Chapter 2a

~SHISHAKLI POV~

There were few things vital to the functioning of the world: food, water, air.

And Spice.

The fourth ingredient had many names: spice, melange, and elixir. However, it mattered little what one may call it. This little brown spice was the centre of the universe, allowing for the guild navigator to carve paths through the far-reaching galaxy.

It was expensive. One fistful of this magical powder was enough to buy a home on a mediocre planet.

Yet this magical powder was only found on one planet. Arrakis is a desert wasteland ruled by the Harkonens through a contract. Much like art, people cared little about how this magical drug was harvested, of which atrocities were dolled onto the inhabitants of this desert wasteland where water was more precious than the brown gold scattered through the dunes of Arrakis.

Yet the land did not have only spice. Even in the harsh environment, humans had managed to carve for themselves a life, living in deep crevices carved into the wasteland they lived.

No.

They survived, barely, on minimum sustenance as their planet's treasure fuelled the Empire's economy, preserving even their body's moisture. Their sitches, housed them as they lay scattered across the land obscured from the Imperial eye through exuberant bribes to the guild to not put up satellites.

It was their sense of defiance against insuperable odds as the Empire wrang them dry of all it could by robbing them of their spice and dolling them unimaginable cruelty through the vengeful rule of the Harkonens.

In one of these very sitches, a young girl sat as the water of one their own was added to the giant pond of life, the water in it sacred that they were not to drink it even when facing death.

This was her first seeing the water of one of their own drained, and she knew him. He was young, barely older than her, Ibad had just passed the test of Aqal, and had accompanied their leader on a campaign outside their sietch.

She had been happy to have him by her side, the three of them finally together until they had come under Harkonen fire. Those bastards had surrounded them as they were making their way towards Sietch Turak, and while those bastards would not be a threat to us normally, Ibad was young and inexperienced; the Harkonens had been able to spot him through their camouflage.

It was their first loss of life in quite some years, and the whole sietch mourned the loss of someone so young, yet none cried for water was too precious, even than their dead comrades.

Her eyes scanned the crowd as the older woman began to pray for the departed. As his friends hiccuped beside her, she found one face missing from their group, with his iconic hair, his absence was far too easy to spot.

She pushed herself up, even as her mother gave her a small glare as she left the prayer, having no patience for it as she sifted through the sietch with ease, ease that had come after years of living in the ravine.

She reached the mouth of the sietch as the night stretched over them and the cold winds had begun to blow, and found him there sitting there wrapped in his stillsuit looking into the darkening skies, his eyes blue much like everyone else.

His face was even seemingly unbothered, yet she had known him for more than a decade now and could tell from the faint tightening of his eyes that he was angry, very angry. The anger did radiate off him as well, yet not as the fiery rage, no his anger had never been of the fiery type.

He raged like a storm, calm and chilling.

"I should have gone with you guys," he said to her, and he would definitely know she was there. It was impossible to sneak up on him; he saw much, too much.

"It would have changed little," she consoled him. Ibad, her, and Inzal had been friends for years. All of them had grown up together since her parents had found Inzal as a babe in the desert. They had lost her brother to disease a few months ago and had considered the little babe a sign from the Gods.

And they had taken in the babe, despite the protest of many. Though there had been voices in support of it as well, for the boy was foreign in his heritage, his coloring enough to make it clear that he was not from this world.

And his eyes, unlike a child born on this planet they had been blue even as a child, something that only happened as the years went by and the melange concentrated in the blood.

"I hate it," he said through gritted teeth. It was rare to see him so serious. Of the three, it was often her job to be the older sister and rein in the two troublemakers. And it was rare to see the one who would usually bring smiles to their faces so filled with rage.

"You should have come to the ceremony," she said as she sat down beside him.

"Mother will be wroth with you in the morning," she added, and she would be.

"You know what would have happened had I come..." he said through gritted teeth, and she was aware, for she had seen it happen all too many times before.

The years had done little to change Inzal's appearance, and even now, a decade later, his features remained foreign, and his origin had remained a point of contention in their village to this day, the circumstances of his birth and subsequent years mimicking a prophecy long foretold.

The Prophecy of Lisan al Gaib, the voice from the Outer World.

Even now, they whispered it behind him, a title which he Inzal had always hated, much like the order from which it originated.

"I know," she said, and once a time, she had believed in the prophecy as well, yet years spent with Inzal had changed her. Changed as he told her about how the ancient order of the Bene Gesserit worked, of how they sowed seeds of prophecy for their own greater purposes, to keep the people of other planets docile for control.

How he knew it all, knew the secrets of an order so ancient, was a mystery, the answer to which he had not given her to this day, nor had she asked.

"But what can we do? They are too powerful," she complained bitterly, and though the Fremen were better warriors, they were too few and had too few resources.

"I hate prophecies," he added, and she had guessed that already.

"I hate the feeling of being controlled, being played by either fate or design," he said as he raised his hand, blocking the moon as if grasping air.

"I am going to uproot it all, the prophecy, the fates. All of it," he said as he closed his fist as if grasping for the things he spoke of, and his voice was different than it usually was.

"No matter what it costs, I will liberate us," he promised. She looked up at him, hesitating, yet the words slipped out involuntarily.

"Like the Lisan-al-Gaib," and she regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth.

"There is no Lisan-al-Gaib. There will be Mahdi. Everything a man may have, he has to claw it for himself. And I shall do so as well," he said as he turned and looked her in the eye.

"I will claw this freedom by myself and drag us all towards a different path," and she wished to believe him, her friend, believe him because she was tired herself. Tired of being parched, tired of seeing her people suffer in destitution.

"You always wished to know my name, and I had yet to choose my middle name too, right," he spoke, surprising her, for once a Fremen reached their maturity, they must make a name for themselves, and he had yet to choose him, though it seemed he had finally reached a decision.

"I was born to a Bene Gesserit mother, her name Anirul," he whispered, and she stilled as she recognized that name, for all in the galactic Empire knew the name of their Queen.

"I was awake the day my heart first beat and survived in her womb by concealing myself through means held secret by order of the witches who wish to tame the world, for I am an abomination in ways more than one. A thing to be exterminated at first convenience," he said, and she could feel his voice trembling.

"The last mercy shown to me by the one who brought me to this world was to give me a name, as she lay me in that pod and blasted me into the open galaxy...."

"I am Inzal Kazab Corrino...," yet this was not his voice. No this was the Voice, the speech of a Sayyidah.

'How?' her mind whirled as he continued in that ominous tone of his.

"...the heir to the throne of the Padishah Emperor!"

0000

A/N:

Shishakli is a canon character, a very underrated character, according to me.

She is the Fremen girl, who is killed by Feyd Rautha, the one who is friends with Chani.