed along, almost running into his back when the vision struck him. She took a few steps back, looking concerned, feeling uneasy. She stopped, freezing up once the arrow shot across and proceeding to relax again once it was done. It wasn't as if she wasn't used to traps, but right now, she was shaken. She mumbled a name, but it was impossible to make out, and pressed to his back for a moment to calm herself. It was hard, not having Milly to hide in at these moments. She had to admit to herself, for as much as she was the mature party, Milly was her emotional support.

Leto surpressed a reflex that tried to make him spin and lash out. The sandskin made him simalteneously overly sensitive to touch and numb to it.
Speaking of...If she stays there she'll deduce it. So he backed off a tiny bit, turned and looked down at her with his usual smirk and blue-within-blue eyes. The light from the rooftop openings was starting to filter in with the dusk and it caught the dust, little columns of sunlight within which the dust motes swirled like drunken revelers.

"Are you alright?"

She drew in a deep breath once he moved away, realizing what she'd done. Mentally, she slapped herself and cursed quietly. She took a moment in silence to collect herself and gather back up her frazzled ends. She'd faced worse, this was no time to fall apart.

That was right.

She straightened her shoulders, confidence and composure slowly regaining as she waved it off a bit with her hand. "I'm fine, I'm fine. I just wasn't expecting a trap so suddenly. I should keep it in mind for later."

That's right. That's how humans react to being led into a torture chamber. Remember that. Leto knew that as his metamorphasis continued, he would begin to forget what it was to truly feel as regular humans did. Thus he collected sensations and emotions and secreted them away in his memories. Meryl trembling and muttering something unintellegible into his back went to his inner storehouse, like an animal preparing for the coming winter.

He pickeed the arrow up from the ground, wings flaring as he sat on his heels to do it.

Above, the sun was starting to flare purple as they made their way towards the exit. "Dusk is here."

She looked the arrow over. In truth, it wasn't often you'd see an arrow like that on Gunsmoke. People generally didn't man crossbows for weapons. She was a bit intrigued, now that the initial shock had passed.

"I don't know what's out here when it gets dark, do you?"

Leto sighed almost imperceptibly. "Nothing." He thought of men and women moving quiet and rythmless over the sands, under Dune's three moons, flashing blue eyes the only thing visible about them. His people. He missed the sea-without-water, the way it scoured away detritus from the mind and soul. He missed the simple community of the sietch. Ghafla, he even missed the Palace and Alia's simpering sycophants. He twirled the arrow between his fingers.

He looked out at the dunes through the main door. It as nothing but a patch, a playground to keep people like him and Meryl happy.

"...Which means it would be safe if you wanted to leave." He wasn't shooing her out. He just doubted she'd want to spend the night in the temple or among the Malnosso's bleeping machinery outside in the tents.

She looked at him a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. She didn't feel she was at a point where she should ask too many questions. People tended to get touchy if you asked too many of them.

She folded her hands and glanced out at the expanse of the desert as well. She could hear that old song in her head and it made a smile grow on her face. She remembered that day on the cliff, and it made her feel more at ease.

"Don't get me wrong, I'd like to stay, but I have to go back. I told Ciel I wouldn't be gone too long."

She paused, thought, and nodded to him. "I'll come and visit again, soon, though."

Leto leaned against the doorway. He grinned, almost boyish and mischevious. "I would enjoy that."

This had been fun and they'd accomplished something. He held the arrow out to her. "A souvenir."

The sun was setting, turning the dunes pink so the world looked like the frosting on some enormous cake.

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one foot in front of the other, one foot back to counter it

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look who's talking, ranty mcwormstein

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brain is back. late though. X|

Re: brain is back. late though. X|

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