Instinctively jerking back and away to keep from stepping right into him, she frowned as a rather pleased and sardonic grin graced his lips for a moment. "I would have thought you had seen me coming. After all, your family is more adapt in the sands than mine. Oh, that's right… your family apparently is on the downward slope of The Golden Path." He didn't put hardly any emotion into his voice but she knew from the look in his sapphire gaze that he was making fun of her, and to say that it rubbed her the wrong way was an understatement.

She looked over his shoulder to see that Ghanima was still on the hill with what she now knew had to be Farad'n.

"And what are you," she mockingly bowed, "Great Duke Atrates doing out here so late at night?" Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She knew she was playing directly into his hand  and he knew it, but she also knew that the moment earlier when he had slipped past her temporarily fractured shields to look into her mind would be the absolute last time he got in without permission.

If he was insulted by her words, he did not reveal it. She was beginning to see that he revealed mostly nothing about anything that might be going on inside that head of his. And she couldn't help but swing back and forth between approval and frustration over that simple little fact.

"I am protecting the royal family from a potential threat. I'm also here to ask you a question." He stepped past her and pointedly started walking away from the intriguing cliff. Obviously expecting her to follow and reluctantly she did, but only after one last lingering look towards that direction. She would have to find out later what if was about that spot that was calling so intimately… She had a feeling she wouldn't be resting easy until she did.

"Ask away, Duke," she encouraged with a slight humorous twist to her lips as she pulled abreast of him. Knowing that he wasn't a duke at all. He'd given up that life to be a desert creature. She could try and as defensive and sarcastic as she liked, but she knew nothing would ever let her forget that. Despite his distrust and obvious disinterest, to her, he was beautiful and dangerous. Compelling and attractive in the same way that the desert around her was, times a thousand. Even if it was an attraction that he had already made clear he would not participate in, even after the almost callous way she was pushed aside, she couldn't help the way something deep within her clenched tightly. Aching to be a part of him.

The wind picked up around them as they walked, leaving the cliff behind nothing more than a distant memory, and it caught up within his hair. Blowing it almost teasingly into his face. She clenched her hands into fists tightly, nails digging into her palms, in order to resist the urge to move it back out of his eyes for him the way a lover would.

She knew he would not appreciate the gesture.

"I found a ship deep within the desert that had crashed. Was it yours?" When she nodded in affirmation he went on. Carefully watching her for any telltale emotions. "Why did it crash?"

Shandre'la stopped for a moment and looked up at him, emerald eyes meeting sapphire ones unflinchingly, before walking again.

"Do you believe in fate?" Her change of topic did not slip past him. She didn't let him answer her unsuspected question. "My people believe in fate. The fate of my people rests upon my shoulders, but there are some who would see my people die before our mission is complete." She led them into the open desert before she started talking again.

"Stomp."

He blinked. Looking at her quizzically. When all Shandre'la did was look back at him expectantly if albeit blandly, he reluctantly did what she had told him to. Keeping an eye on her the entire time as if he didn't quite know what to make of her.

Only as the pounding rhythm of his foot reverberated deep within the sand, she Shandre'la continue with her story. "My people, from the moment they are born, are tied to the worms. The men are tied to the Sandtrout and the women…" Shandre'la paused for a moment as she began to feel the sand beneath her feet start to rumble with more than Leto's insistent call. She smiled as she felt the rumbling become stronger.  "…To these." She finished as the air around them suddenly quivered and thrummed with the force of the magnificent creature coming to her. The ground shook as if it was held within the jaws of a massive earthquake. One in which they were at the heart of.

Then the sand a little less than a hundred feet away from them exploded violently from the inside out. Showering them with the microscopic crystals as a worm shot just its head free from the ground.  The rumblings and hisses that emitted from it a pale comparison to the sounds it could make when it felt unhappy or threatened.

It slithered its head out far enough to come almost within touching distance of them and came to a stop. Resting its massive head complacently upon the crushed sand beneath it.

"This is Septinia. The worm I am bonded to."

Shandre'la didn't even spare Leto a glance as she made her way closer to her waiting companion. If she had, she would have been more than taken aback by the way he was looking at her.

 She walked around to the side of Septinia and placed her hand on her quivering side. Feeling the surprisingly textured yet soft skin of the worm. Still very much heated from the warmth of basking in the sun. And for the first time since arriving on Arakis, Shandre'la felt a moment of almost complete tranquility.

"What I feel, she feels, and the other way around. She's never been ridden before and today someone rode her for the first time." Shandre'la's eyes wandered over to the area where a Fremen had hooked onto to pull himself up upon Septinia's back, remembering the shared pain, before turning to look over at Leto for the first time since her worm had appeared. He was as calm and cool and for the most part as unemotional as he was every time her eyes ever came to rest upon him, and it bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

A thought suddenly occurred to her.

 "I ask only one thing of you. If I am to die, I want you to cut the ties that bind her to me. One of us has to live." She turned back to look at Septinia as her hands lingered in one reluctant long stroke before falling away completely as her worm effortlessly receded back into the sands. Swallowed up by the heart of Dune welcoming its child back within its embrace.

"What do you mean, cut the ties that bind you to her? How would I do that?" He watched as the worm's recently created tracks and the indentation of her head were smoothed away by the desert winds. Erasing any proof that such an incredible creature had just been there. Making the moment that Shandre'la had spent with her feel almost like a dream. She smiled faintly, finally turning her gaze towards Leto, whose eyes had drifted to the dune-swept horizon, and had yet to turn back to look at her. She wondered for a moment what it was he was looking at, and then pushed that thought away. Whatever it was, she knew that expression well enough to know it was not being seen with his physical eyes.

"You take my head."

Leto's head snapped in her direction. Deep sapphire eyes reflecting the brilliant stars unblinkingly above their heads like a mirror till they looked as if they were drowning with the universe suddenly buried deep within them, and again she felt a strange sense of vertigo for the second time that night at the almost frighteningly beautiful sight. His focus had become completely centered on her with those unexpected words falling from her lips.

Finally she had his undivided attention.  

~*~