SALTBURNT INBOX.

[babies]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
pythia

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Comments

[babies]

No? That's small-minded of you.

( not presented as an insult, but simple fact. )

Any decent instructor should know a demonstration is a perfectly suitable method for learning.

[imperatour]

[ Thankfully, Furiosa is beyond insult. Iron-clad confidence. ]

Call me small-minded then.
A wall full of watchers defeats the purpose.

[babies]

Sending inept fighters into battle against one another equally defeats the purpose.
What do you expect them to learn?

[imperatour]

[ God Jessica you sound like one of her MOTHERS. ]

I'm not drafting an army.

[babies]

( a high compliment, thank u furiosa )

Then you're wasting their time.
Those girls came to learn. Show them the path to survive.

[imperatour]

Lot of talk for someone who still learns by observing.

[babies]

( insults only land their mark when there's pride to target. jessica's tickled by it, instead, like watching a cub pounce for the first time — misunderstanding the death of her pride means so little. an easy cost to pay, to feed the impression furiosa wants to keep of her. )

I don't need to wave the banner of my experience for all to see.
Take the wisdon, or don't. It's only your pupils that will suffer for it.

[imperatour]

You are Alia's mother, aren't you?

[babies]

( is she?

alia had been no more than a nameless speck of conception in her belly, the last jessica had known. no bigger than a grain of sand, small in the face of endless desert dune. there had been no celebration of love, in that pregnancy — just the final remains of duke leto atreides, as though she had been carrying his will and testament inside of her womb. to my concubine, i leave the daughter we were meant to have. an ancestral token to remember him by, her child born from death.

unconsciously, jessica's hand slides to her stomach, sensing no stirring. whoever alia atreides is, jessica cannot call herself mother to a girl she has not yet birthed, named, raised, loved. )

I'm Paul's mother.

it's not too late to change your un to boymom

[imperatour]

Alia once told me of her mother.
A complex woman who gave her an impossible gift and tremendous power.
I would have liked to meet her.

HELP

[babies]

( a foolish girl, with so little discretion. jessica's mouth narrows into pencil-thin disapproval, to see her children so weakened by a single drop of kindness. how easy it is to poison them into freely giving up their secrets to strangers. were she my daughter, she would have a greater sense of caution, jessica does not commit to text. i would have not taught her to be so guileless. the thought that passes by as quickly as her irritation. )

I am not who she speaks of.
I've born no daughter. My second child has months to grow before she'll be ready to enter our world.