deercountry | let me look at the sun

Entry tags:

let me look at the sun | open

Who: Paul Atreides, open
What: Event catch-all
When: Month of December
Where: Archaic Archives, streets of Trench, the forest's edge, memories
Notes: Go ahead and contact me at

terriblepurpose or by PM if you'd like to discuss any starters or suggest new ones! For tagging in your character's memories to Paul, feel free to start with whatever your preference is.

Content Warnings: Violence, body horror (lockjoint), death, religious extremism, extensive Dune spoilers, suicidal ideation, funerals, grief

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Paul has no right to give Palamedes the brief look he does, the subtle incline of his head and raising of his eyebrows in disbelief as Palamedes asks if this is worse. He could pretend to himself that it's entirely reflexive, but it isn't, and he doesn't.

He does still have the decency to look ashamed of himself as he looks away. Maybe he'd feel differently if he had ghosts, if he could strip the flesh from his dead family and send their bones walking around a dead house. Perhaps dying here is more trivial, the loss less acute or not present at all, just a transition to another state of being. What does he know about it? Nothing, and how dare he assume otherwise.]

A test. [Paul takes in his surroundings, and in the midst of everything else, he finds time to think that necromancers have over-committed to an aesthetic style at the expense of good taste or health. But Palamedes seems less wretched out here, so again: what does he know?] I'd like that. I'm trying to get as much practice as I can before this is over.

[And yes. His hand. Paul fights the childish urge to act like he doesn't know what Palamedes is talking about:] It's not too bad. I'm taking care of it.

[But still: he raises his right hand and offers it to Palamedes, not quite looking at him or it. Paul really doesn't think it's that bad, yet, compared to some of the illustrations he's seen of darkened crystalline blood jutting out of skin. His joints only look deeply bruised, the crystals that grind under his skin still small enough to let his fingers mostly bend the way they're supposed to. It hurts, but pain is - pain just is. It exists. That he has to bite down on something to muffle a scream when he first moves his hands after waking up is trivia.]

If you want the crystals, I can save some of them for you. They're supposed to be valuable for magic. I haven't had any crest yet, but maybe the smaller ones are worth something too.

[If Palamedes goes looking for an iota of evidence Paul is kidding, he isn't going to find any. After all, isn't that what they're here for? The exploration of magical and scientific curiosity.]

[If Palamedes catches that look (he does) then he studiously pretends not to, unwilling to pick at the scab of what that look might want to ask him. Part of him already wants to stop in the middle of this imaginary hallway and shout that of course it's horrible, it's world-shattering and lonely and empty to lose the people he loves, more than any terrible deed that could have been done to him. Of course it's worse to go on. But hypocritically he left Camilla, acted on a reckless high of righteous fury and desperation, and after eight months and change, well — one has time to think about the apologies they owe, and to whom, and for what.

And Paul doesn't know all the things Palamedes has done, besides, and maybe one day he'll tell him this one; but for now there's a thick line drawn around some things he's done, to keep him from allowing himself a crumb of guilt that will topple any focus he will ever have again.

So Paul can look at him like that if he likes; he's welcome to his assumptions. Palamedes tsks at the state of his hand as he takes it and turns it over to see the crystalline bruising. Delicately. Still, this is already enough to be a concern, Paul.]

I want you to be able to use your hands. [...And,] I didn't think something like this would follow someone into a purely psychological space.

[That's some scary attention to detail, and another pin in the board for how the rules (if there are any) actually work around here. Moreover, it means he will have to go find Paul as soon as they leave this false Canaan House, before his hands become completely useless.]

Don't be so eager to go under the knife. It's only in your hands?

[Paul doesn't believe Palamedes' seeming ambivalent acceptance not because he suspects some defect in his character, or even really because he isn't sure how death is handled in a society built on it. He doesn't believe Palamedes because Paul can't imagine a future for himself where he ever again feels anything but what he felt in the stilltent, like he's become the dying nuclear heart of a collapsing star: a gravity of vengeance rending the universe apart at its basic laws.

But that's the same kind of secret as Palamedes is keeping, one that's a someday. Paul will let the moment where they hung between them pass; he doesn't want to talk about any of it either. Besides, he can move on to a more straightforward kind of confusion. Palamedes is talking about him like - but of course, Paul realizes, he doesn't know.]

No. It's up to my shoulders in the arms, some in my lower legs. [He says, a neutral accounting of fact.] I think it stays with me because I'm doing most of the things that accelerate it here, or because it's integrated into my self-image.

I'm Bene Gesserit trained. I didn't tell you before. That's another thing. [Paul seems comfortable letting Palamedes turn his hand this way and that, as if he's used to being handled by professionals.] I didn't have all of my memories when I came here. I was waiting to see if they'd come back - they did - but I have to wonder if it's related to this. Apparently it's not uncommon for Sleepers first waking.

[He stops himself, mouth quirking up at the corner ruefully.] I'm trained to be able to monitor myself well, redirect and control circulatory functions. I shouldn't tell you any of this, by the way. The Sisterhood is protective of their secrets. But I don't think even they have agents this far out.

[And if they wanted him to keep their secrets, Paul thinks they shouldn't have already tried to kill him.]

I should have been able to keep this from happening at all. [His lighter tone drops a little again as he glances at his knuckles, but he rallies himself.] So it's been...educational.

[Palamedes hums, eyebrows raised as he peers at the state of Paul's hand, both concern and curiosity. He doesn't, ah — well, it wouldn't be helpful to idly comment on how he didn't forget a single thing, but then, he supposes he has more experience with holding himself together than the average person. Or the Bene Gesserit trained person, a phrase that means absolutely nothing at all to him.]

I'm excellent at keeping secrets, [he offers, a little wry.] We don't welcome many visitors on the Sixth.

[So he understands, at least in the most basic sense. This Sisterhood sounds perfectly normal, which does not necessarily mean perfectly safe. He taps a knuckle experimentally, just to see what response that gets.]

You're crystallizing in every limb? [buddy.] When we're out of here, I'll come find you, we'll cut them out. Think of it as further education.

[By which he mostly means don't object, but details. Don't, though; it is not optional.]

Who knows; maybe I'll look as bad as you by the time I get there.

[ha ha how ironic would that be huh]

In the meantime, I don't know how to tempt these memories into letting us leave, so I could show you where Cam and I stayed, if you like. Unfortunately, most of the interesting places in here are incredibly haunted.

[Paul doesn't flinch when the knuckle is tapped, but his mouth does twist as he breathes out through his nose. The offer of help keeps him quiet a while, listening as Palamedes jokes about his own joints (and he thinks that Palamedes had best be joking, which goes to show something about human hypocrisy). He barely even stirs at the mention of things being 'incredibly haunted', something that would have otherwise had his immediate attention.]

...it's hard to reach some of it. [They're a heavy seeming few words, as if knowing relief is at hand makes it possible to allow that, perhaps, Paul finds his body working against him more disturbing than he wants to admit.] I'll send my omen to lead you, after this.

And I'd like to see anything you want to show me. We should be safe enough, whatever there is here. And if not, I'll see if we can go further out. Apparently, someone once ended up going far enough sideways to end up in another memory.

[Details on how were frustratingly sparse, but he thinks that being attacked by anything that somehow violates the one rule that has seemed consistent so far (inside is dangerous, outside is safe) would be quick motivation to figure it out.]

No, that's unnecessary; there's nothing out there.

[There's... clouds. If Paul is passionate about clouds. But the great and vast and honestly a little overwhelming expanse of sky and light is nothing compared to the dark and dusty quarters of the Sixth. Palamedes thinks so, anyway. Call it nostalgia; there was a brief enough time when Canaan House was full of intrigue and potential, and the competition was fierce but relatively friendly (and frankly, an accessory to the real challenge, because nobody was going to best him at necromancy).

He makes one more survey of Paul's joints before releasing his hand; he'll remember. He just needs to bring some appropriate tools and it will work out.

Well, as he gestures for Paul to follow, since they are heading Up to the Sixth's weird little hidey hole, another thought:]

It's going to be uncomfortable at best to get those out — you know that, but fair warning anyway: it's going to hurt like hell. Even for a... What do they call someone with your training? I doubt it's "sister."

[He did say Sisterhood, but Palamedes has the sense that Paul is something of a unique case. A lot of unique cases have wandered into his daily life in the past yearish, so...

But during: up to the Sixth rooms, which are as dark and dusty as he'd left them last. Every surface covered in flimsy and Palamedes' tight handwriting, stuffy and dim from the covered windows, ah — delightful. He is ready wondering just how accurate a recreation this is, hmm...]

[A freak is perilously too close to the tip of Paul's tongue, his guard lowered by a number of things: Palamedes' solicitousness, the way this place feels like it can hold secrets better than a grave, his own increasingly frantic efforts to understand what is happening to him. But he laughs instead, polite, worldly, barely audible.]

It's forbidden to train outsiders, so there's no word for it. Of course, that means it happens enough there should be. [He can't deny to himself: there's a pleasure in taking even this petty of a revenge on them, mocking their precious secrecy.] A witch's son, maybe.

Not that - my mother isn't a witch. But they call her that, sometimes. [He doesn't know if he should sound as defensive as he does; maybe he's insulting Palamedes indirectly.] The Lady Jessica. She's the one who trained me. It's usually mothers.

Anyway - I'm good with pain. Don't worry about that.

[Including the self-inflicted kind, if that embarrassing little outburst on his part is anything to go by.]

[It strikes Palamedes in a way that it simply hasn't until this moment how young Paul is. Perhaps a boy valiantly (well, in his own little way) defending his mother does that, regardless; adding a dollop of youthfulness no matter the age. It makes him smile, if only a little.]

My mother is an Archivist. [Conversationally; he definitely pronounces the capital A.] Maybe you ought to come up with your own word.

[He doesn't comment further on the pain, although he puts a pin in it. Paul's insistence that he can handle pain is, hm, noteworthy? In its own way. Palamedes isn't planning on going hog wild with a scalpel, or anything, but he considers — well.

He'll bring a tin of biscuits or something. A book. A distraction.

He hums and looks at the nearest wall, lifting a corner of a piece of flimsy. The notes are, as expected, all there; given he remembers them all, it makes sense as much as anything else in here.]

I don't know how we get out of here beyond... Well. Did the magic stag happen to you, too, in any of these?

[It was weird! It just showed up! But for the sake of Paul not overexerting himself on blood magic, they can probably idle until a magic stag shows up. He's ready to do that.]

[Paul and Palamedes both know the old truism: real men of learning conduct their horrific experiments on themselves and those they know.

Paul takes Palamedes' advice into consideration - it would bring him up to, what? Three names or four, for whatever it is he's supposed to be? And maybe he's being facetious with himself, his own little private joke, but. He also hasn't thought of that as an option before, to choose a name for himself.

A distraction is good, so he seizes on it.]

I'm somehow not surprised to hear you come from a line of scholars. [Paul smiles back, also just a little.] The stag is consistent, and it's either duration or resolution that brings it, in whatever form that takes. I tried communicating with it, but it either didn't want to speak to me, or couldn't.

[Paul is not especially thrilled to admit to failing to talk to a magic deer. He looks over Palamedes' shoulder, trying to make out what he's reading, for something else to focus on.]

So...we wait. [Unless Palamedes has changed his mind about resolution, so to speak, but Paul doubts it.] Look at something 'incredibly haunted'. Ghosts are real, then?

[These are necromantic notes, for sure — identifiable only because Paul knows that much about Palamedes, certainly, because the notes themselves are a lot of gibberish and lines drawn with arrows and circles. Here and there a number, a set of initials and a series of question marks, the word "theorem" more times than is necessary; sometimes another, separate handwriting joins Palamedes' scrawl, with corrections or suggestions that even read like dry commentary.

It's Work. He glances over his shoulder at Paul, moving slightly to let him see the flimsy more clearly. Ghosts Are Real, well, if Paul insists...]

Don't think I'm not hearing that you talked to a stag, [silly! tell him more!] but of course ghosts are real. With the correct formula you can call one up — I'm using "call" here generously, of course — and talk to them. A soul that's died suddenly or especially violently can linger around as a revenant, thanks to the release of thanergy; we call it apopneumatic shock. Revenants stick around until they... finish what they set out to do. Usually.

[Usually.]

Necromancers can do the summoning, provided there isn't interference from something else and assuming the soul hasn't gone irrevocably insane in the River. There's the issue of time being a factor sometimes, as well; those bodies in the beach ships, for example, were too far gone. Despite meeting the other criteria. Getting ahold of one of them would take an amount of thanergy that could be much better spent elsewhere.

It was worth trying.

[It was for Knowledge, Palamedes - but then Paul is silent, rapt, as Palamedes pours out more information about necromancy. The last time he heard about it, he was a blank slate, but he's thought about it often. As he's poured through the books on blood magic he's cobbled together, he's wished they were more like this, for all of Palamedes' opaque references and the way his thoughts flash like supercell lightning.

(He wonders whose handwriting joins Palamedes' on this wall of those thoughts seared on near-paper, suspects he might be able to guess.)]

Why would the soul go insane? [There's so much to ask, but that catches his attention first. Paul moves around the room a bit, hands folded behind his back, and soaks in more of it.] Is the River the path to the afterlife? That would settle a few debates.

[This is all academic to him. He's now fairly confident magic isn't real in his world, if only for the fact he's never heard of anyone using it to kill someone. These are other people's dead; his own haunt him more abstractly.]

That I don't know. [Fun! This, the concept of souls going insane in the River, is much more fun than the dinner party downstairs. He wonders briefly if it's still happening, if it continues while they aren't around to look at it, and if so, then have Magnus and Abigail...

Well. The River.]

The River and other liminal spaces aren't my area of expertise. I've been told that traversing the River without a considerable amount of thanergy and a life to return to would be... [He waves a hand, moving to take a seat at a rickety, flimsy-covered table in an equally aged armchair.] Inadvisable.

[He considers the facts, call them. Aha. He wonders if Paul should know these things - if anyone outside the Nine Houses should be burdened with the true breadth of their bullshit - but it's not as if the River is here.

It's a squid-filled fucked up ocean. Very different. Nuanced.]

As far as I'm aware, the River is it. Someone from the Fifth- [mmph] -would be able to tell you more; they have a gift for talking to the dead. Holding a soul together takes focus and energy, far more than when the soul is contained in its own original body, particularly when it's someone else's. Most people aren't prepared to do that when they die, so let's say that they drown, whether they die suddenly or after a long, long time.

[A beat.]

Metaphorically drown, that is.

[Paul has stopped walking, at some point in Palamedes' explanation. He has stopped looking at anything on the walls. He is simply standing there, looking at Palamedes, with eyes wider than they were even on the ice, when he first saw magic.

He had told Palamedes he was sorry about his losses assuming that, if the soul was real in the way he was inferring, there was an end, if the soul was not eternal, or an afterlife, if it was. The idea that any one of those pleasant seeming people downstairs are now insane ghosts lost in a River leading nowhere was not one that occurred to him.]

I see. [His voice is careful, as he thinks it through. He has to assume that his initial shock at learning this isn't completely abnormal, although it probably happens at a younger age.] Maybe we should-

[And he can't go through with it. He stops, presses two aching fingers into the bridge of his nose, and shakes his head.] I keep saying things that make it worse. You should have asked me to turn her into a statue of salt, something like that. I'd have been better at it.

[Well—

That isn't what Palamedes expects. He hadn't anticipated anything, really - is this not just academic curiosity? - but oh, to have that last piece slide into place and realize Paul is still thinking about her is...

Why salt, he thinks, and he doesn't ask. He takes off his glasses and drops them on the table with a little clatter, leaning back in the armchair with a hand rubbing over his face. Okay; they're unpacking this. Or they're circling around this. He's certain the distinction doesn't really matter.]

You can't make this worse, [he says, half through his fingers, and it's a gauzy web of reassurance over a brick of fact. This isn't real, this whole thing. This happened. It's over. Paul cannot, objectively, do anything that will worsen the circumstances of this dinner party or anything else at Canaan House, because—well, Palamedes doesn't want to belabor the point to himself, either.

This was a ghost lesson until twenty seconds ago, so hold on.

To the ceiling he says,] I already handled it. The others helped.

[Probably. Then, as he lifts his head and squints, spectacles-less, at Paul, now is the time to ask:] Why salt?

Symbolic. And less terrible than anything else I thought of.

[Paul says it flatly from behind his hand, his head still bowed. When he drops it and looks up, he only looks tired, and still sorry. There's another chair, probably one that Palamedes' 'others' sat in, once, and Paul drags it in Palamedes' direction instead of speaking further. He sits down, arranging himself with his hands flat on his thighs and his back straight.]

I'm glad you have that, at least. [His revenge, that is. Paul had been wondering. And that explains more of Palamedes, Paul thinks, although he's finding the necromancer to have depths and facets he wouldn't have predicted.] The point of these is to hurt us, have you realized that yet? It took me a while. They say it's meant to bring us together, they don't say what the mechanism is. But it makes sense, doesn't it? Surviving shared hardship is a bonding agent, so -

[He gestures: all this. His voice has been nothing but quiet and tense, not a whisper, but not intended to be easy to overhear. Now it rises again, and he looks directly at Palamedes, and lets his face and voice be unguarded in their sincerity:]

But you helped me when I had nothing, and I'm in your debt. That was real. And no, there is nothing I can do for you here, I know that. How could I? You've barely met me.

So I'm sorry, that this is how I know. If I ever did, it should have been from you. And I should have said that at the start.

[The point of these is to hurt us. Palamedes hums, picking his glasses up to fiddle with the arms. Yes, he had a feeling; he's yet to wander into one that's been pleasant all the way through. The air in the room feels that much stuffier, from a discomfort that has nothing to do with the covered windows; nor Paul, who is so damnably earnest that it would make Palamedes smile, if they weren't—here.

Ghost lessons. Dinner party. He asks himself, Does it hurt?, and recalls with idle non-surprise that of course it does. The dull familiarity of heartbreak and loss and rage and all else that's congealed in his chest for months is still there; it has been there. Maybe that's why he can wander through this memory without participating, or losing himself in the emotions; what do these powers that be think—that this is something new?

He drums his fingers on the table's edge. He sticks his glasses back on, lets out a breath he wasn't aware of holding.]

Thank you. [All other platitudes, oh-no-don't-worry-about-it, no-it's-nothing-really, all feel clumsy and trite. Thank you, for the honesty. He'll remember it.] Despite our mutual paranoia about this thing, I think the damned bonding agent might've worked. Sorry about my mess.

[Ha. Really, though. He sits back, looking at the covered window as if it's not actually covered, like perhaps he's going to sit here and wait it out in silence—but no, it's barely thirty seconds before he sits up again. There's an itch at the back of his mind: resolution.]

There is something you can help me with, but you only have to get me to the door. Then, I think we can go.

[And deal with the next thing, unsaid in how he doesn't at all try to make subtle the way he glances at Paul's crystal-bruised joints. Resolve and move on, tidily. A nice thought.]

Edited (do not mind my phrasing adjustment) 2021-12-22 06:06 (UTC)

[Paul doesn't expect Palamedes' reaction to be thank you. He was expecting the chill of immediate rejection, and he wouldn't have been offended by it. Saddened to lose out on what could have been a friendship, yes, but it would have been understandable. Everything he knows about the subtle dancing art of social warfare dictates that a move like the one he just made would result in nothing less. Palamedes can almost certainly see his surprise, his relief, his humbling in the face of unwarranted grace.

He didn't do it to gain anything. He did it because he couldn't bear to keep balancing on the edge of manipulation, because he lost his nerve to strike at a moment of perfect opportunity. And yet: he feels as though he has been given a gift.

There's more ease in Paul as he sits up to match Palamedes, an unwinding of a tension he's been carrying since he got here and realized his transgression. Even his joints seem less stiff.]

You have nothing to apologize for. Believe me. You should see mine. [He rises from his chair and tugs his sleeve up, repeats his little process of scraping at his scabs. Once again, he'll open the door on Palamedes' cue.] Point the way. Let's get you out of here.

That's tempting fate.

[Ha, but surely that wouldn't happen. Surely not. Palamedes stands, mindful of the flimsy and the errant stacks of book so he doesn't topple any. He moves, stopping at the door to give the room one last sweeping gaze; that's it, then. Time to go.]

Now we have to go outside, I'm afraid. And I'm sorry in advance, because I mostly remember this place when it was raining.

[Nothing for it, anyway. He'll make the trip down and out to one of the miserable grey terraces as quick as he can, for Paul's sake. It is raining, if only a little; an equally grey and miserable patter to herald their arrival to a steel chimney and some sad-looking, long-abandoned planters, and Palamedes' abrupt stop, once they're within the chimney's sights.

He hadn't come out here when the incinerator had burned, it had been later that they'd all rifled through — there, an out of place bowl sitting on a low ledge, filled with more grey and more misery.]

It's mixing contexts, [he says idly, glancing at Paul, acutely aware of the memory rain dripping persistently into the bowl.] I thought it might bring things out here if I focused hard enough. Remind me to write it down, later.

[Brightly, and then after taking a few steps toward the bowl and the furnace, he spins back around in a grey (and miserable) whirl. He doesn't need to ask Paul to give him space; Paul is demonstrably not the kind of person who needs to be told something like that in circumstances of this magnitude, but - just for clarity's sake.

Just to control one thing properly in this memory of memories, before he talks to a bowl for ten minutes.]

Okay! Can you give me a minute? Or a few? This is...

[He gestures somewhat helplessly at the mismatched scene laid out behind him. Ah, this is his heartbreak? Well. A significant bowl of ashes can be only so many things, and since Paul has a point about learning things on Palamedes' own terms, then:]

She was important to me. I'll be right back.

[A beat, then he spins back around to continue on to the chimney. He'll be swift; there isn't much to say that he didn't already write down.]

[Paul doesn't mind the rain. If anything, it's comforting, the familiar patter that had been the background for most of his life. He doesn't have much to say, for once in his life, only nodding at Palamedes' guidance, explanations, a slight think nothing of it wave of the hand at the rain, murmured:]

I'm used to it.

[Tempting fate, he thinks. He might as well be waving a red cape at it. There will have to be someone else, when he does what this is all bending towards, and it's no less than he deserves for what he's doing, has done. If it's going to have to be someone - at least let it be someone reasonable. Come get me, then, he tells no one in particular. Come get me and I'll show you what I think of this.]

I'll remind you, about writing it down. And I'll wait here until you're done.

[He isn't saying much, but he is watching, and it aches something of his own when Palamedes looks at the ashes. (And because he can never stop himself, he marvels at how Palamedes did it, at the pull his mind must have exerted to overcome the memory's inertia.)

Paul finds a place at a discreet distance (close enough to be called if needed, far enough the rain will muffle anything Palamedes has to say) and folds his legs underneath him to kneel. He keeps his eyes open, but fixed on nothing, as he slips into a shallow meditation. It's nearly peaceful, this grey misery, the softening edges of no longer fresh grief.

Maybe something incredibly haunted will happen to him. If something eats him before Palamedes comes back, it might be less awkward for everyone involved.]

[It's a little more grey and a little more miserable, as Palamedes leans against this ledge beside this bowl and simply looks at it for a long several moments. He doesn't touch it; his hand rests just to the side of it, a hair's breadth away, and if the low murmur of his voice carries through the rain and over to Paul — so be it. He has two primary topics of interest here, in this memory that is not real but for now may as well be: an apology, and an update.

He keeps the apology brief; a solid half of the update is about Camilla. Neither one lifts his grief and carries it away from him, not really, but rather the opposite—almost. Like the heavy blanket of grief that has settled over him, the tendrils of it that have wrapped around every part of him inside have moved deeper into a private part of the heart; not gone, but not so all-encompassing. It's been a terribly long eight months.

When he wanders back to Paul and stoops to tap him on the shoulder, his outer robe is gone to reveal more grey underneath; the robe draped over the bowl some yards back, to stop the rain getting in.

He's tired. This was done to hurt him. He can't stop turning the two over at the back of his mind, he's so tired, they wanted to reach into his chest and close a fist around his heart, he's never been more exhausted or resentful than this — hmm.

Well, that's spite. Now he has that to keep around, too. For later, just in case.]

Hi.

[Buddy. Chum. Palamedes sighs and takes a seat on the ground himself, looking around for a magic deer. Not yet; maybe the powers that be need to analyze precisely how red-ringed his eyes have gotten, here in the metaphysical realm.]

Oh; you were focused. [aha. hey. cool cool cool.] Sorry. Is that from your secret training? Honest question.

Mm?

[Paul blinks Palamedes back into focus, returning from his contemplation of the feeling of water running down the back of his neck. That and a few other things, most of them about a graveyard very unlike this in form and yet not unlike this in feeling. He assesses the lapsed time, the missing robe, the covered bowl, the lack of stag.]

Yes. Prana-bindu, breath-muscle control. [He tips his head back and looks up at the sky, closing his eyes against the rain.] It was more not being focused. I was listening to the rain. You know - I'd never thought I'd hear rain again? There's no precipitation on Arrakis, it's a desert world. But I come from an oceanic planet. Caladan.

[In other words: I wasn't listening to you, and here's something you didn't know about me. (Paul is surprised at himself that he didn't even try to listen. He didn't expect that of himself, either.) With eyes still closed, he says:]

So there's that.

[All of it, he means.]

[Ah, the art of not being focused, that's one Palamedes will never manage to master. To wit, he's already wondering about the flesh mechanics of breath-muscle control, and whether that isn't a kind of self-imposed almost-necromancy — without the theorems and the diagrams, of course, without thanergy, or the implications would be far too strange to really consider...

He hums. Yes, that is a talent he does not have, but he thinks for a moment that if he sits here in the drab rain and listens to Paul talk about it - and his various worlds - that maybe that will be close enough. It's not questioning what he said to the bowl or how he's feeling about any of that now, and that much Palamedes vastly appreciates. The quiet acknowledgement, indirectly at best — there's a shade there that reminds him of Camilla, and that's never a bad thing.

His silence for the next handful of seconds, then, is another thank you; letting the rest seep into the background, and taking the chance to change the subject:]

Do they- God, this is going to sound ridiculous, do they go outside? [A desert planet? And it's not moments away from burning at any given time?? Wild.] On the Sixth we're too close to the star — the Library is on the dark side, and the only reason anyone would go to the light side would be to melt their face off instantly.

[So, like, do they go outside on Arrakis? That's genuinely novel. As an afterthought, he taps the ancient floor of this terrace.]

This is the First. By the way. If we're going to be here waiting for our escort for who knows how long, I wouldn't mind whatever you'd share about your home.

[Either one. Whichever happens to come to mind.]

[It has to be Arrakis, then; Paul thinks he would have chosen it anyway. Caladan is beautiful, but Arrakis - he thinks Palamedes will appreciate Arrakis.

(And because he took almost fourteen years to learn to pull off that little trick of his, now that he's out of it: so if this is the First, and the Sixth is a tidally locked inner planet, and there is a Ninth, it implies at least nine Houses and non-sequential planetary naming. Interesting.)]

They do go outside. It's only safe to do it at night, but near the poles you can survive for a while in the mornings and evenings - it does rotate, almost standard, about twenty four hours.

[Paul brings his chin down and opens his eyes. Where does he start, past that simple question? Where else. His face is soft, his voice thoughtful as he begins:]

You can't talk about Arrakis without talking about spice. [Paul wonders if talking about necromancy felt like this, glancing at Palamedes - it's surreal to explain something everyone already knows.] The spice melange is a geriatric drug. It improves life and extends lifespan. It's an addictive narcotic. But more important than any of that, it's the key to space travel. Guild Navigators are the only ones in the universe who can navigate between worlds reliably or quickly, and they do so by consuming the spice in quantities large enough to allow for the prescience needed to safely plot the courses between stars.

[Paul will allow for a moment for Palamedes to grapple with the implications of that, and then:] Arrakis is the only planet spice is found on, threaded through the desert sands.

[Imagine that, Palamedes thinks, a world where one can go outside even a little. That he thinks this while sitting outside in the memory of one world that he's experiencing from another that also has a perfectly serviceable outdoors does not escape him - but that's not the point. He does appreciate Arrakis, in a way; it's not the Sixth, even by this brief description, but it's the kind of thing he'd ask about. Rotations and timings.

Maybe it's that Paul thought to tell him that bit specifically that he appreciates the most; who can say. Now then, after a considerable beat:]

Prescience is real, then?

[You know, just like ghosts are real? Necromancy by definition is firmly rooted in things-what-have-already-Been, so yes, that part in particular is more shocking than a planet that apparently produces a miracle drug in sand.]

Your planets must be farther apart than ours, if you need prescience to get around. [And he says "universe," which is equally telling. Palamedes takes another moment to think about the scope of that alone; every House in the Empire cloisters away to themselves at least on some level, as an Empire they are fairly shit at communicating, the Sixth included — so the universe?

The whole thing?

He looks long into the grey mist dredged up by the rain and makes a soft huh sound, then looks at Paul.]

This spice sounds like a fine line to walk. [And what would it do for necromancy— no, no. No.] What is it, do you know? Chemically?

A very fine line. It's an open secret that many cross it.

They call it the Empire of Ten Thousand Worlds, but I don't think anyone could tell you how many there actually are, or how far apart. Possibly the Spacing Guild, but that brings us back to spice. The Guild Navigators guard the secret of the spice closely. Most people think it's a form of complex mathematics, what they do, calculating the deterministic physics of the universe, and that must be part of it, but it's prescience that checks those calculations. You can only travel at the speeds needed for space travel if you can predict a perfect course from the beginning, since there's no mind fast enough to react as the ship travels. I'd always wondered how it was done.

[It would be too much to have hoped Palamedes would say something like, oh, prescience, of course, and launch into another dense explanation of a well-studied branch of study. That's not the point of this. The point is that it's done what he hoped: be the kind of puzzle that can distract from grief. It's what he's used it for, turning it over and over in his mind. It's how he came to the conclusion about the Guild - and the reason for so much of what had happened, unlocked too late to matter.

Paul holds a palm out to catch the rain; he's truly soaked now, cold cloth clinging to his skin, but he thinks of gold-flecked sand and its searing heat.]

Interfering with spice production is forbidden. No one who holds the monopoly on the planet would risk offending the Spacing Guild by doing anything that might be construed as that. Even the Emperor treads lightly with them. Without the Spacing Guild and their Navigators, space travel is impossible - they can kill a House by stranding it, but if you threatened their control over spice, they'd bring the full force of the Empire down on you.

You don't need to know what spice is, or where it comes from, to mine it, and make your House rich for generations. [He shakes his head, looking at Palamedes - who will understand very well how much of a frustration that is.] That was one of the things I wanted to find out when we got there. That brings us to the ecology.

The other thing that only occurs on Arrakis are the sand worms. [Paul tips his hand, pooled water falling from it.] They're massive filter feeders, some over four hundred metres long, that tunnel through the sand with vibration, hunting by sound. They're the greatest danger on Arrakis. And they always follow the spice.

[Paul pauses here. He wants to see if Palamedes will also draw the conclusion that's seemed so obvious to him from almost the start, but has somehow escaped the notice of anyone else: the worms and the spice are linked.]

Edited 2021-12-25 04:29 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

uhh i guess cw: vague allusions to cremation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject