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𝐌𝐘 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐄𝐓 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 beautiful at dawn. When the winds move like waves over the dunes, and the heat starts to waver down, you can truly see it: spice, sparking and glistening through the air reflective of the one defining thing on this plane - sun. It goes down and it goes up: it is the one true thing us fremen live by and follow by complete command.
I find myself watching it, sometimes alone, sometimes with Chani. Either way, I'm always there, sitting atop the dunes feeling like dwelling on what the world could've been. I watch as the sun sets below the mounds of gold, and I watch as the sky grazes itself over with darkness.
We've been pushed regrettably south, away from harkonnen territory and up towards the swarms of sandstorms that they deem inhabitable. Having just brushed through the north spectacle of fremen men, women and children alike, I'm feeling undecided and erratically reluctant.
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"Sadus-" I demand, but the reverend mother stands tall and unmistakably over me, forcing any power I might have over the trinity to whittle down to nothingness.
"man yuta-shu wa-yaba-h yatlub wa-lis yuta-h!"
She speaks, and I can tell from the foreign rasp in her tone that she is using her voice on me, controlling me, guiding me. I do not see it that way.
"I beg of you, reverend mother, my people, they seem to believe-"
"Your people believe that wolves do not cause harm in their dens. They believe in the might of brotherhood, that it is stronger than a force which of whom changed the name of this very planet. I do not consider what your people believe, because they accept you as one of their own-"
"Enough!" I speak with such might that she shuts her mouth, and manages to stumble back a little. My fingers graze my lips as I recall a surge in my throat when I let out my anger. A 'foreign rasp', fallen over my chords as if someone had enchanted me with a power I hadn't known I'd harnessed. The room full of beggars, fighters, sisters and fremen all stood back in disbelief, waiting for me to turn around and tell them it was all an act. I did not.
The chains that hang from her facial garments are stricken with sudden movement as she tries to straighten herself out. The first person I look over to is my sister Chani, a woman who is not related to me by blood but only by sand. She looks almost horrified, a sudden confusion twisting her features together as her eyes find my own. They're crystal blue, contrasting against her darker skin - and she looks beautiful under the light of the northern temple. The thought makes me regret ever looking over to her at all.
Whispers erupt all over the room as I collect myself. I push my beige garment back up over my mouth and in doing so cover my hair with it. All that is visible are my striking eyes, laced with glistening particles of spice, and tainted a deep cobalt.
"Muh Zein wallah," I spit, though I most likely shouldn't. The sisters are still shunned by my power, and as am I - but I refrain from baring it on my face. I turn on my heel and march past the rows of towns folk, cowering from me like I was a snake, slithering throughout them and boasting about my venom filled teeth. In this case, it's my tongue.
Chani most likely is the one following me, but I don't stop to converse with her; instead I keep going, no need to push through the crowd as their reluctance to touch me creates a bubble of air with each step I take.
I get to the great doors at the end of my path and shove them forwards, Chani still tailing me closely. When I'm finally free of the reverend mothers gaze, I yank down my veil of raspy fabric and take a deep breath in. That's when Chani catches up to me, and grasps tightly onto my arm.
"What the hell was that?" She hisses through gritted teeth. If only I could explain it.
"It's bene gesserit sorcery, they used it against me, but somehow I....." the words seem to tumble from my lips before I myself can stop them."I don't know it was this....this voice that wasn't mine. It was like it was.."
"Theirs?" She finishes, and I nod. "Either way, you shouldn't tell them they're a waste of time, Zahid-"
"They're granting us banishment!" I snap.
"Banishment or not, whatever they might grant us we'll go south anyway. You know so. Why do you trust them so much?"
"I....I fear they know something we do not."
"In relation to what?" Her voice had lowered to a whisper now.
"I've been having dreams, Chani. Ones of a boy, but he's certainly not of fremen nature. His skin is pale and even though he is purely male, when he speaks his voice is distorted and sounds just as theirs did moments ago. There's been word of him, I've heard it. Some even call him the mahdi-"
"Stop that! We don't source our truths from weakly pillared prophecies."
"I know this, I don't believe in a single prophecy. I just wanted answers."
"It seems you are being subjected to bene gesserit visions. These are far more serious than any half witted dream." A voice speaks from behind the two of us. It's an older woman, whom is draped from head to toe in sandy hued fabrics. She's nothing but a regular, but her words imply some sort of unforeseen wisdom.
"What does this boy tell you?" She asks, her voice worn and tired.
"He speaks my name. That's all." I fail to mention how much this enchants me. The way it creeps past his lips as he looks to my eyes has me so intrigued that I feel as if I want more, every morning I wake. But that has been all he's ever said.
"Be careful, child. You might be tied down tighter than you think." She tells me, smiling. A strange feeling arises in my heart as I look to her, and it's so unusual that I almost feel sickly. I look to Chani to try and halt it, but she looks just as confused as I do, and soon she pulls us away from this woman's presence, interlocking our hands and ushering us back to our group.
"Chani, what does that me-"
"Shhh," she hushes, placing one finger to her mouth as she does so. She brings us through the winding alleyways of the fremen's north, and gestures for me to shun my wrap back up to my face.
She does the same, and soon we are almost unrecognisable. We walk again through crowds of others like us, and soon, we've reached our travellers, eating their rations by the rocks.
"Hā, Stilgar," she voices, and they all look up to meet only our eyes. They know it's us, but they still stare unknowingly at me. It feels eerie, and wrong - little did I know, this would be something I'd have to get used to.
"Is it true?" He asks. Stilgar wasn't present to witness my spark, and only a few others of our group had seen it.
"Even if I was whatever you wanted me to be, the bene gesserit are not on any of our sides. We're dismissed."
"We do not need them if you are present in our hands!" He exclaims, smiling wide, as the others sit and shake their heads.
"Stilgar, she went against the reverend mother. Who knows what this means for us?" One of the girls adds.
"She could be of sacred mind, that's what that means!"
"I am not of 'sacred mind'. That's nonsense. Jesus, Stilgar, I haven't even been out the room for five minutes."
"You'll see," he says gleefully as Chani and I migrate further over to finish our food. The two of us sit in solemn silence as the others pass on murmurs until it's time to leave. This is our second and last day spent at the north's homeland, and I'm almost itching to get out.
We each file out of the room, one after the other. Chani and I interlock our hands again, scared of losing one another in the vast crowd. It's not something we usually do, but it's not completely foreign. The fremen, and especially us, are usually untrusting and survival driven. But Chani and I have something special.
We shove our head wraps back on as if that might conceal our identity, and make our way back through the crowd. The north is built of rock and deep sandstone, and as we waltz through waves of people I look up to admire the chisel work and am not disappointed. If there had been one plain definition of beauty, it would have subsided up there, where the rocks turn to sculptures so delicate and advanced that not even I could've dreamed them up.
Soon, the crowds are too thick as we approach the market, and so I let go of Chani's hand, to allow us to return to single file. Just as I do, I hear a shout from behind me, and I recognise the word so clearly that there's no doubt what had been said. There was no doubt either, that it was directed at me.
"Mahdi!" A man yells, and the echo carries round the canyon intensely. Everyone turns their attention to me, and just when my heart starts to race at the thought of an uprising, a soft hand grazes my shoulder. Then, another, and another after that.
Soon, every person I pass is trying to touch me: it's a symbol of good luck, it's a symbol of gratitude, but it is also widely used as a symbol of worship. That's what scares me the worst. When we make it out, there's nothing to dwell on besides the ghost of a thousand touches, and suddenly I realise I am blessed with not bene gesserit respect, but that of the people's.
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That had been just about three weeks ago. We hadn't heard much past that from the north, but surely word would have spread by the time we reached the south. I was dreading it. I hadn't asked to be any sort of messiah, but word had stricken me that I had no choice. Even though our attention was merely demoted by towering dunes and even bigger worms, Stilgar still managed to tell the 'prophecy' to our group so many times over that I was confident any one of us could recite it from memory.
I punched a mighty hole down into the sand, just to push the thumper in and screw it down securely. I clicked it on, and there it was: the sound of the ground vibrating, attracting worms my way. Deploying my grapplers, I stood up mightily on the hill as I watched the sand shift in the distance.
"C'mon," I mutter impatiently as it advances strongly towards me. It doesn't scare me so much anymore; I know there's a great risk present, but I don't even think about that anymore. I suppose, travelling miles across the desert is too a great risk.
The ridges in its skin show itself through the dunes, and soon, I know - I'll be getting ready to run. When it surges through the sand, getting closer to me by the second, I start to lift my feet. They take me far before the worm is crashing through the hill of sand I'm stood upon, and so, I take a mighty leap into the dust and try my hardest to lodge my blades into the shelves and/or cracks in it's surface. It speeds from under me as I scramble to hold on, letting out groans and shouts of struggle as I do so.
The segments of the worm are dry and rigid, and that makes it easier to grab onto imperfections in it's skin. I latch onto a sandy ledge, and push the blade deeper into the worms back. My other grappler does the same but a few feet away, and soon I pull at the strings and try to stand up. My knees almost buckle due to the weight of my own body and the sheer force of the wind pushing against my survival, but again I shove through, managing to plant my feet and carefully rise to gain control of the beast.
THE FIRST TIME I truly dwelled on death was when I questioned my parents - why did everyone else have families and I did not? I knew they were gone, but fremen did not have possessions, per say, so I had virtually nothing of their inheritance. I didn't know whom they'd been, where they lived, the languages they spoke. It was then I made a promise to myself, that if I was to die I'd do so under the desert sun with the sand underneath me, so I could see my planet in its fullest. When I was to die.
But when I awoke from this dream, I had a sensual feeling that I should be afraid, of not the war, but the peace. That I would not get those seconds alone, with the sky, that I would die shrivelled and cold and defeated. The boy and I stood together last night, our eyes shining blue and our garments a deep black. We were staring, whether out into the sands or out into the chaos I wasn't sure. Because all I saw was us.
This was the first time a dream like so had shaken me. It was the way he looked out, the way we looked, like we were looming over something bigger. Like we had control of something I couldn't see yet. I pat my hand up to my face. A tear.
That hadn't happened before either. Frantically, I tapped the tear to my tongue. A tear - especially one sourced from an erratic, non-existent scenario - was not to be wasted. Water to us fremen is not just scarce, but sacred.
Even still as I recall all of my previous dreams, I cannot seem to view them as visions. Maybe it is because I cannot view myself as bene gesserit, and that I feel I was born to ride with the fedykin.
Seamlessly, I ride up the side of the rock after wakening. I cannot bare to lie any longer, thinking of the boy with blue eyes. It wasn't just his beauty, it was his demeanour - Though I'd never admit my slight liking to this boy aloud, I could appreciate it in silence. I felt drawn to him, I felt as if he was someone I might be equal to, if I'd ever meet him. That maybe, he'd be the one person that would know what it felt like to be placed on a pedestal unwillingly.
I watch the sun arise once again, like I always do, but instead of my hearty dune raising me up, this time I'm hidden and skewered into the rockside, dangling my legs down from a ledge to feel the height. To feel like I might be above something, to feel the control.
An hour later, when the sun stood like a compass in the morning sky and the spice had started to roll around, I was caught by the strike of surprise - a commotion was ongoing below me. A commotion of two newcomers, I was certain. It wasn't unlikely that they'd been sent from the north last minute, or maybe even the south. But only two? What could the fedykin want with two soldiers?
I don't stop to wonder as I push my mask on, grabbing my curved blade from beside me - all to sit and wait. Wait until they needed me.
I couldn't make out much of what the two were saying, and they too bore masks. All I knew was that they did not seem welcomed, and that we were not warned. Then, I had the thought of disguised harkonnens, set to kill us. I don't quite know where they'd get the suits, and I almost believe it when one of them starts to fight against Stilgar, but then when it reveals it's face, it's nothing but a mousy haired woman, of normal build, and an almost tan skin tone. She looks strong, but not stronger than any fedykin team, and so she soon is restrained by my people.
I don't feel the need to jump down and help, but as I realise she's escaped Stilgar's grasp, I look to find that the other being has vanished. Again, my only job here is to wait, and so I tuck myself behind the rock, eager to strike out at whomever it might be.
My breath slows as my eyes peek from the stone.
They contrast too deeply to both the granite and my mask, both being very deprived shades of grey.
Soon, I hear the sequence of tiny rocks breaking. Just as I'd predicted; and so, I get ready.
My knife, it rests faithfully in my hand. I know that I will not use it, but I consider it a tool of another name: fear. As the figure stumbles upward, it stops: I know so due to the sudden silence that rips through the air to me. He has realised, as I did, that this is a penultimate end to his route. What he does not realise, is me: crouched in the corner, cuffed in camouflage. To almost combat my hesitation and silence, it raises what I assume to be a lasgun, and points it down toward my people.
"I wouldn't let you hurt them." I say, and they whip around to face me, their hands trembling, though the silhouette does not surrender the gun. It's then that the sun creeps gently to it's face, and I can see what I know to be a 'he' in the fullest light. For a moment, there's shock in my eyes, but I make sure to erase it as I have always done. Because standing before me, is the boy in my dreams.
He looks scrawnier than I'd imagined him, and his eyes are a deep brown. He does bare fremen armour, though I don't believe he's from north or south descent for one second. No. He's from a different planet entirely. My hand cups the mouth of my mask, grappling it off of me once I know I can hide my true emotion. I stare into his eyes with a cold demeanour, as his grow wider by the second. It's then that I start to wonder if I've been in his dreams, too.
"They say you're the mahdi." I state, and he does nothing, still too stunned to speak. "But you look like a little boy."
He still just stands, looking into my eyes as I raise to my feet. I brush my hair back with one hand, waiting for him to say something. Eventually he does not, and so I huff out a sigh before opening my mouth again.
"You picked the steepest way up. Follow me." I say, and I turn past him to go a different route down the rock as he follows obediently in my footsteps.
"What's shaken you, lisan al gaib? Bad dreams?"
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[word count: ³⁰⁹⁸]
thank you for reading!
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