The Morning After The Night Before

The Dune novels are copyright Frank Herbert, his estate, and associated persons. This fanfic is for entertainment only and I make no claim to any rights pertaining to it.

Chani leaned on the railing of the walkway over the sietch reservoir, staring at the waters beneath her as if they held the answers to the problems of the universe. The amount of death-water here, perhaps they did. Somehow, though, she doubted they would give her the answers to her questions.

The weight of Usul's water-rings pressed heavily against her collarbone. Why had she hung them around her neck as she left her apartment this morning? You will wear Usul's water-rings without obligation, Stilgar had told her, and she wasn't so young that she imagined that meant in-sietch as well. The only women who wore a man's rings in-sietch were those who had accepted them in courtship, with obligation. They did not wear them tied and muffled, as one did out-sietch, but openly and proudly, on chains and cords designed to display the wealth their men had settled upon them.

The night before.... She didn't want to think about what she had done. It had been wrong. Unfitting. She was Chani of the Sayyadina, daughter of Liet, called Chani-Kynes out-sietch among the Imperials for her father and grandfather, niece to Stilgar of Seitch Tabr. She was almost fifteen and a woman of the Fremen. Death came to all, as she who had stood beside the death-still long before she knew what it was, should have known all too well. She should have reacted with dignity and self-control. Instead, she had.... And she had involved Usul, which was worse. Usul had his own grief to deal with. As a Sayyadina, she should have been helping him with his pain, not using him to salve her own.

And what had happened the night before did not - could not - bring back Liet.

A maintenance spider wandered along the underside of the stone walkway she was standing on. Its tiny searchlight spun in a constant three hundred and sixty degree circle, curving continuously over stone and water. The delicate beam created an oval of green amidst the black beneath her, and she watched it as it moved under and away. The green of the water reminded her of the green of the plants growing in the carefully nurtured gardens above the sietch. Her father had loved those gardens. It was ironic, really; the green of his beloved plants was the colour of mourning. The colour of the scarf she had worn around her arm the night before at the ceremony that inducted her into the Sayyadina. The colour of Usul's eyes.

She wasn't going to think about that!

But now she'd started, the thoughts crowded in and she could no more close them out than she could stop breathing. Usul, who had borne another name out among the stars of the Imperium, where he had been born; who had been fleeing the Harkonnen as all Fremen did at some point (although for most Fremen it was after doing something nastily destructive to some Harkonnen property); who had just lost his father to the Harkonnen monster of a Baron (As you have, too, a voice whispered in the back of her mind). Usul, whose skin was darkened in places and as pale as if he had always worn a stillsuit in others (and she blushed with the memories of what she had been doing to find that out); whose green eyes and thick black hair were exotically different from any other man's she'd ever seen, that she would remember long after the melange of the atmosphere dyed his eyes Fremen blue and his hair crumpled beneath the cap of his stillsuit. Usul, who had defeated two Harkonnen soldiers and called a maker to destroy the evidence; who had defeated Jamis in single combat; who had sensed the poison in the Water of Life.

Usul, who she had taken to her bed the night before, the first man she'd ever shared a bed with. It had been, she realised now, a mistake. And she could blame her fascination with his exotic looks and past, the tau of the ceremony the night before, or her grief, but she could not evade the fact that she should have risen above those things.

How can you be Sayyadina, much less Reverend Mother, when you cannot even control yourself? she asked herself harshly.

"There you are."

Chani jumped and gave an undignified squeak, turning to see Usul, dressed in one of Liet's in-sietch robes, patterned in crimson and green. How did he-? she thought, and then reminded herself, Of course, I took him to my room, and Liet's room is part of the apartment.

"I woke up, and you weren't there," Usul continued. "Are you all right?"

"Yes. I needed... to think."

Usul tilted his head towards her and moved closer, until they were standing side by side. "What about, Sihaya?"

She stiffened. "Where did you hear that name?" she asked, her voice cold.

Usul half-smiled and shrugged. "It just suits you, a spring in the desert. Why?"

She turned back to face the water. "Liet called me that," she said softly. "I wasn't expecting it."

"Liet." Usul's voice was thoughtful. "Your father. Was he the Liet called Kynes?"

"I am Chani-Kynes, daughter of Liet-Kynes," she said calmly, a measure of pride in her voice. "The Harkonnen called my father Kynes, as though that was all he was, and did not know the part they set aside. We knew his full name, but we preferred to call him Liet, because to us, the fact that he was Fremen was more honourable than the mask he wore to shield us from the Harkonnen." Finally she turned her face towards Usul, noting the sober expression he now wore. "I suppose I will now simply be Chani. I don't think the Harkonnen will have an Imperial Ecologist on Arrakis anymore, so I won't have to be Kynes to shield the sietches." A thought struck her and she added, "Of course, the same will happen to you. We'll call you 'Paul Mu'ad-Dib' for a while, but as we forget that you weren't born Fremen, and you become one of us, we'll come to call you 'Mu'ad-Dib'. We'll remember that your name is Paul Mu'ad-Dib, but we'll call you by your honourable Fremen name rather than your Imperial one."

He watched the water for a while. "Liet... shielded me. Without him, I would never have made it to find your troupe."

"Liet was impressed by your father," she offered quietly. "He mentioned that he thought we might be able to reveal the plan of the Fremen to him. He thought that your father might have been able to be considered an ally. Liet spoke of you to Stilgar, as well."

Usul looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Did they speak often?"

"Before her death, Stilgar's sister was Liet's woman. Stilgar and Liet took oathbrotherhood in their youth. Yes, they spoke frequently."

"You must miss him."

She closed her eyes. "Yes," she admitted, her voice a thin thread of ache and grief. "But - you miss your father too. We are neither of us alone."

Usul looked at her, his foreign eyes boring into hers. After a long pause he said, "Which is why you're down here by yourself."

"That's different," she protested, ignoring the little voice inside her head saying, No it isn't.

He just looked at her.

"You have a lot more to handle than I do," she offered lamely. "I still have Stilgar, and the Sayyadina. You... your entire life has changed."

"Not that much," Usul replied quietly. "My father is gone... but for the rest?" He shrugged. "By coming to Arrakis I had already left most of my past behind. And I knew my father was going to die - I'd been told, and I could see the trap for myself. I had time to adjust to the idea. Your father was healthy and in a place of safety - you have had the greater shock."

She shrugged. "I am Sayyadina. We are the support of the tribe. It is right that I should support you." She flicked her eyes away from his face. "Not the other way around."

"And I am Usul. The base, and support, of the pillar, that supports. I do not think that you're entirely correct."

Chani sniffed. "I'm not getting into wordplay with you."

Usul grinned, a wicked slash of humour that said I win without the words. She glared and he pretended to flinch. She shook her head, and remembered the scarf around her neck. Reaching up, she untied the knot and held the length of cloth out to him wordlessly.

Taking it, he looked at her, his expression confused.

"It's time you learnt how to tie your water-rings into your kerchief properly," she said briskly. "I cannot carry them forever! Now, see how I've twisted-"

"Why not?"

Chani looked up from where she was pointing to the scarf. "Why not what?"

Usul narrowed his eyes at her. "Why can't you carry my water-rings forever? I want you to."

"To offer a woman your water-rings, Usul, is to offer a permanent relationship," she replied, ignoring the way her heart had just lurched in her chest. "If she accepts, she accepts you. She is your woman, you are her man, and there is no going back."

"I know. Sihaya, will you wear my water-rings?"

She blinked, swallowed, and swallowed again. "Are you sure?"

Usul nodded, his expression serious. Without a word, she fumbled in the pocket of her in-sietch robe, pulling out a soft brown cord. She quickly untied the rings from the scarf, threading them onto the cord. Holding up the makeshift necklace, she pressed the ends into his hands. "Would you please... put this on me?" she asked softly, pulling her hair up out of the way.

His hands shook a little as he tied the cord around her throat. She moved her hands to his wrists, keeping them on her shoulders after he'd finished. They stared into each other's eyes, noving closer....

"NO I DON'T WANNA!!"

A child of indeterminate sex came streaking past, a woman in hot pursuit. Chani and Usul stood there, blinking, watching the chase move up into the sietch's industrial section away from the reservoir.

Chani chuckled first, but both were laughing, as much for the break in tension as the inherent humour. "Come on," she said finally, grabbing Usul's hand, "I haven't had breakfast yet!"

And as she led her man up into the residential section of the sietch, she smiled for the first time all morning.

Thank you, Liet.

Author's notes:
    I've always liked Chani, even if she's little more than a cardboard cutout in Dune and a plot device in Dune Messiah. Her situation makes her sympathetic to me: she is not all-powerful or all-knowing, and while she has influential relatives, her chosen career (as a priestess) is one she'll have to work for. And then The Hero arrives. Of course she falls for him (as teenagers do), he falls for her (which is pure wish-fulfilment), and then they have to make it work.
    I admit I've created her relationship with her father out of whole cloth, but I can't see why a woman as strong-willed and faithful as Chani was later shown to be would jump into bed with a man (even her Destined One True Love) less than two days after meeting him, if she wasn't reacting to some pretty powerful emotions - and it was less than three hours between her hearing of her father's death and her taking Paul to bed. So I'm assuming Liet was an affectionate father, and she was as much seeking comfort over Liet's death as she was attracted to Paul.