Salle, Wednesday Morning

[weetuskenraider]

No, Tahiri hadn't been here all night, although it would've been a reasonable assumption to make. She'd gone back to her room and caught a few hours of sleep, then come back down to set up with a pair of staves and the padding she honestly hated in preparation for the promised spar with Dinah

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[future_sandworm]

Leto had decided that the best way to deal with this persistent boredom was to get some exercise. He had brought the flying blades, but when he entered and saw Tahiri and Dinah there he decided not to use them - too easy for someone to get hurt accidentally. It annoyed him a little, but this wasn't his private room, after all.

He picked up a short sword and drew his crysknife, preparing to launch attacks on one of the dummies. There would be no holding back, not today.

But he hadn't forgot his manners. Before starting he smiled and nodded in greeting to the others present.

[weetuskenraider]

"Hi, Leto," Tahiri said, her smile a little bit tired but genuine.

[future_sandworm]

"Tahiri," he said, noticing how she felt. "How are you doing?"

[weetuskenraider]

"Keeping busy, mostly." She shrugged, studying his crysknife with half-focused interest. "How about you?"

[future_sandworm]

"I need something to keep me busy," he said truthfully, noticing her interest and shifting his hold on the crysknife.

[weetuskenraider]

"I know the feeling," Tahiri agreed. "Too much, um, on my mind otherwise . . . that's a neat blade."

[future_sandworm]

"It's a crysknife," Leto said. "Made from the tooth of one of the great Makers of Arrakis. All adult Fremen carry them." He looked at Tahiri. "Can what's on your mind be made less heavy a burden by any other means?"

[weetuskenraider]

She hesitated, bit her lip, and nodded. "Maybe. I don't know. Training helps." Talking about it made it a little more real than she was prepared to deal with at the moment, so she tried to shift the subject back to the crysknife. "Like the Tuskens with their -- our -- gaderffii, sort of. Are all of your crysknives unique?"

[future_sandworm]

He noted the change of pronoun. "All unique. Who are the Tuskens? And what are gaderffii?"

[weetuskenraider]

"The Sand People," she explained. "Most of the humans on Tatooine find them dangerous, but I was raised by a Tusken tribe after my parents died."

The same tribe that'd killed her parents, but details. "Gaderffii are sort of staff-like weapons, but they can be tools too. They're usually made from whatever we can scavenge up in the desert, so they're all unique."

[future_sandworm]

"Dangerous? That can mean many things. Were they good to you?" He spun the knife in his hand. "I believe it's a think common to people of the desert; to make use of everything there is."

[weetuskenraider]

"They're very territorial, and they tend to attack humans trespassing on their lands," Tahiri said, her eyes lighting up at having someone around who understood. (And who looked just like another desert boy she knew, go figure.) "Sliven, my adoptive father, was teaching my father how to fight with gaderffii when the rest of the tribe saw them, and they thought he was being attacked."

She shrugged. "I was three, at the time. I don't remember it, really. But that's how I ended up living with them."

[future_sandworm]

"I am sorry for your grief," Leto replied genuinely, reaching out to place his hand on her arm. "But they raised you well after that?"

[weetuskenraider]

"Sliven was good to me," she confirmed; it didn't say much about the rest of the tribe, but Vexa had never liked her anyway. "I lived with them until I was nine, and then I went to the Jedi academy. What's your world like, besides being a desert?"

[future_sandworm]

"Besides?" The question surprised him. "It is first and foremost a desert," - although the desert was changing, dying - "everything else is dependent on that. But change will come, and Arrakis will be transformed, one way or another."

He had noted her evasive reply, but decided not to ask further, not right now.

[weetuskenraider]

"From what Professor Atreides said, it seems like an even harsher place than Tatooine," Tahiri said by way of explanation. She tilted her head; it was hard to imagine Tatooine being anything but what it was. "Transformed? Into what?"