MERCURIAL ( paul atreides.. )

000. Prologue..

There is wisdom riddled in a child's laughter. 

A sound as loud as the tallest waterfalls of Caladan was also suave and reassuring, not over the mundane concerns of adults for the smaller forms of life, something embedded into the nature of life itself to the point that it was a rule daring hostility and disobedience, rather than a yet to be proven fact. It was a reassurance that life was a miracle that endured, no matter the place, the times, no matter the moody weathers of planets and politicians; children will be children.

It was perhaps how greater minds explained why a child's presence in a room full of adults turns more heads than the oldest being breathing the same air as them. Like flowers which look up to the warmth-giving stars, those fireballs of the celestial realms which hurl gravity and make life possible, we too stare at our future, wiggling their legs, growing between blinks, absorbing knowledge amongst the games and charades, the plays and the tricks.

Underneath the rumbled grayness of clouds, blanket of impeccable chaos over Caladan's orchard escape belonging to House Atreides, they were toying with some tumbled stones, playing a little game of towers, piles and precision. 

"Tell me how we play," the boy looked up as excited as if he was about to see the sky exploding in a fountain of colors for the first time again. Instead, his hope was centered on a girl's face, where he sought wonders and always found them. She was not from around there; meaning that, at the end of the day, she was not even born on the same planet he's been raised and rooted on for as long as he could remember, which wasn't even as far back as her. But they were the same age and each day she had spent there was a confirmation that she belonged in his home just as much as him, while every moment they spent lightyears apart was consolidation of the same thought, through the lenses of missing these new old things she brought with herself as gifts.

They were new to Paul. But to the whole world and the infinite depth of history hidden in time, "Little Stone" was just another memory from a past radiated and brushed into dust still haunting the Known Universe.

They've just finished placing the final big stone in tower she instructed him to help her build and Mercury couldn't help but lean back and take in the good work they've made with only the beginning of their game. It had been just the prelude all their running around in the orchard, lifting twigs and searching under leaves for stones, getting their hands muddy from the moist ground and their clothes unrecognizable as that of nobles anymore. 

Children didn't care about nobility. Why would they ever think of a surreal concept as silly as a rank of power when there were physical towers to build and quests to complete at hand? 

Both Paul and Mercury were twelve years old -they were the same age save for a couple of months, days, hours, minutes and seconds; somewhere in their childishness, the differences got blurred to the over simplification that Paul had once been born during sunrise, while Mercury came into this world riding the sunset backwards- and neck deep in knowing too much about their names, their houses and their legacies to afford thinking ranks were unimportant; but for these moments, for over ten years now, they smiled to each other and let the duties fade behind a curtain of innocence, curiosity and patience. 

Mercury handed Paul one of the two small stones they've collected, keeping the second for herself. She finally stood up from the ground and, with eyes wide and attentive to follow her every move, Paul followed, ruled by curiosity; it wasn't curiosity alone. Something ancient laid dormant in his chest and fired his lungs with the information which his brain translated as perhaps a roaring admiration. There was no better word he had learnt yet to describe what he felt for the girl who always seemed to know a grain more than everyone, even his mother; and Paul, even more so than any child, was convinced his mother knew everything.