[D7 FMR] Catching Up

[Kannon]

Her hip blended into his grip. "How real do you think it is? Arrakis... without the Harkonnens? People have lived their lives and died not knowing any other masters. I know no other masters. Almost ninety years of their rule, but it's as good as eternity."

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

His eyes looked to hers, honest as they could be. "Difficult. Politics involved," he admits, pausing. "Need to find more."

His hold on her grew. He barely knew her, and he knew it. But he tended to act counter to the common wisdom of not getting too close to one's charge. Because they were usually his family and that motivated him. So, it was not uncommon for him to become deeply involved with others after knowing them for short times. Many in his family didn't return the sentiment though, so connections with new people tended to be more common for him. And Zenzi was that. A feeling of being connected, even with so short a time here.

[Kannon]

Her own motives for this pursuit of closeness with him, for the ease with which she opened to what seemed as something beyond the realm of business, weren't clear. What was clear was that she'd taken care of learning who he was, and he'd been no stranger to her the moment he'd entered The Sipwell for the first time. Whatever her reasons, her body spoke genuinely to his, and the way she talked to him betrayed few reservations.

"No great hopes then." She sighed. "When they come, I'll have to compromise, Bom. You know how it is with the Harkonnens."

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

"Trying," he says. "Not giving up."

"Water flow to False Wall West?" he asks, curious if she was aware of anything of the sort.

[Kannon]

"We have no dealings this far. Mostly offworlders there, and not many, and they have enough windtraps to support their own needs. They probably import water on their own too." He nodded cautiously to his call of not losing hope while she was squeezing his arm.

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

He nods at that and closes his eyes in thought. If there were people out there, they'd need their own supply of water and food that was not obvious. Not hard for the Harkonnen to bring such from orbit without being noticed. His mind was trying to work out potential angles he could come at to locate such forces.

Were they actually using ground transport though? Supplies out to the 'miners' then spice back to the spaceport to be loaded onto ships? But why would they load like that. Why would they not stockpile or hide it in the normal flow of spice. Was... had the spice loading in the spaceport been off the books? Shit... he hated being this slow on the uptake. Were they keeping an off-world stockpile? Or bribing or trading with spice under the table?

"Why load spice at spaceport? Under CHOAM banner?"

[Kannon]

She didn't understand the question, or she simply didn't have the right knowledge. "To cut on the red tape?"

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

"Sorry. Thinking out loud," he says, he pauses as he looks at her. He wants to explain and she can see it. But that was a good amount of pain he'd have to suffer to do so. "Realizing things."

[Kannon]

She thought about it again. "Whatever spice exports you have seen in the city, it is probably legal. The illegal happens where no-one can see." She sighed, having some loosely related thought most likely.

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

"Maybe legal, but odd," he says, kicking himself a bit for not following up on it. "Got busy... storm, depression, report."

The thoughts were coming at him in a confusing mess. This really was not his strong suit. Bom has the sudden urge to clear his mind a bit. "Spice?" he asks Zenzi before untangling and leaving to get his little pouch that he had barely touched.

[Kannon]

Her eyes glittered. "Should I brew coffee, or do you like it raw?" She stretched like a cat with her balled hands. "Spice coffee-brewing is how women seduce men on this world, but we're probably past that point."

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

Going into the pouch he pulls out a small pinch, before setting the bag aside. He moves to his knees next to her, stick his tongue out to show her what to do, then places the pinch on her tongue before kissing her to share it between them.

[Kannon]

The spice wasn't slow to interact with his body. In fact, the initial kick was almost always significant, altering, making a difference. It did work as a recreation drug if used for the purpose, as it heightened awareness could well be opened unto another. This is what happened in the kiss, the sense of intimacy and togetherness so powerful that it made Bom's body tremble and shiver with a surge of subcutaneous warmth. In fact, he felt as if he may have crossed the boundaries between him and her, having flashes of passions and anxieties he felt were unfamiliar, not his own, and decidedly female.

But if he wanted to turn inward, toward self-realisation, that pathway didn't seem foreclosed either. His mind could wander more freely than he was used to, go places that seemed blocked most of the time.

[Understand 1, Complication at 18, must be done with a choice: inward or outward.]

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

Feeling her in this way, having this new and unfamiliar connection, drew him in. He felt he might disappear inside her...

D7 FMR, Understand + Truth, TN 10, Difficulty 1, Outward/Shared: 2#1d20 1 13

2 successes, momentum for stronger shared realization

[Kannon]

He couldn't read her cogent thoughts, at least not in any verbatim way, but he could 'feel' her deep dispositions, coming from areas below the cortex, from the emotional hub in her amygdala, and what he found was a pervasive imperative to... procreate. In a simile of a tau experience, she seemed to be finding a similar notion in him, and so she didn't hold back one bit regardless of their earlier post-coital fatigue; her actions quickly led to that possibility becoming plausibility.

For Bom, the experience felt surreal. The carnal aspects were more potently felt and over-encompassing than ever before, and yet this was not everything. Connecting to her subconscious, she found a complex tapestry of formative events saturated with hostility and violence, with ruthlessness and ambition, but also with love and loyalty. She was not a desert creature in ways Ahmina was, but she was one of those who lived in its proximity, understanding its necessities and dangers enough to have respect and awe toward it. This kind of sharing was under normal circumstances inaccessible to human beings. The theory of mind they had developed as species way back at their original planet, the one twist of their evolution that allowed societies to exist, often called empathy, was faulty and ever an approximation. The philosophers of those ancient times had later struggled with the idea of what it is 'like' to be someone else, or something else. Bom had struggled with it too, here on Arrakis: what was it 'like' to be a bat?

And here and now he experienced the breakthrough only this rare substance allowed through its irreplicable molecular specificity, offering a linked alignment of minds. He knew what it was 'like' to be Zenzi, especially with relation to the act itself; he felt her like she felt him, conjoined into one almost seamless sensual account.

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

The awareness and understanding that grew from the two of them, the shared instinctual awareness but split rational consideration, was as intoxicating as the spice itself. Bomilcar was a man that desired... to be loved, to love, to have comfort, to give comfort, to protect, to feel safe, to be understood, to understand. His outward stoicism was a mask born of both physical comfort and emotional necessity to be able to do his duty.

Even as their instincts took over their bodies, and they acted on them, there was a schism that made him feel like what was happening in Zenzi's room was simply unimportant because it was already occurring and nothing could change what is or has happened. What was important to him was understanding what could be. Not for him... but for them. He did not have to reach out, he was already there. What he needed to do was exchange sensations and feelings with her.

His body was on autopilot as his mind shaped and fed feelings into hers. She could feel a want being formed within the space they shared, a want for this the feelings to not just be a fleeting moment in time. A want for this to continue, not infinitely, but certainly indefinitely.

[Kannon]

Aaah, the future. Melange was indeed opening his awareness to the fact that there were paths for all those tangling threads of now that were him-her to continue, and they weren't random just as they couldn't be fully determined either... or could they? And yet, the place where they could be traced to was dark, impenetrable, sealed from him. The more he tried to glean beyond it, the more his mind was being filled with primal terror that forced him to look away, and no amount of resolve could master that terror. There lay pure madness he couldn't handle. Did he need more melange, or was it truly beyond his capacity, or that of his species in general? He knew it was not beyond the ability of Guild navigators, who were allegedly consuming inordinate amounts of spice, to pierce the veil and access the oracle. But at that point, were they still human? They were never seen, but even those Guild officials that interacted with the Imperium were always eerily deformed in some way as if they had undergone some transition that detached from the concerns of humanity. Bom's own recent experience from the the heighliner only confirmed that.

The sympathetic connection to how Zenzi was feeling gave him a glimpse of an answer to his questing, however: she herself strongly wished for a pathway for this to continue, she desired his child, and his presence for as long as it could be. It may have been calculated, but also deeply instinctual, a drive toward self-preservation in the most ancestral of forms to all life - for the genes to mix, and continue anew.

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

He had no desire to peer that far out that it would destroy him, so he remained in the moment instead. That she had calculated based on what she knew about him had before meeting him didn't matter. The ony thing that did was the desire to multiply. And with that, a growing sense of protectiveness came into being and he let it flow into them.

And all the while he did nothing to discourage base level desires. Perhaps more time passed than he understood, or perhaps it was his instinctual focus on their shared drive, but he suddenly felt his mind fill with a familiar sense of euphoria, multiplied by a thousand times by the spice and shared sensation. Nature's reward for fulfilling that particular biological drive.

He did not let go. Instead he wrapped himself around her, both in mind and body. This was what they wanted, and he would not deny the being he was part of in that place. The physical and mental seemed to be reconnecting though. And as they did he found that he had said something to her. At first it felt like he was observing someone else say it, but it quickly solidified in his mind that he spoken the words.

"Name them." It was verbal confirmation of what they had done, why they had done it, and that he approves.

[Kannon]

The mental nakedness they experienced was euphoric, exhilarating, but also potentially embarrassing. Zenzi couldn't respond immediately from reasons that were obvious to him given the coriolis storm rolling over her senses. But once she was able to speak, emerging sllowly from their shared condition, she blushed, and instead of speaking still, nodded, and kissed him.

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

Bom had no problems with embarrassment himself. His command of his emotional responses was a strong part of what made him good at what he does. He felt it, certainly. And she could feel that he felt it. But she could also feel a disciplined control over it. It was like having an excited animal on a leash. It may jump all over you, annoy you, try to get in your way or drag you off... but the leash gave control.

And he was happy to support her and comfort her in her bashfulness, returning the kiss and holding her in a comfortably firm embrace. He knew that things would not be ideal for the potential bastard of a bastard, but if their coupling bore fruit then they would be born of survivors.

[Kannon]

That bastard of a bastard would still carry Corrino blood... in an Imperium in which the Emperor has no sons. They would also carry Thorvald blood, a prospect loathed by Bom's siblings. The moment they would come into the world, they would come into peril. Somewhere at the back of his head, beyond the bliss, Bom knew this. Among the Faufreluches, issue, legitimate or not, was never inconsequential. Was Zenzi aware what she had let be done?

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

As he let the consequences roll in his mind, he considered options moving forward. "Secret. I'll help, I'll be there. But there's danger," he says. "Blood of the emperor."

It was something she should probably have known before, but the shared instinct hadn't been seen until the moment.

"Your child, my child, our child," he says, placing a hand on her belly. As though he assumed and knew his seed had taken.

[Kannon]

"I know, Bom." She whispered hazily, having lost her spice-induced clarity and now being overwhelmed with blissful numbness. She cradled his head on her abdomen, combed his hair with fingers. "But something has to change."

[Bomilcar Thorvald]

He rubs her belly gently with that hand resting there, placing small kisses. His attention and hope all turn to the child in her womb. There was a strong paternal instinct that she could feel from him, that likely drove his desire to protect.

"Want change too."

He then moves one of her legs to wrap around his chest while he puts his arm around her waist.

[Kannon]

There was no more talk. Just tenderness.

/scene