Claudius heads down toward the tent complex that is apparently the makeshift HQ for Spice mining operations. He is dressed normally, nice clothes over still suit and his cloak over everything.

Except... There was no complex. Just a single tent, the sphincter of its water seal pulled tight.

Bomilcar showed up to help out if he could. He didn't expect to be of much use but he also didn't mind helping out even if Reins worked for Londine. Their purpose here was not at odds.

Still wearing his gloves Reins steps up to the tent opening and knocks/scratches at it waiting a few moments.

The Thorvald bodyguard stood nearby, being particularly observant of the general area. Open desert like this... he'd been ambushed by Fremen in a situation like this before.

"What case brings you?" A raspy female voice replied to the scratch, giving the stilltent the feel of a witch hut.

"We are with the Imperial CHOAM audit we would like to review your records, please"

As per the Levenbrech's orders, their Sardaukar shadow wasn't far behind.

To the call for records, there was a cackle. "I don't know if you have spice tolerance high enough to review my records."

The sphincter began to open...

An odd statement. He didn't know exactly what the implication was.

The woman that came out was odd to say it mildly. She looked like a Fremen, those deep blue within blue eyes and a water-scarce face included, but she was still wearing the striped overall of the miners and wore the signs of their Guild.

She narrowed her eyes, squinted her nose, and looked at both men with pervading intensity, nodding to himself as if understanding something deep about them.

Bomilcar nodded back to the old woman, but remained silent for now.

He smiles brightly, "Are you the foreman, or accountant for the miners in this area madame?"

"I am their seer." She cackled.

Bom nodded. "Makes sense. Why not." She definitely looked the part.

'I see the sands as they have moved, I see the winds as they have risen and fallen. I see the great worms as they have torn from Alam al-Mithal to own the desert!" The woman started striking the ground with her staff rhythmically.

"So you uh... use this sight to decide where its best to look for spice? Where it is safest?"

"Please... don't." Bomilcar became uncomfortable with the thumping. He wasn't an expert on sandworms but he understood that that kind of thing was what was done to attract them.

"Sight uses me!" She cackled, not stopping the thumping despite Bom's suggestion. "Worms don't come to the rocks, but I see them as they approach, and rage their way through Alam al-Mithal!"

He nods in understanding. He's not familiar enough with the terrain here to know if this was thin enough rock for the worms to break through, but honestly... she was old and alive so she probably knew what she was doing. Didn't make it any less comfortable.

But this was how she was going to communicate... this is what he would need to work with. "They seek what?" he asks about the spiritual worms she refers to.

"Tendrils of time, eternities! Every passing makes the sand anew, starts a new cycle. No-one leaves trace on the sand!"

"Eternity," he says, simplifying it for his own mind. But there was no way for him to truly understand such concepts. Perhaps her spice use made such things more conceivable. He mused on imagery that the Fremen he met previously might appreciate. "Time like a river. Water returns. Continues flowing."

"Ahhh, yes!" The woman stopped thumping and reached out to touch Bom's chest with an open palm. "It's all about water, whence it comes, where it goes."

Edwell was a magnificent bastard. A beautiful lesson from their ordeal. He placed his hand on hers against his chest. "Ancestors give children life. Each generation, same water."

Ignore the fact that he had every intention to bring new water to this world.

She squeezed Bom's hand. "Thousands of years! And yet it is, I've seen it! Every miner has had their eyes on it, but they haven't seen. Al-raqs quddam alumi majhudan la yura amal-u. Why they need me."

"Show me how?" he asks. He was slowly learning the lesson with these Fremen that it's acceptance and openness to their ways that will earn their respect.