>>6100137>>6100165>>6100173hmmm, let me test this theory, the Theory Of UNIVERSAL SCI-FI FANTASY SEX FLUID IMBIBING BREASTFEEDING DEATH. I wonder if Dune (the novel) has any scenes of breastfeeding death / sex fluid drinking...???
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Jessica knelt beside Chani, holding out a plain camp ewer. The charged odor of the poison was sharp in Chani’s nostrils. She dipped a finger in the fluid, held the finger close to Paul’s nose.
The skin along the bridge of his nose wrinkled slightly. Slowly, the nostrils flared.
Jessica gasped.
Chani touched the dampened finger to Paul’s upper lip.
He drew in a long, sobbing breath.
“What is this?” Jessica demanded.
“Be still,” Chani said. “You must convert a small amount of the sacred water. Quickly!”
Without questioning, because she recognized the tone of awareness in Chani’s voice, Jessica lifted the ewer to her mouth, drew in a small sip.
Paul’s eyes flew open. He stared upward at Chani.
“It is not necessary for her to change the Water,” he said. His voice was weak, but steady.
Jessica, a sip of the fluid on her tongue, found her body rallying, converting the poison almost automatically. In the light elevation the ceremony always imparted, she sensed the life-glow from Paul—a radiation there registering on her senses.
In that instant, she knew.
“You drank the sacred water!” she blurted.
“One drop of it,” Paul said. “So small…one drop.”
(...)
Terror threatened to overwhelm her.
She fought it the only way she knew: “I shall not fear. Fear is the mind-killer….”
The litany brought a semblance of calm. The other mote lay quiescent against her.
Words won’t work, Jessica told herself.
She reduced herself to basic emotional reactions, radiated love, comfort, a warm snuggling of protection.
The terror receded.
(...)
But Jessica’s attention was focused on the revelation of the Water of Life, seeing its source: the liquid exhalation of a dying sandworm, a maker. And as she saw the killing of it in her new memory, she suppressed a gasp.
The creature was drowned!
“Mother, are you all right?”
Paul’s voice intruded on her, and Jessica struggled out of the inner awareness to stare up at him, conscious of duty to him, but resenting his presence.
(...)
“Is this all right for me to drink?” He gestured to the sack in Chani’s hands. “They want me to drink it.”
She heard the hidden meaning in his words, realized he had detected the poison in the original, unchanged substance, that he was concerned for her. It occurred to Jessica then to wonder about the limits of Paul’s prescience. His question revealed much to her.
“You may drink it,” she said.
