fh_trips | Arrakis - Sietch Tabr - Wednesday Morning & Afternoon

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field trip 2009: arrakis

Arrakis - Sietch Tabr - Wednesday Morning & Afternoon

It was around dawn when the scent of food began wafting up from the kitchens. Fresh baked bread, coffee, and the lilting tones of Fremen chattering in a mixture of Galach and Chakobsa as they went about their lives.

If they were a bit more outgoing and less-wary of the visitors than they had been the day before, well, going out into the desert to meet with Shai-Hulud had shown a certain daring and respect, and those were two traits that the Fremen held very dear.

The portal would arrive to pick them all up around three, but until then, the visitors from Fandom had the run of Tabr.

Although it still didn't make you safe from the Aunties.

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"You give me too much credit," he said, ignoring the tips of his ears. "Not that I mind so much."

She shook her head and looked over at him.

"I can't give you too much credit to tell you I enjoy something. It's just the truth."

"Says you," he replied. "But I fear you will be disappointed at some point."

"Haven't been so far," she pointed out.

...all right, the thing she'd heard about with Brooke, that hadn't exactly impressed her, but that was then. This was now. This was now with Griff-who-liked-her.

"Then the pressure is on," he teased. "Have you spent time with any of the locals?"

She shook her head.

"No. I don't... really like crowds."

"Oh, I thought you were quite...close to one of the organizers. What are they calling him? Gavin?"

Fiona blinked.

"Do you mean Leto?" she asked with a slight frown.

"Yes, he's my friend. And I suppose he's local. But he's-- I don't think of him-- I guess, then. Just him, though."

"You don't think of just him, what?" Griff didn't understand how the words she'd said fit together into something coherent.

They didn't.

"I don't think of him as local to here. Know it's home for him and all, but he's... one of us. From school. It's different."

"Oh." That made more sense, even if Griff was still curious about whether he and this smiling Leto fellow were both friends with Fiona in the same manner. And if he'd promised Dinah he'd ask, well, that had been it.

"I don't suppose he offered any extra insight into the way of this world then."

She nodded.

"He's told me a few things about it. And his step-mother has said a bit more. Helped me learn, but I can't say I understand it all."

"It's difficult to piece together not knowing any of them nor taken any of the professors courses, assuming she infused her culture into studies," he replied. "But I'm working with what I've got."

"It seems very... survivalist. Practical."

She didn't comment on the spiritual aspects. She was just about the last person who'd ever deal with it considering her complete lack of understanding in that area.

"Primitive in intentions, refined in practice."

"Given this community is surrounded by that desert, I think your assessment's likely the right one," he agreed. "I half expect to find people praying at this reservoir of water five times daily."

That made her raise an eyebrow.

"Why five?"

"It'd have to be either five or three, right?" Griff answered. "Those are the typical religious numbers. I just like five more."

Huh?

"Religions have numbers?"

"That they do," he grinned, reaching up to pat her hand. "I think the internet could help you more than my broken piecemeal knowledge could. But there are a lot of symbolic things broken into threes and fives with or without religion."

She shook her head to that, though.

"No, what you know would be more helpful. Would give me context. I've read some books on mythology, for both sides. But I don't really know how people think of it. What it means. How religion works."

Griff made a face, "I don't know if my views are very solid for you in that respect, not being much for attending church, but I can try. Five is actually sort of fun, since there are the five elements, the five sides to the pentagram, five fingers and toes!" That he waggled up in front of her. "Muslims pray five times a day, the five directions...all that."

"Five kingdoms of organic life, five gears for most automobiles with manual transmissions, speech generally falls into iambic pentameter, and people have five senses," she continued with a smile.

"Is that how religion works? People pick up on common patterns and just sort of... assign meanings?"

"See, you know more about this than you think," he told her, wagging a finger in her direction with a smile. "That's basically how I understand it in minus the unfortunate part where it seems a bunch of people with similar ideas of things that are wrong get together to persecute people who don't agree."

She frowned, a little confused. Her books had had things crossed out, pages removed, all manner of things. Many of those crossouts had involved religion.

She'd just thought people were jerks most of the time.

"How does that work?"

"For a really extreme example, say you and I agreed that carrots were disgusting and we never ever wanted to eat them." Griff, of course, quite liked carrots.

"We could start our own anti-carrot religion and then anyone who liked carrots, well, they could try to join but we'd constantly tell them they were wrong and something terrible would happen to them later for liking carrots. We might even start a war with people who claimed that beets were far worse than carrots, which of course, couldn't possibly be since we didn't like them. So, um, complicated?"

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