terriblepurpose | Deer Country Contact

Well, you can't have one for every tentacle, so some of them will just have to share.

Have you thought about it? Who you would go back and visit, I mean. If we were living in the conjoined ocean as little monsters, ourselves.

Edited 2022-02-05 00:27 (UTC)

I've thought about it. My mother, the witch. She could cast spells on our enemies for us, if we had any, which we wouldn't, of course. What about you?

Which we wouldn't, of course.

I'd have us swim down the coast, then. Further south even than the school for witches, to Cintra. There's a girl there, a few years younger than me, who's just become a queen. We're not friends; we've never even met. But I'd want to see her just once, I think.

Why her? If I may ask. She sounds young to be a queen.

Because I can't think of anyone else.

[She doesn't mean it to sound so dismal, but, well. Well. At least there's another tack she can quickly move on to, anyway.]

And I think we're alike, if the stories about her are any indication. She's tough, skilled in battle. They're calling her a lioness, for how soundly she won her first victory. It's made me curious about her, I suppose. What kind of queen she's going to shape up to be.

I couldn't either.

[It's an impulse, to throw himself into the same pit that she stumbled into, but not one he regrets.]

Perhaps she'll come here one day. It's a place that collects remarkable people. What kind of queen do you think she should be?

[And that gives her pause, for a minute, as she slouches down low among the shelves of the archives and draws her knees up close to her chest and slowly teases out the implications in what he says. He couldn't think of anyone, so he picked his mother the witch. His mother the witch from a sisterhood of scholars, known for having children, who raised him on a planet of oceans and then took him to a desert, where desert people were waiting for a messiah to come with his mother in tow, to make him a sword in his mother's hand.

She must still be living, his mother, or he wouldn't have picked her. But he only picked her because he couldn't think of anyone else.

She isn't even altogether sure what that all adds up to, in the end, but for the fact that they've played out their mutual fantasy for a while now, and none of it sounded like he was only doing it to humor her.]

The sort who's strong enough to have her own mind, I think. To do what she thinks is best, for better or for worse. No witches and wizards whispering pretty notions in her ear.

What if we went back through to your desert? No oceans there. We'd have to turn into something else, to go to the parts where no one could find us.

[Paul thinks that he knows exactly how much of himself he's revealing, each admission a thing he notices and recalls, so he knows where he stands with Renfri. If he knew what she was making of this, he'd rethink that, but ignorance is its own solace.]

That's how a ruler should be. When authority lies in your hand, you have to be master of yourself before any others. That one is easy. We would be sandworms. They swim in the sand like it's water, and they're the masters of the desert. They're huge, large enough to swallow a whole troop of people without one touching the sides, though they do, since they're lined with their teeth.

You talk about them like you've seen them firsthand, these sandworms. You've laid eyes on something like that and lived?

I have. I was only a few meters from one, once. They're amazing, Renfri. There's nothing like them anywhere else.

[Paul wasn't joking about the diagrams. He attaches a sketch to the message.]

I'm going to ride one, one day. The Fremen do it with hooks under their scales.

...I see what you mean about the teeth. That is what all the jagged bits in the center are, then? Those are all teeth, thousands of them.

Why didn't it swallow you down? Were you not to its taste?

They're sharp as murder, too. They make knives out of them you wouldn't believe. As for why it didn't swallow me down: they hunt by sound, and a passing troop used a device to lure him away. (The Fremen word for them is Shai-Hulud. Most translate it as Old Man of the Desert, but I think a better translation is Father Eternity.)

So that's the trick of it. You were that close, but it didn't really know you were there. I suppose that's how you ride them, as well? You get onto their backs without letting them hear it.

Do you have a knife like that?

I think so. I've only seen it done at a distance, but it would have to be. There's a way to walk on the sand to avoid their attention, unless you end up on the wrong type of sand. Not yet. Or yes. I'm not sure. Someone gave me one, but I hadn't had the chance to ask if she wanted it back before I came here.

All that power and might, and people have still figured out how to take advantage of them. Though I suppose the sandworms don't care, do they? What people do or don't do around them, it doesn't matter to them either way.

That's a curious gift, a knife as sharp as murder.

That is a thought. The Fremen revere the sandworms like gods, but they still ride them. I suppose all religion is like that, in a way. Gods in service to man even while they're worshiped. It was appropriate for the task at hand, and an honor. It was given to her by her great aunt. If you gave someone a knife like that, would you want it back?

Not the gods themselves, just the interpretation. The same way that prophecies are about information, yes? Some things just are, and then men take those things and use them for their own ends.

I would expect it back. Not for the sake of the knife itself, but to see if he would return it to me at all.

Or, I suppose, to see which end he gave back to me. The handle or the blade.

You're going to make a good witch, thinking like that. The handle. Of course. She gave me a gift.

[That's a lapse, a too quick, too vehement response brought on by the sickening flip of his stomach at the idea of - no, never.]

I learned from a good teacher, thinking like that.

[It certainly is a lapse. It stands out in contrast to what she's come to expect of him — measured, calibrated, thoughtful responses. No, she thinks: something about that one bothered him.]

What did you do with the knife? The "task at hand". What was it?

I think you'd like my mother. She'd like you.

[He hesitates only a little before he answers; this is actually a less uncomfortable line of questioning than he worried he'd invited. She wants to talk about knives, not girls.]

A duel. I won. There's a custom with crysknives: they can't be sheathed after they're drawn without tasting blood.

But you'd rather she didn't come here, would you. Even though you miss her.

Was the duel to the death, or just to first blood?

I've thought about it. I don't know. I can't decide where she'd be safer. It was amtal. An old word. It means to test to destruction. I wasn't destroyed.

You're teaching me all sorts of new words today. I wish I had more to offer in return.

Was it the first time you'd killed someone? Dueling with a girl's gift of a knife?

I was afraid, the first time I killed a man. I suppose in a duel you don't have the luxury of being afraid. Or at least not of showing it.

I wasn't afraid. I was ang Yes. I was tired, after. Were you tired?

Once the terror wore off. Though it wasn't the killing that bothered me, really, but the circumstance. The part afterward where I realized how powerless I'd been, and how close it had come. That I was only still alive because he'd been stupid and selfish enough to delay killing me long enough for me to kill him first.

It's all right if it bothered you. It's not supposed to be something that comes easily.

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