The Deep Desert

Photo By coda

Shameless Dune fanfiction from a writing prompt this morning.


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I must not fear.

Ketar placed his tiny hand palm down on the sand dune and felt the worm. The dune hummed, a low note. He felt his breath quicken.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Ketar jumped to his small feet and ran. He took steady, even strides, perfectly in rhythm. He felt the exact moment the worm caught his vibrations and turned. Here was his test.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

Ketar slid down the face of a dune and continued his run. Not fast. It was the steady impact that mattered. The regular timing of his steps. It drew the worm like the Spice drew men from the stars.

I will face my fear.

The sand boiled behind him. Ketar broke to the left into uneaven steps. Walk without rhythm, and you won't attract the worm. It surged past him- a wall of plate scale and single-minded hunger. It threw sand; as long as a spaceship and twice as big around.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

Ketar ran alongside the worm and set his hook under the edge of a scale. He pulled up, exposing the underside. The worm turned upward, protecting its delicate skin from the harsh desert sand. Ketar hopped up as it turned, his leather-covered feet found purchase on the coarse scale. He set the second hook and leaned forward against them. The worm turned him up to the crest of its circular body.

And when it is gone I will turn my inner eye to see its path.

Ketar leaned rightward, exposing more skin under the left-hooked scale. The worm turned to the right. They flew through the deep desert, faster than Ketar could move. Faster than a horse of the watered plains. Almost as fast as the helicopters that collected the Spice.

Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Ketar was proud to ride his first worm before his tenth birthday and maintain his people's traditions, but he'd seen where the desert gave way to the plains and the plains to the forest; he knew they were a dying people.

There was something out here. Ketar let the left hook slip free from the scale. The worm turned. He let the right hook slide free. The worm dove into the sand. The boiling desert approached. Ketar leaped rightward and stutter-stepped across the churning sand toward... was it a man? Out here?

It was. A man in a worn but functional stilsuit standing in the middle of the deepest desert. His eyes, even the whites, glowed blue but they did not focus on Ketar as he approached. Ketar had never seen eyes that glowed. The man held his hand out to Ketar who took it.

"You are... Ketar?"

His voice... Ketar had never heard a voice like that. It was low and high at the same time. Wavering in the air. He felt it like a physical thing. Ketar nodded.

"I am blind." The man said in that Voice.

Ketar wrenched his hand free. That was why he stood out here in the desert. A blind man was no good to the tribe, no good as a Fremen.

"The worms will not come. The desert does not want me." His Voice traveled over the desert sands, rattling them like the worm. It was a Voice like a weapon.

Ketar took the man's hand again and looked up at him. He couldn't see. Ketar couldn't speak. It wouldn't work.

"I am.... The Preacher."

Ketar lead him from the desert.