When Is A Gift Not A Gift?

“She sought to divert him, lowered her hands and said: ‘We’ll find a place among the Fremen?’ ‘The Fremen have a saying they credit to Shai-hulud, Old Father Eternity,’ he said. ‘They say: “Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.”’ And he thought: Yes, mother mine – among the Fremen. You’ll acquire the blue eyes and a callus beside your lovely nose from the filter tube to your stillsuit … and you’ll bear my sister: St Alia of the Knife.”

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica in Dune (2021) dir. Denis Villeneuve

Dune Production illustrations 1983, Ron Miller

Dune: Part Two, dir. by Denis Villeneuve // A Panathenaic amphora (Greece (Attica), ca. 365BC - 360BC) (x)

Daniela Amavia as Alia Atreides

CHILDREN OF DUNE (2003) season 1 • episode 3

Dune (1984) 🎥 David Lynch

Dune (1984) - Dir. David Lynch “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me. And when it has passed I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where it has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

can't stop thinking about how even though they don't 'die,'--"his vital signs are too low to be detected"-- when they drink the water of life and gain the precognition, whoever they were dies. lady jessica died, the reverend mother rises from her body. paul, son of leto, partner to chani, fremen equal, is dead. reborn with the desert spring tears is paul maud'dib atreides, the mahdi, the lisan al gaib, the kwisatz haderach, emperor of the known galaxy.

♥️piter de vries♥️

A Dune thought I was having recently is about when Leto II bonds with the sandtrout in Children of Dune. I was thinking about the role of the sandtrout in the sandworm's lifecycle, as larva, but how it cordons off water so the worm can flourish. When the sandtrout bonds to Leto II, it's like it would cordon off the water in his body so it can begin to flourish.

So he's watered and unwatered, human and sandworm, male and female, ancient and of the future, merciful and notoriously without mercy, Tyrant and redeemer... and like where the Fremen take the dead to sap their water, he's a living deathstill. It's good, it's very good.