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[preborns]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

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[preborns]

[alia bathes, she prepares, she measures herself out to speak to her followers. to tell them stories of muad'dib, strengthen their faith, ignite their souls with paul's message. but when the reply comes, she pauses, frowning.]

Don't you? You ought not say things you don't mean, August.

[dwelt]

i don't. i mean what i say.

[and he can sense an unwelcome shift in his heart, one that ripples to those he's connected with. if anyone will understand, it'll be alia.]

something is happening.

cw: self-harm

[preborns]

It is. I wake most nights, from dreams I can't quite recall.
I find such joy in it. In the sermons writ in blood on my body.

Do you find it, in what you see?

[dwelt]

[he doesn't like what she tells him. he is overrun with the thought that alia is the only one he can trust to say such strangeness.]

i don't.
i don't find anything, but i'm on the edge of grasping it.
i forget who i am sometimes.

this is what we'd call possession.
it shouldn't be happening to me.

[preborns]

Nor to me.

[her cause is so righteous, so divine, that alia forgets for vast stretches of time that it's wrong -- wrong planet, wrong universe, wrong place and time. the fanatical devotion isn't quite hers.]

Is it inside us all?

[dwelt]

[is it inside us all. his thumbs are moving across the screen's keyboard faster than he can think. an automatic response, as if refusing is a sin itself, and no matter how much he'd like to avoid this he can't. their doom is shared and inevitable.]

yes

[preborns]

Then it is good of you to tell me. To warn us.

We all have our roles now. You must play your part, August.

[dwelt]

it shouldn't be like this, alia
we didn't sign up for this

[but they did. they left the comfort of their home, their beds and their tents, to walk and struggle and fumble their way toward the unknown. the shepherd had been waiting with open arms.]

someone is going to die

[preborns]

I did. Or, rather, I signed up to go where my brother does.
If this is what's needed for me to stay beside him, so be it.

[there's almost a smile at that, a wry thought -- priestess in another world, to a god that staggered bleeding and empty into the desert.]

Perhaps. Someone usually does.

[dwelt]

[he can't speak on devotion, especially devotion for family or loved ones. he'd do the same.]

what do you mean someone usually does?

[preborns]

At the end of a story. Isn't that so?

[dwelt]

if by story you mean our lives, yes
but this isn't

[and this is where he begins to question himself, where the poison of his knowing expands into the space inside of him and makes him uncertain. he's not august for august anymore, he's august for everyone in the flock. he isn't an individual.]

saltburnt isn't part of our natural story. is it?
our stories are getting interrupted here.

[preborns]

[if alia is surprised or uneased by this, she gives no sign.]

Just so.
There is a story for my brother still to live, this much I know. I come into it much later than him as he is now. Therefore there must be a continuation, sometime.

You do not know this by observation, though. Do you?
Something speaks to you.

[dwelt]

but if we're getting interrupted, how do we know it isn't affecting what's going to happen? what's supposed to happen

yes.
i'm here and then i'm not. does that make sense to you?