MERCURIAL ( paul atreides.. )

013. The Last Song You'll Ever Hear..

It is said that when we die, our senses begin to shut off much like a machine's. After the heart ceases to beat, there's approximately three minutes left before hearing, our last conscious sense, detaches completely and dissipates with the departure of the soul. Three minutes in which the dead hear the wails and the sorrow their death leaves behind.

Sound had all but faded for Mercury Yaranes and her weary head, bowed on the pillow of Paul's lap and finally resting, away from the aches of a body carrying the tensions of continuous travel and perilous flights. The Coriolis storm was far away and her own clouded mind had been tamed to nimbostratus formations, without rumbles and lightning strikes of fear, much like the skies on Ehya, a planet she tucked to her heart, like that pin hidden on her suit and costing her a drop of water every now and then. A small price to pay for the bittersweet taste of melancholy, a sort of evocation she could not ignore, especially while her head was crowned in gentle caresses; she had but a glimpse of imagination showing her Paul's bashful slowness in slipping the hood of her stillsuit off. He had released with awestruck pause the heaved locks of her hair so they may be threaded into waves by timid hands, learning how to appreciate a soft slickness. Without even realizing, Paul was quietly guiding her to one of the most comforting sleeps she's had while her mind was weaving dreams of the past for her. It was neither her ideal void of silence, nor the fantasy land in which she rippled memories to her will in a desperation she felt she will never have to feel again.

This was a true memory that Paul Atreides had resurfaced from her with only his scent of safety. One by one, as the reverse of death, senses sparked to life. It started with the white noise of all Ehyan settlements. As there were no seas or oceans on this planet, the majority of cities were build around banks of rivers, while villages peppered the land around bright lakes and tropical swamps of the forestial shadows. The running water along with the moving dark and featureless cloud of vapors that would rain on for hours on end, created of Ehya a jungle of deep meditation. That water shivered itself across the Ehyan glyphs, forming streams through temple rocks as well as the stone made streets, shrines and houses, then it delved into the hungry soil, already soft and moist, feeding out a flora that blossomed vigorously and lushly in leaves bigger than a human and trees that made up for the planet's mountain-less infinity of rolled hills. 

It was such a quiet planet, despite the countless shades of green that its few visitors have always but gasped amazed to be told that apart from the composed civilization living away into this harmonious vow of silence, Ehya had an interesting variety of fauna to prize itself with. A single question about what was in his plate had opened Paul up to the wonderous presentation that the quiet place was in fact populous and overflowing with life well beyond what Mercury had presented to him as the hum of the earth -a reason behind why walking barefooted was as encouraged on this planet as custom made thinner shoes. 

No sooner had they finished breakfast and the rays of their sun star -named by locals of Ehya, Kuxtal, life- had spread warmth and condensed humidity all across the capital city of Ehrylene, Kiran Yaranes had set his daughter and their political guest down in front of a totem no bigger than his hand and shaped, for simplicity that its engravings did not follow through with, in a smoothed column of triumph, shrunk to wisdom's laurel. 

"Ehya's gravitational force is high enough to have solidified our tectonic plates and settled the planet's surface on a landscape which is meant to endure," Kiran presented the attentive children, pointing from the very top of the totem so that his daughter could also follow the words written in the old dialect she had to study. Both her and Paul were six years old at the time when golds danced through the balcony and they heard the murmur of a planet stilled in its inner peace, turning around a star that coated it in care and riotous delight. "As a consequence to that, Ehyan people are shorter and they have resistant bone structure. The animals too obey by the same rules as those above them in the food chain, so there is no wildlife you'll meet here bigger than a child your age."