Grim Omens [OPEN]

[snarky_raptor]

Sharp Tongue is hunched over a patch of paving in the city, painting the ground with a brownish paste using her hand claws. Her eyes are bloodshot and her movements jerky. Symbols, shapes, things that may or may not have meaning. Something that could be a serpent, a man, a raptor, all figures delineated in messy smears. Swirls and slashes and spots

Comments

[worm_dancer]

Sheeana is constantly coming and going from the worm pen, so it is no surprise when she finds her erstwhile acolyte staring intently at a patch of city street. She seems to wobble like one who has taken an overly large dose of Spice.

She squats on her heels in front of her, looking for signs of a too deep trance. She smells no flinty cinnamon, but remembers the compounds and tools of the 'raptor sayyadina's apprentice.

Instead she waits, saying nothing, merely checking to see if Sharp Tongue is responsive to her.

[snarky_raptor]

"Do you need something or do you distract me for no reason?" hisses the raptor, not looking up at Sheeana.

She's working!

[worm_dancer]

Sheeana grins. She's used to this pricklyness by now. It's part of Sharp Tongue's nature.

"I was curious...And I wanted to be sure you hadn't entered a too deep trance."

The figures aren't familiar to her but the ritual content is obvious.

[snarky_raptor]

"I spoke to the spirits. I need to remember what they said."

Scrabble scrabble scrabble.

[worm_dancer]

"Then use the Memory Trance." Sheeana found herself analyzing the figures on the pavement. Freeform shapes, that was ghafla that could be sifted through. But the hybrid figures...

Amphibian...Literally "one who lives on both sides" in Latin. I am sorrounded by such monsters. Arha, both Bene Gesserit and Jed-eye now. Leto, man and Worm. Myself and Sharp Tongue, fremen, 'raptor and Bene Gesserit. These are interesting things. Is this the beginning of 'raptor Other Memory?

[snarky_raptor]

"I am doing as the Shaman does," replies the raptor somewhat testily. Another human shape. Then a raptor one. A...snake... no not snake it has these things. Many snakes? She can't even begin to guess and just smacks down a couple of writhing, twined squiggles.

"Future sight," she says. "Ask the spirits what will be and they will tell you. If you can understand."

[worm_dancer]

Sheeana is suddenly very interested. "Like what the Spice can do." She feels herself walking on shifting sands. Delicate.

"They look like worms." Could she have already guessed her plan with the two worms in their pen? How quickly they would breed under the right circumstances?

[snarky_raptor]

The raptor shakes her head and makes a sneezing noise, scowling down at the figures on the stone.

"I do not know what they are. I made the shapes I saw but I do not recognize."

She traces the tip of a claw along one of the narrow, serpentine lines.

"I think it is a viper," she says. "Not one. Many vipers."

[worm_dancer]

"You are in the liminal place where you can pull things from the unformed universe." Watching this activates her Atreides heritage, that danger sense Darwi had used to protect the sisterhood. She dared not go too deep into it, fearing the effects it could have. But it hovered there at the edge of her consciousness. "A nest of them. It's danger. I feel it too."