The Academy: I'll drag you into evolution;

“They tried and failed, all of them?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “They tried and died.”

If he feels her touch, he does not show, neither reciprocates.

If he feels anything at all, he does not show – deep in a trance, deep in the bowels of the Academy, standing as a sentry in the dark, tall for his age but average by any other standard; his eyes are dark, but he never once looks at her or acknowledges this sister that burns and burns and then, extinguishes in his own touch, her flame blazing against his and then, dying.

Not a flicker of ear, not a tremble of muscle; even his breath is subdued in his lungs, a wavering motion barely perceptible.

“Sister,” he calls, his voice as dead and still as a mausoleum, locked forever. He is not a sociable one, neither is he personable. If he feels the pull of blood, there will be no one to bear witness to it but the stillness and silence of his own mind.

They could not be more different, these children of Brishen: Sisuei, all languid, beautiful motion, in sharp relief against the serious, nondescript sand child whose fire translates into pure invisible heat, an aura trembling beyond perception – no flame, no brightness, not for him.

But he knows, because his seer-father knows, because he has seen the truth and accepted him.

“Leto,” he says in that non-voice of his, and all is silent.

leto
of sandworms and fire;