Arrakeen, Arrakis, 10,224 AG, Monday evening (NFB (mostly))
For several months now, Alice's life had been hanging in an inbetween state. That was what pregnancy was; something in transition that was-but-wasn't. She was a mother but wasn't. A constant crescendo of not-yet.
Queen Alice of Wonderland
It was like engagement; one wasn't married, if engaged, but nearly so. Alice wasn't a parent yet, but nearly. She was a gigantic egg, one who couldn't see her toes. One that, any day now, would crack.
And what then? Then, a baby chick with downy fuzz. Leto with a blessing he had not imagined possible. And her ... she did not know where that left her.
As impatient as she had grown with this waiting-game, she dreaded its conclusion more. She had Leto once again, and at quiet times, she could convince herself that this Arrakis could be home. She could forget about this egg, ticking down to zero, waiting to shift the paradigm and the whole universe around her.
When she felt the pressure start, somewhere in her lower back, then rippling around her sides, making her bump as hard as a rock until the spasm dissipated again, she knew what it meant. Zero was soon. Zero was now.
Leto Atreides II
He didn't leave Alice for long. This made ruling an empire a little difficult, and Leto had postponed most audiences and delegated what he could. It was the cause of some frustration, but no one dared to voice it directly to him. The advantage of being a ruler not quite human: people found it hard to predict his actions and that made them cautious.
He was walking down the corridor, towards Alice's chambers.
Alice
Alice had one palm over her stomach, and was trying to regulate her breath. She counted in her head, slowly, and before she reached sixty, the pressure had released.
She allowed herself to fall into a chair. She should alert someone. Unless it was false labor. There were types of false labor, such as pretending to work when your employer was standing nearby and glaring at you, or having contractions that weren't real. Alice wasn't a doctor, or healer, or someone with a diamond tattooed on her forehead. She didn't know the difference. She couldn't stand and glare at the worker hard enough to see if she was really working or just pretending.
It felt real. Perhaps all false labors felt real. Perhaps they didn't. Some part of her knew. But then, perhaps she would feel that way even if she were wrong.
It began to occur to Alice that this was all very, very real, in ways that made her wish she could scale the walls and fly away somehow.
Leto
"Alice? Are you...?"
Leto had enough knowledge from his ancestors' memories to know that something was happening, although he wasn't really the best judge on false labour. He crossed the floor in an instant, too fast for the human eye to detect, and knelt by Alice's chair.
Alice
"The eggshell is cracking," Alice said. "It hardened and squeezed. Like a python. You move so fast, Leto. I shall never keep up."
Leto
"I won't leave you," he said, his hands reaching for hers. "Let me help you to the bed."
He should call for assistance. He should call for Harah, Stilgar's wife, who had delivered him and Ghanima.
Alice
"Do pythons lay eggs?" she asked. Snakes writhed around one another in her mind. "Only mammals birth live young. Birth."
That was, in fact, what they were dealing with. She grasped his hands to pull herself up to standing, with some difficulty, and then stopped to press her face against his shoulder.
"I'm frightened."
It was too overwhelming. Inside and out. Inside, a parasitic bump, and outside ... a child.
Leto
"I know." Fear was only natural. The paths of births and deaths sometimes crossed. And he found that he too was afraid. Memories of his father's stirred. Paul Atreides had known that the birth of his twin children would cost their mother Chani her life. Leto could not see this, but he also couldn't see anything else. In his visions, the future around Alice and the child was hidden in fog.
"Let me help you to the bed." And then call the servants.
Alice
It helped to lean on him. She was transforming, now; better to save her strength. He was guiding her over to a bed. Not her bed, in Wonderland, where all of this had begun, but the bed in Arrakis, where it would end.
Beds were for sleeping, dreaming, joining together entwined, and somehow, now, creating. She had never created like this before. The body knew the path even if it had never walked it. Or so she presumed.
"You'll stay," she said. "Won't you?"
He had servants to summon and orders to call, and of course he must, but she wasn't talking of immediacies. The whole of it, rather. She needed him here for this. The idea of him sitting in a waiting-room down the hall was preposterous.
She had imagined, once, that she would finish this process alone. She realized now that that would have been impossible. She was exhausted and lonely enough as it was; it was only borrowing his strength that had seen her through to the end of it. But it was not yet completed, and the most daunting bit laid ahead.
Leto
Leto tried to make her comfortable on the bed, as far as that was possible.
"I'll stay." He took her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. "Of course I'll stay." It wasn't the custom, but no one would be able to stop him. "Just a moment."
And he let go, and in an instant he was gone. A servant was down the hall; she was told what was happening and who to call. Then he was back by Alice's side.
"I'm here." In case she didn't notice.
Leto Atreides II
Fear. Leto could sense it ripple through him as he dialled Ghanima's number. He couldn't see the outcome of this, and that awakened a very human emotion. A birth was never an easy thing and life could not be taken for granted. He could lose either of them, or both.
He listened to the signal.
Ghanima Atreides
In that instant in Fandom, Ghanima's own prescient dreams pinged, waking her mere heartbeats before the phone rang.
"Where is my portal departing from?" she asked when she picked up, not bother with a greeting and already reaching for her boots. "I can be there in moments."
Leto
"The nearest one," Leto replied. He knew he didn't have to ask her to hurry. "Ghani?"
Ghanima
There were some muffled Fremen curses as she yanked a clean tunic over her head. "I will hurry," she promised, mentally scolding herself for having not gone over directly after finishing up her first class. "Summon Harah, dear one, and she will get the handmaidens started on the preparations."
Her voice took on a slightly wry tone as she shrugged on her Fremen cloak and fastened the hawk pin. "This is not the first Atreides whelp she's had to birth, after all."
Leto
"Already done."
The 'thopter was bringing Harah to Arrakeen. Leto paced to the other end of the room.
"We should wish for better luck this time for her." They had lived, but their mother had not.
Ghanima
"She should have been there days ago," Ghani chided gently. She could understand why Leto had wanted time with Alice for himself, but it had been selfish of him not to call for Stilgar's wife.
And it was easy enough for Ghanima to follow her twin's train of thought, even with a universe between them. "We were not the first, Harah and Chani did well enough with our older brother, cursed be the Harkonnen butchers," she pointed out, her mother-within agreeing with her words. "And Jessica delivered of Alia safely with her assistance. Harah knows what she is doing, and I shall be along momentarily. Go send someone to meet me at the portal."
Leto
"I would never question Harah's skills, Ghani." But his twin was right, she should have been called earlier. Also, Harah would never hesitate to tell him that to his face.
"I'll send one of the servants."
Ghanima
"Harah is going to have words for you," she teased, locking the door to her suite and walking briskly down the hallway of the hotel. "I am leaving now, and I must hang-up to get to the portal quickly. Tell Alice I will be with her - and you - shortly."
Leto
"I will." A familiar face apart from him must make this just a little easier for Alice. Leto hung up, then turned to the door behind him leading back into Alice's chamber.
(OOC: And thus, the Queen's contractions. Preplayed with the marvelous future_sandworm and atreideslioness. Most of this is NFB, except that Ghanima received a phone call and packed and left, as that's the only bit that happens on-island.
There will be updates, but in dribbles; the child isn't in a hurry just yet. NFI, but OOC is love. ♥)
Queen Alice of Wonderland
It was like engagement; one wasn't married, if engaged, but nearly so. Alice wasn't a parent yet, but nearly. She was a gigantic egg, one who couldn't see her toes. One that, any day now, would crack.
And what then? Then, a baby chick with downy fuzz. Leto with a blessing he had not imagined possible. And her ... she did not know where that left her.
As impatient as she had grown with this waiting-game, she dreaded its conclusion more. She had Leto once again, and at quiet times, she could convince herself that this Arrakis could be home. She could forget about this egg, ticking down to zero, waiting to shift the paradigm and the whole universe around her.
When she felt the pressure start, somewhere in her lower back, then rippling around her sides, making her bump as hard as a rock until the spasm dissipated again, she knew what it meant. Zero was soon. Zero was now.
Leto Atreides II
He didn't leave Alice for long. This made ruling an empire a little difficult, and Leto had postponed most audiences and delegated what he could. It was the cause of some frustration, but no one dared to voice it directly to him. The advantage of being a ruler not quite human: people found it hard to predict his actions and that made them cautious.
He was walking down the corridor, towards Alice's chambers.
Alice
Alice had one palm over her stomach, and was trying to regulate her breath. She counted in her head, slowly, and before she reached sixty, the pressure had released.
She allowed herself to fall into a chair. She should alert someone. Unless it was false labor. There were types of false labor, such as pretending to work when your employer was standing nearby and glaring at you, or having contractions that weren't real. Alice wasn't a doctor, or healer, or someone with a diamond tattooed on her forehead. She didn't know the difference. She couldn't stand and glare at the worker hard enough to see if she was really working or just pretending.
It felt real. Perhaps all false labors felt real. Perhaps they didn't. Some part of her knew. But then, perhaps she would feel that way even if she were wrong.
It began to occur to Alice that this was all very, very real, in ways that made her wish she could scale the walls and fly away somehow.
Leto
"Alice? Are you...?"
Leto had enough knowledge from his ancestors' memories to know that something was happening, although he wasn't really the best judge on false labour. He crossed the floor in an instant, too fast for the human eye to detect, and knelt by Alice's chair.
Alice
"The eggshell is cracking," Alice said. "It hardened and squeezed. Like a python. You move so fast, Leto. I shall never keep up."
Leto
"I won't leave you," he said, his hands reaching for hers. "Let me help you to the bed."
He should call for assistance. He should call for Harah, Stilgar's wife, who had delivered him and Ghanima.
Alice
"Do pythons lay eggs?" she asked. Snakes writhed around one another in her mind. "Only mammals birth live young. Birth."
That was, in fact, what they were dealing with. She grasped his hands to pull herself up to standing, with some difficulty, and then stopped to press her face against his shoulder.
"I'm frightened."
It was too overwhelming. Inside and out. Inside, a parasitic bump, and outside ... a child.
Leto
"I know." Fear was only natural. The paths of births and deaths sometimes crossed. And he found that he too was afraid. Memories of his father's stirred. Paul Atreides had known that the birth of his twin children would cost their mother Chani her life. Leto could not see this, but he also couldn't see anything else. In his visions, the future around Alice and the child was hidden in fog.
"Let me help you to the bed." And then call the servants.
Alice
It helped to lean on him. She was transforming, now; better to save her strength. He was guiding her over to a bed. Not her bed, in Wonderland, where all of this had begun, but the bed in Arrakis, where it would end.
Beds were for sleeping, dreaming, joining together entwined, and somehow, now, creating. She had never created like this before. The body knew the path even if it had never walked it. Or so she presumed.
"You'll stay," she said. "Won't you?"
He had servants to summon and orders to call, and of course he must, but she wasn't talking of immediacies. The whole of it, rather. She needed him here for this. The idea of him sitting in a waiting-room down the hall was preposterous.
She had imagined, once, that she would finish this process alone. She realized now that that would have been impossible. She was exhausted and lonely enough as it was; it was only borrowing his strength that had seen her through to the end of it. But it was not yet completed, and the most daunting bit laid ahead.
Leto
Leto tried to make her comfortable on the bed, as far as that was possible.
"I'll stay." He took her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. "Of course I'll stay." It wasn't the custom, but no one would be able to stop him. "Just a moment."
And he let go, and in an instant he was gone. A servant was down the hall; she was told what was happening and who to call. Then he was back by Alice's side.
"I'm here." In case she didn't notice.
Leto Atreides II
Fear. Leto could sense it ripple through him as he dialled Ghanima's number. He couldn't see the outcome of this, and that awakened a very human emotion. A birth was never an easy thing and life could not be taken for granted. He could lose either of them, or both.
He listened to the signal.
Ghanima Atreides
In that instant in Fandom, Ghanima's own prescient dreams pinged, waking her mere heartbeats before the phone rang.
"Where is my portal departing from?" she asked when she picked up, not bother with a greeting and already reaching for her boots. "I can be there in moments."
Leto
"The nearest one," Leto replied. He knew he didn't have to ask her to hurry. "Ghani?"
Ghanima
There were some muffled Fremen curses as she yanked a clean tunic over her head. "I will hurry," she promised, mentally scolding herself for having not gone over directly after finishing up her first class. "Summon Harah, dear one, and she will get the handmaidens started on the preparations."
Her voice took on a slightly wry tone as she shrugged on her Fremen cloak and fastened the hawk pin. "This is not the first Atreides whelp she's had to birth, after all."
Leto
"Already done."
The 'thopter was bringing Harah to Arrakeen. Leto paced to the other end of the room.
"We should wish for better luck this time for her." They had lived, but their mother had not.
Ghanima
"She should have been there days ago," Ghani chided gently. She could understand why Leto had wanted time with Alice for himself, but it had been selfish of him not to call for Stilgar's wife.
And it was easy enough for Ghanima to follow her twin's train of thought, even with a universe between them. "We were not the first, Harah and Chani did well enough with our older brother, cursed be the Harkonnen butchers," she pointed out, her mother-within agreeing with her words. "And Jessica delivered of Alia safely with her assistance. Harah knows what she is doing, and I shall be along momentarily. Go send someone to meet me at the portal."
Leto
"I would never question Harah's skills, Ghani." But his twin was right, she should have been called earlier. Also, Harah would never hesitate to tell him that to his face.
"I'll send one of the servants."
Ghanima
"Harah is going to have words for you," she teased, locking the door to her suite and walking briskly down the hallway of the hotel. "I am leaving now, and I must hang-up to get to the portal quickly. Tell Alice I will be with her - and you - shortly."
Leto
"I will." A familiar face apart from him must make this just a little easier for Alice. Leto hung up, then turned to the door behind him leading back into Alice's chamber.
(OOC: And thus, the Queen's contractions. Preplayed with the marvelous future_sandworm and atreideslioness. Most of this is NFB, except that Ghanima received a phone call and packed and left, as that's the only bit that happens on-island.
There will be updates, but in dribbles; the child isn't in a hurry just yet. NFI, but OOC is love. ♥)