humanforthis

[humanforthis]

"Exceedingly." he said as courteously as he could, but could not help but further crack a smile at the way she fidgeted. Her cheeks flushed like roses. Spring had blossomed there.

He had always reached for soft moments. Her had clawed for genuine ones. Here, it had fallen into his lap as gently as a leaf falling from a tree.

"It's cleaner here." He wasn't so skilled as she was, but he was greedy for another moment with her as genuine as this. As the tea was poured, he reached across with his left hand to pick up the cup ( clearly meant for the right hand).

She froze unable to escape the feeling of being caught like a fish in a net. She had met his gaze unveiled and he had returned it, by fixing the full intensity of his own gaze on her.

Not even her Bene Gesserit training could keep her from blushing. "I- thank you," She said grasping at words. What would her teachers think? Her mother? Her father?

"Is it terribly different from your homeworld or much the same?" She asked unsure what she was even asking. She sat gracefully in a seat across from him in that careful, over-practiced way everyone moved here on Kaitain as if they were all dancers in a play.

As she sat there she tried again to observe him in Bene Gesserit fashion but found herself distracted. He was handsome she'd heard rumors. Even earlier today she'd heard her handmaids giggle over the pretty Na-Baron who wasn't at all like his brother. How terribly right they were.

[humanforthis]

@impercre CONT FROM HERE

Tradition was only tradition if it was upheld. It wasn't hard to see the way she tensed and glared. She could break tradition. She could slaughter him and try to run back to her desert.

But that would only cause more death, not just for herself, but for her people. This foreign concept of a union was the only strand that kept the Padishah Emperor from exterminating the indigenous people of the planet. Savages was still the common comparison of her people.

The Atreides was right. To rule the planet, one needed the Fremen. If following this tradition was his leg up into it, then he'd try his best to understand and follow those forms.

If he ever had the room to acknowledge a very specific thought, it would be that they both were still very much children. He could not acknowledge or even fathom a thought such as that.

He'd never played games or had friends. he'd never worried over the opinions or interests of his piers.

He'd never known how to be a child or that he was at the end stage of being one.

"Did I kill him?" he asked, and it struck him as odd that she now would lower her tone so after all that noise she had made. He'd killed many people back on his homeworld... and one person here. The degrees of death were all different and stained his hands with varying shades, but the way she speaks made him feel as if he had killed another here.

"Do you need someone to blame?" He asked in her same tone. "The rules of Kanly have been met." he started, ' and that Stilgar said...I was promised two years of your time. " There was no doubt she had heard what he'd told the Atreides. But those words warranted the acceptation he was presented with as a slave. That was not how he accepted her.

and in accepting, many of the Fremen fighters were spared. Her forms said two years but as long as she stayed his concubine, she was safe from any retribution of the Imperium. Nothing of the Atreides remained.

"I did meet the old Planetologist once." His eyes were on her then. His Uncle hadn't like their interaction. Jealousy sat poorly on him in that way. "At the meeting of the Landsraad. we talked about snow."

did she know what that was?

"He was kind." He said and that much was true. " He was kind." Not many had given Feyd genuine kindness, or even the consideration of simple conversation.

[humanforthis]

The relief from her affirmation did not rest long on his features at what she spoke next. His brows furrowed as his lips pulled downward into a frown. He opened his mouth to speak, but she had laid out the parameters of her conditions.

He needed his words. How was he going to make things right with her, and get to the heart of this situation if he couldn't talk to her?

He almost stepped back from her as she approached, but the motion merely came across as rocking on his feet.

He had been a fighter. He'd take. Lives both in the pit and out. He'd even been dubbed the hero of the universe after he killed the Atredies, but right now, in the privacy of their chambers he looked nothing more than a child afraid he might fail.

What if she didn't like what his answer would be? He had never had a friend before. Winning Chani over was a task in of itself.

And what if his answer would upset her? What if she turned away from him? What if it was the wrong answer?

What if he'd lost her so soon after their union? He didn't like to think about that, each question and emotion showing right across his face.

He'd better not ruin this.

To her outward extended hand, he finally stepped forward, his hand reaching for her wrist instead, slowly( and oh so carefully, so not to hurt her) let it travel to her forearm. It was a greeting of men. His hand slid back just as slowly and rested in her hand.

It was still the formal way of holding it. He hesitated. He'd never held her hand the way he had held Chani's. What if it upset her? It was like holding something sacred, like a star.

But she had asked for strangers. She had asked for friends.

His hand shifted again in hers, fingers intertwined. He liked this, his forbidden thing. He just didn't want to stain her.

Slowly he pulled her closer, the soft dance of being on guard melting into trust.

She could stab or hurt him now, and he wouldn't care. Their arms touched from where fingers were intertwined to the tops of the shoulder, just inches from her face. He could kiss her now.

But he doesn't " friends." He whispered before pulling back and beginning to let go. She was so perfect and so pure while he...

No one could hold a candle to her and no one could convince him otherwise.

This is the mystery at the heart of human existence- we wanted community to be seen, understood, our souls exposed. But we had only the weakest tools to rip ourselves open and even then we could only share what we could capture with words or say with our bodies and our actions. So all humans were lonely.

Irulan's hand was on the door of that mystery now and she was only half aware of it. She knew she loved him, had schemed to have him and met with him in secret just to feel herself in his arms

But she didn't fully understand him.

"It will always count, Feyd." She had to breathe in deep to focus. Slowly she stepped forward and reached out to him. The mystery and it's contents unnerved her.

"Let us pretend we are strangers. I do not know you or your language. How would you explain that word to me? 'Friend'?" She asked.

She was trying her best now. When she had first seen him surrounded by flowers on Kaitain he had reminded her of a drowning man. She hadn't loved him then but she had wanted to be his friend, to be the one to pull him from the water.

[humanforthis]

@impercre CONT FROM HERE

For a moment he looked hopeful, pleading with the face of a child for any moment out in the frozen hellscape like it was only a light dusting. the moments were farther and fewer between.

The hope died with the mention of his Uncle. His Uncle who would have wanted to know every single detail and second of the trip. His Uncle who would look over the reports and find some fault with them to call him forth for further instruction on how to 'improve'.

Feyd's gaze went back to the storm window and the snow outside. Any bit of truth in his stance or his expression suppressed into a rigid back and emotionless face. Piter had taught him the face; the pits had taught him the posture.

"Then he'll want both the furrier's reports and the re-cultivation reports as well." He finally looked back at the mentat. If there was a notion of something sweet, Feyd had already dismissed it as a false hope, thinking over every avenue of how quickly his Uncle would want them back to Giedi Prime and within the palace.

Like a switch to the light, Feyd had shut himself off. Piter had always said that one couldn't be disappointed if they didn't venture to hope. He'd almost forgotten that lesson.

[humanforthis]

"Friends." He replied, his tone even. The formal use of his name should have put him on edge. Other husbands in such a high position would have become defensive or aggressive. There was a way the household should have been handled, but Feyd-Rautha stood there thinking only how long he had waited for his name to fall from her lips and how lucky he was to hear it.

There was a way men should have run their households. The Imperium's ideals held firm demands of the aristocracy. He had decided he could be that way with those outside his house.

He'd lived long enough under Imperial ideals.

"I don't think I could recall when we last were friends." He said truthfully, "But I remember the way you turned the handle of my cup the second time we met." He'd had tea with her the first time they had met, and his natural use of his dominant left hand had overtaken the learned and correct use of his right.

"Irulan," he said still watching the way she retreated and was lost in the way the muscles of her face tightened around her jaw. Still, he did not want her to be disappointed in him.

"I don't understand why you are jealous." He said in the same tone he'd use when his brother did not understand a thing. " Because we are not friends? We are not friends because you do not have to earn my trust. We are not friends because the conventions are different. I knew from the start that we would never be friends. It is because I know you, love, adore ,and have fought for you. I have turned plans and moments over in my head thinking of all the ways I could get to you and stay with you. There are other sons for your father's eye to fall on, and I am only a second son. "

That fact remained true even if he inherited his Uncle's Barony. The term only highlighted his own failings. It only made him think that if the conditions hadn't been as they were, he would have lost her.

"I meant what I said in the hunting palace." So long ago on Katain when the world felt as if it would crash around them and he could not steal another moment. " Does that no longer count between us?"

She doesn't think of him in those terms. She thinks of him as a boy and now a man who has been wounded and made beautiful because of it. She wanted to be loved by him in all senses of that word.

"We are not like what, Feyd-Rautha?" She said using his full name like a mother scolding a child. She was jealous, terribly so. He was so casual with Chani, so comfortable when he still seemed to be holding back from her. Everything she had ever known of love before this had been a competition even as her father's favorite- he'd made it clear she was still wanting.

She didn't want to feel she needed to compete for her husband's love in her own house. "Of course I am jealous!" She finally snapped "Stop repeating that like a broken distrans."

She huffed and retreated back a few steps, looking away from him. There another of her failures- she was a poor Bene Gesserit adept despite her high position and training.

[humanforthis]

@impercre (IRULAN)

It was another stretch of sleeplessness. His mind had been running, thinking over any and every little thing that needed done that day ( and well into the night.). He overthought every little mistake, too.

He hadn't slept the night before that and only rested his eyes for a few hours the night that predecessed the former, but he did not submit to anything of substantial worthwhile sleep.

It was always worse when he was anxious like this. With the duties of the Barony added to that, it only made things worse.

But when Irulan said come, he went, his arm offered so that her hand might wrap around it. When she said sit he sat. And now found himself in the comfortable position to lie beside her.

She'd tricked him into this, he wasn't blind. A moment of safety in her arms was worth the tricking. Slowly, like a cat trying to slink it's way into a warm lap, he snaked an arm around her waist.

( it was not close enough, if he had had the gut and the gall, he'd be skin to skin with her instead of holding the folds of fabric around her, buried in her hair and finally close enough. But he knew his hands would stain and those marks would never come off. He wasn't brave enough to ask, he wasn't worthy enough, either.)

He liked the soft nature of her voice as she read aloud. It didn't matter if it was someone else had written those word or if she had herself, as long as she cared enough to share it with him he was content and happy to listen.

Slowly, so slowly, he let his eyes sag. He didn't like to sleep, he couldn't let it take him. he tried to stay awake, despite how relaxed he felt. He couldn't fight in his sleep, he couldn't-- that was when he felt her fingers through his hair and in that near sleep could only conjure a different set of hands that had done such a thousand times... and he felt all the horrors that came after them.

His eyes shot open, forcefully pushing himself up and away--pushing her away-- before he'd made contact with the floor with the propulsion of his own force.

Quick as he could, he sat up, trying to get to his feet as his own hands went to his head, trying to shake the sensation out of his hair.

He sat back down on the floor, a hand still in his hair looking around for those horrid hands. All at once he felt himself quite younger than he was and sore afraid of everything around him. It had been his own mistake. He'd been foolish enough to fall asleep.

[humanforthis]

@impercre CONT FROM HERE

It wouldn't have had happened this way if he was stronger. If he had been smarter he could have kept himself safe.

When he was younger there was no fighting back, but now he and his Uncle both knew what he was capable of It didn't matter if his Uncle was a thousand pounds of flesh, Feyd only needed to be stronger than the suspensors that kept him upright. He could safely say he could lift that man and given his time participating in the fighting pits, Feyd knew he could kill him. It wouldn't be hard to commit that treason.

That's when the Baron began to be invested in his health. He didn't like it when anything was out of his control or ended without his say.

He began forcing 'vitamins' and 'vaccinations' that luckily grew on Piter's nerves. That was when Feyd thought to educate himself on the nature of those poisons that were being forced in his body.

He felt foolish for thinking that even Piter's way of caring and his spiteful nature towards his Uncle might keep him safe.

Feyd-Rautha was learning how to protect himself, but it was not enough. He was getting stronger and becoming more aware of poisons and other drugs. He had to, to safely combat them. Piter always said that only the ignorant fool was one who stopped trying to learn .

He just didn't think his Uncle would have let gas into his room. Feyd had barely smelt the slight off tinge of the gas before he hit the floor. He couldn't move, couldn't react. The horror of it was that his Uncle didn't want him entirely unconscious. He just wanted what he wanted without worry of his own bodily harm.

Now, there was no where to hide from him. Gas could be anywhere.

He still couldn't feel his hands now, and felt so ashamed for Glossu to find him the way he did. He hated the thought that he had needed help after all that. He despised and regretted hat Glossu could see how dirty it all was.

How could he even look at Feyd now after finding him like that? He should have been smarter. He should have been stronger.

If he was not as grown as he was, he might have cried. He certainly heaved when offered water earlier, still somewhat paralyzed within, but if he was not grown he would have tried to hide in his brother and begged to be taken away.

But he was not young. He was nearly a man and he could do nothing.

Like a child he dared to whisper, "You promise?"

[humanforthis]

@impercre (IRULAN)

"She's my friend." He said plainly. He had never had a friend before-- or at least one that was genuine enough to be anything real. From what little interaction he had, it was with those in the slave quarters or prisoners to spar with.

But he couldn't count those as friends. Not when their positions in life pitted them against each other. Surviving the day was always the priority. Especially under the Baron's roof. That was the greatest thing they had in common.

The word sat strangely in his mouth, his expression trying to decide if it had been the right word. No, she hated him at first. He didn't think she hated him now, he certainly didn't hate her.

Actually, what had developed was a much more enjoyable experience. She was a different kind of friend. Her hand fit in his. He fingers intertwined with his. There were moments in the morning hours that other saved for the dark. It wasn't simply pulling teeth anymore to gain footing on this planet or try and gain political clout as his house consisted now of only himself. In that sense, he needed Irulan in much of the same manner.

"Are you jealous?" He asked, his feelings clearly showing on his face. "You and I aren't like that." Aren't friends like that. he said decidedly. "Are you jealous?"

Try as he might, there was no use in suppressing the smirk that slipped through his best efforts not to laugh. "I did not think you would want... that." He clearly looked confused. " Not when that is the least of what is between us." No one could hold a candle to Irulan. No, she sat high up on the top shelf like a glass plate painted with blue little designs. She was something precious . Something beloved.

They had built this piece by piece and were continuing to lay the stones of their foundation. That was something he held most dear.

[humanforthis]

@impercre (CHANI)

"Feel better?" He asked, breathing deep and hard. He was trying to catch his breath, having finally sat down beside her.

They were in a grand ball room in the Arrakeen, one that held fast to her ideal of water seals while boasting the opulence of the keep infrastructure.

Here, she wouldn't have to worry about her rhythm or her silence. There were many exits and yet they were completely alone.

" My brother used to say..." he took a breath, " holding everything in..." he paused again, catching his breath, " makes you sloppy."

He had encouraged her to scream. He'd encouraged her to fight him, to try and end him, though her conventions of her Tahaddi rule forbade it, given how he accepted her. He'd accepted her as a wife amongst her own people for a reason. He'd have to talk to Irulan and explain in his own time, but securing the Fremen both secured his path to Irulan, and prevented more genocide. There was too much in the balance, and he was only a young person. She had every reason to hate him. She wasn't alone, he hated himself, too.

One misstep meant the end of everything. "Can we put it aside now?" He asked, his voice quieting in her way if only to reach her, the both of them finished in this dance of combat. " I've bested you. Can we... can we stop fighting each other?" Thufir would have cautioned kindness and Piter would have suggested caution above kindness. He was trying his best to remember those lessons.

"I need you." He said and decided on the blunt honesty that his brother always promised him, if only in private. "You are my wife. I need you as that. And I need you for your own people's sake. " Maybe she'd listen. He couldn't be sure she'd catch her breath and still hate him and all of it would have been for nothing. Two years would go by unproductively and it would all be wasted.

He needed her on his side now.

"I can see why he liked you." Why the atredies would choose her. The multitude of reasons were staring him all in the face, but only one mattered in this instance , "You're beautiful."

[humanforthis]

making some new icons, then replies

[humanforthis]

piter had once taught him how to relax all of the muscles in his face. he had done it out of spite after a particularlly bad bout of an arguement ( one Feyd had to sit through and witness the utter diaster it had turned out to be) with his Uncle.

Piter and the Baron were always going after each other. it was any wonder they even liked each other as people, let alone colleagues. The vacancy of such a expression unnerved his Uncle.

It made it easier to get through each day.

Glossu had even cracked him hard on the back of the head when such an expression was more common than any kind of emoting. Piter was proud. Proud that Feyd had listened and put a lesson into effect and proud that Glossu had shown authority and taken appropriate action. The technique that led to such monotone vacancy was used for more for his own masking than anything.

Somehow that led to an entire week on Lankiveil. Just him, Glossu, and Piter. He didn't use such an emotionless face even once while there. How could he? He was with the only family that mattered.

But now there was plans within plans and Feyd-Rautha only felt more isolated.

Glossu wasn't here. Neither was Piter. at the end of this day, the only person he'd be trapped with in this place was his Uncle.

That, and no other reason, was why his face had donned that technique. that relaxation of his face into perfect vacancy.

But all that fell away when he looked at her from where he sat.

"Beautiful." he whispered in response to her question, but she was the only thing he saw.

@humanforthis will know what a princess is worth

In her girlhood she had read a story of a sea maid who had no soul and instead watched the world from beneath the waves. It had struck her even then that she and her sisters where like those sea maids watching in the waters. Watching the world of their father, the court, only to allowed to surface without a voice.

They had no space to cultivate their souls even if they had one. They were in a sense branded with their father's name, molded in the kiln of their mother and her Bene Gesserit sisterhood for their own ends and the ends of the Great Houses who coveted them like keys to unlocked rooms and unattended thrones.

Irulan sat with that recognizable Bene Gesserit rigidity as the Harkonnen was escorted to take his seat beside her, crossing the vast sea-green vast lawns that circled the Imperial palace as her sisters continued their musical performance.They stood on a platform made of soostones their arms linked together as they sang ancient songs that had been recited on this planet since the battle of Corrin.

From beneath her long, pale lashes she observed him in the Bene Gesserit fashion. She knew of the Harkonnens of course there were few houses as infamous in the Imperium and yet this was not what she had expected. He reminded her of a drowning prince. She saw the tell-tale signs of violence but above all he seemed . . . wounded and knew years later this was the first crack in the ties that bound her to the Bene Gesserit. A Bene Gesserit was expected to look at such a boy and see his weakness, she saw someone who needed protection and healing and wanted to give both.

She raised her eyes to look at him head on, and there was something unladylike in her directness, like the lifting of a veil. ""And what do you make of Kaitain, Na-Baron?"

[humanforthis]

i got on to write and continue fixing this blog up and man do I hate all of my graphics >:(

[humanforthis]

going to be revamping and reorganizing this blog. Stay Tuned!!

[humanforthis]

Welcome to the 23rd century A perfect world of total pleasure...

with just one catch

[humanforthis]

Only idiots were out in this weather. Acid rain was just another day, but any Chickenhead with his wits screwed half way on didn't come into the plaza near the bar. Not at least until the drizzle stopped, or they got their hands on a decent coat.

Still, this was her spot. She had a decent coat with water resistant plasticides. it was enough to keep the rain off and to keep her skin from burning. Hopefully it would end soon.

The decrepit balloon has passed overhead not to long ago, glitching through its old programing to try for offworld passage.

Nobody left for offworld anymore. Old Terra was where the undesirables lived and where the Wallace Corporation acted like their savior.

In some sense, he was. He was the only reason any Nexus models were allowed to exist. The ones that weren't 'saveable' had all been retired.

On a day like this, it wasn't too bad. She just had to stand out in the acid rain. All day. if she was lucky then some Chickenhead might approach her and want( and would be only capable of) to take a shower.

The touch was light, but she felt it all the same. there was no argument in being touched, only her fluid motion to turn to face him with a smile.

"Oh, honey, did you over do the mood organ?" The guy didn't have a coat, nor a jacket. He was going to burn. From the looks of it, he might have been from the upper levels. maybe a trader's son.

"i can fix that."

@humanforthis is going to run

Logan 5 stumbled out into the gray haze outside the Domed City. The pollutants in the air scratched at his lungs he began to cough and wheeze as he trudged forward. Already he knows he cannot go back even if this wasn't the paradise he had been promised Sanctuary would be. The realization still subconscious was that this was a door that once opened could not be closed again.

For a time there was only the clumsy wandering through streets. It was a city like the Domed City he'd been born and raised in but made wretched not unlike Cathedral.

Then She was there.

He didn't have a word for Her. Mother wasn't used in the Dome if it was it was dirty and vulgar. He ran and felt clumsy because he felt like a child in Nursery again but his limbs felt so long and strange and She was suddenly so small. It wasn't sexual, but he wanted Her to hold him like She had in those old days in Nursery. But he wasn't a boy in Nursery anymore and just like he knew coming to the Outside meant opening a door that couldn't be closed again he knew she wasn't She. And he wept.

[humanforthis]

iinmortales​:

      whatever the baron was scheming that had brought him here early, she would think on it later. all that mattered in this moment was the man in front of her. close as they were, she stepped even close, having to tilt her chin up to look at him properly. the palm that held the ring flattened against his, not giving the ring back, but connected them though it. ‘ i’d like you to put it on me properly, if you don’t mind. ‘ even if it wasn’t that ring, rings still held some level of significance. and, well, she was curious to see which finger he meant it to be on. 

“Properly, hm?” He teased looking down at her. He could rest his chin atop her head with the difference in height between them, but he’s content to watch the light dance off of her bright eyes. His Uncle would turn this into one of his grand schemes. Her Royal father would be insulted of the scandal of them meeting alone like this. There was nothing genuine within the Landsraad. There was nothing good on Giedi Prime and he only had moments at a time for what good could be found on the desolation of Lankiveil. Out of all that, she was the best thing. He could lay down his armor with her.

“We might have different definitions.” he said separating their linked hands ( he did not want to) and taking her left hand and slid it quite easily on her ring finger. “ ahh,” he sighed, “ Doesn’t fit.”  he moved to slide it off, unsure if she’d want what he thought proper.

[humanforthis]

impercre​:

Chani was silent, she remembered the stories her father would tell of his travels off world how his moods when he returned. She had been dazzled enough in parts that she had wanted to accompany him. But now she was older, twice now wife to off-world men. Foreigners who seemed to her and her people so terrible fragile. How would she appear in their worlds so rich with water and politics?

“Fremen dances,” She said her lips thinned as she frowned. “I would be a wali in your world as you are still in mine. What use am I to you in this? I would only be a distraction, a ghanima to show your mastery over Dune. Is that the use you wish to make of me, beloved?”

He watched her features shift and sag and sink into that frown, listened as she called him beloved. He reached for her then, first her hands then her wrist, pulling her closer to him like he would pull a rope. He settled his hands around her waist linking his fingers together in the small of her back.

                                                                   She called the Atreides that in her sleep.

“You have parlayed for your homeworld well. I am most certainly a wali in your ways, I cannot deny that. Where the die is cast is that this is a political convention and not a culture one.” He puller her closer, talked soft, “Where is my strong woman to show these out-freyn the way it is done? The words are different, but you are my wife.”  The word was concubine, because politics demanded a way to the throne. A way not to break Irulan’s heart. This was the first meeting of the Landsraad he had not snuck off to their secret places to meet with her. all spare moments were spent as this: with Chani.

“We cannot ask for leave, yet. See this through.” he’s pleading with her. “Even the old planetologist stayed for the dancing.”