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Waves of water crashed onto rocks made up by something never seen on Arrakis. Beaches upon lakes and seas and oceans would never trickle from Dune's core.
She flinched as a surprise droplet of water reached her cheek. The breeze carried water- almost as though it was made of it.
Humidity. Where air carries water and makes the atmosphere heavy. She looked up to the clouds and saw ships arriving. She turned toward the castle, making her way up the stone steps from the edge of the sea.
The plants around the stones were a deeper green than she could dream of ever missing.
A green, a color of richness, that I would never see. Hmm. Not that I missed it. My heart does not ache for things I will never experience. There are things I will never experience but the past has. I can see them there, feel them like a ghost feels the sun on a cold day.
All of which is foreign to me. I have never sought the sun because I was cold or wet. I have never seen a plant so rich with life that it has shallow roots.
She arrived at the castle just as the ships landed. She made good time. Of course she did, she knew how long it would take- as if she counted the steps.
My father was young. It showed in the joy in his eyes when he saw my mother. He held out his arms to her to feel her embrace. An embrace I felt.
"Waiting for me?" He asked her. His eyes roamed her face, her figure. He did not know it yet, but my brother was forming in her womb. She would tell him soon. Or he would find out. It is misremembered, but a joyful light I cannot touch. I refuse to touch. I long to touch.
"Just today, Leto," my mother's voice came from the one we shared. It wasn't true. This was one of their dances.
He hummed and smiled at her, then they parted and walked side-by-side toward the castle. She looked over he shoulder and I saw who I sought.
Duncan Idaho.
He was younger, too, of course. Much younger. There was some sort of hardness to him. I knew he softened later with my brother. As if they had been brothers. A bond never quite made but still strong in an unspoken way.
He was speaking with the pilot- not as though the pilot had flown. My father, the Duke, always insisted on flying himself. It wasn't dangerous, exactly. But it was still something to put himself at ease when everyone else grew concerned.
Look at her... look at her... look at me...!
The soldier didn't.
Fine. I would look somewhere else.
Like flipping through a holographic set of images, I moved through my mother's memories. Many that she can't even recall herself. It is always easier to remember someone else's memories, instead of your own, after all.
There. A dinner, just after Paul's third birthday. The lighting is warm. There are guests. Leto is not there.
She blinked as I settled in the memory. She was weary. Something was weighing on her.
"My lady," Duncan was to her right side. Leto wasn't there, so Duncan would be.
She looked at him.
That is what I wanted. The memory froze as I stayed there.
His eyes.
Hayt, of course, didnt have Duncan's eyes. The Tleilaxu were good, but eyes were fragile things, hard to replicate. Besides, its important to know if you're talking to your old friend or someone who doesn't remember what they're laughing with you about.
He was a little older now, just a few years, but it showed. He had my brother to keep an eye on. My brother was always an anomaly. Everyone always knew it.
It weighed on my mother. She sought a friend's comfort from Duncan, not a lover's. She knew what she had done. She knew her sisters of the Gesserit order were angry with her. But she didn't exactly regret it. She was proud of her son, my brother. He showed so much progress in just his few years.
Duncan was already his favorite person. He was strong and more and more present. He never took the place of my father, to Paul. But he was more often than not there.
I looked through her memories for more moments like this; moments that were surrounded by people but private all the same. I knew I would never find the way I wanted him to look at me- her? in her memories. He never would let such a thing happen. He was a good man.
What kind of man was he? The kind who never jeopardized the trust placed in him.
The kind of man who knew his death approached and continued to protect those he was charged with safeguarding.
He was alone in his final moments. I only had access to my mother's memories, not the memories of the men who killed Duncan Idaho. I could not witness his final fight, just his final moment with my brother and mother. Telling them to go. Telling them to get away so he could buy time.
Duncan Idaho, in all his other flaws, was a noble man.
A man I could not wait to meet.