markofthebrave | [Action, Voice, and Windblown Journals] .015

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[Action, Voice, and Windblown Journals] .015

[Voice]
Hey, Hugo - if you have a chance, I'd like to talk to you about something.

[And then she shuts the book and moves to her evening practice session behind her house. Today is not about how much water she can move, but it is about control. When the wind blows her journal opened, anyone watching can see thin streams of water moving quick enough to cut intertwining with her arms and legs as she works through a form. The pattern of when she splits a stream, and when she adds more water seems random... until you glance above her head. Any time her concentration is broken by a flash of an image, she adds another and another until all the thought bubble reflects are the forms

If you want to interrupt her, give her a minute - messing up and slicing herself with one of those water streams would be painful. While she normally hates to have her practicing interrupted, tonight it's not quite keeping her mind off of things.]

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[Genes... the building blocks of life... Katara shakes her head slowly.] No, I've never heard of it before. What does that... mean, exactly?

((A world without water... A brief mental image of the time where the ground had opened up beneath her and that crazy general had practically drowned her in sand appears - so quickly that if you blinked you missed it - only to be replaced by a picture of Vash's face, smiling in the rain.)) I know someone else here who's world is a desert... but I think even his world has some water... [She shakes her head slowly.] I don't think I could live on a world like that.

When in utero, they instruct the developing embryo in how to develop. There's gene combinations that encode for every feature the developing organism will possess. [Too pat an explanation. He wonders if he's doing her a disservice, amends it.] That's the simple explanation anyway. It's not as clean cut as I make it sound.

...Meryl and Vash? I know them. It's not easy, but it has its own kind of austere beauty and the society it creates is unique.

...'in utero?' [She laughs a little and shakes her head.] I don't know what any of those words mean. Well - organism is a living being, right?

That's right! Vash and Meryl. And I had to travel through the desert once... [I had never felt so helpless.] I can't say I noticed much about its beauty... except at night, the stars were so very close and beautiful.

'While developing within the mother'. You've probably noticed that children tend to look like a combination of the characteristics of their parents, right? This is because the child receives a mixture of the parent's genes.

With no clouds, they are very easy to see on Dune, as well as the moons, Muad'dib and Qhamsa. Shai-hulud, the great sandworm is also quite breathtaking when he emerges.

[Katara nods.] I understand what you're saying, but I've never heard of anything like that before...

Is Dune the name of your world? And -- [Pause. Back up. Glee.] Did you just say you had three moons?

Dune or Arrakis. [Another bit of laughter] No, only two. Shai-Halud is a creature native and sacred to there.

Oh. ((I wonder if they're lonely without the ocean.)) I've heard of a world with two moons before, but Rydia said that one of them was built. What is a 'Shai-Halud?'

The sandworm. They are creatures that can reach kilometers in length. They produce the valuable substance called Spice, can be ridden by those trained, and are sacred to Fremen. From your naming convention, you would as well call us the 'sand tribe'. [Which he thinks is a little silly, but won't say so just yet.]

Kilometers? [Pause, and she sorts through that again, trying to put it in terms she can recognize.] I've met sandbenders before. [They didn't exactly leave the greatest impression.]

Miles? Li? These translations are not exact.

So there is a 'bending' for each element?

Oh, it's a unit of measurement. ((A large sandworm sounds like it could be something like the Unagi, but with sand instead of water...))

[She nods.] In my world, there are four elements. Earth, air, water, and fire. Only the Avatar can bend all four elements, but there are fire, earth, and airbenders as well. ((This image appears briefly.))

[A second at the ground.] I may as well take advantage of this feature...[He sweeps it over his head to his thoughts. An image of a great sandworm (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_i6r1kHyLaSY/Rif8LFqE8RI/AAAAAAAAABw/tsUpXbjG7jI/s400/sandworm.gif) breaking the sands. It zooms in to see a Fremen, dwarfed by the worm but riding it (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_i6r1kHyLaSY/Rif8LFqE8RI/AAAAAAAAABw/tsUpXbjG7jI/s400/sandworm.gif).]

...[Just... awe.]

Wow.

[Derp, this (http://www.thestargates.com/dune/makerhooksENCYCLO.gif) is supposed to be the second image.]

I take it nothing similar exists where you come from?

[Ah, gotcha!]

[And Katara shakes her head.] No, I've never seen or heard of anything like that before. We have dragons, and sea serpents, and the unagi, but when we were in the desert I really only saw buzzard-bees. And people ride them? All the time?

Ai. Well, only Fremen know how. If you do it wrongly, you are crushed or eaten.

Dragons and sea serpents hmm? Elves, dwarves, gryphons and ghosts too?

Yeah, I've seen Aang ride some pretty big things...

...and I know what ghosts are, but I've never heard of those other things.

Someone from your world?

Aang? Yes, he's a friend of mine. He would definitely want to ride that sandworm.

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[Action, Voice, and Windblown Journals] .015

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