[Alia feels the urge, suddenly, to offer a sweet lie -- to fill Quentin's mind with recollections of the ocean, plucked from his own memories and made vivid with his longing. She could wrap these images around him, transport him back to the world he lost, turning the surrounds of Saltburnt into his home. She's done it for herself often enough, let hours slip away as she travels through Arrakis in her memory, hers and Jessica's and Paul's and a thousand, thousand others.
And then, a whisper, a tickle, and Alia can taste Quentin's magic in the air, like spice carried on the wind, blue as his lost sea, unknowable and familiar all at once. And she knows, she knows -- any mirage she could give him would ring hollow, the way her own fancies and fantasies crumble in her hands whenever she reaches out to them. Alia cannot fool herself, and she cannot fool one like her. They are blessed, they are cursed, they are irrevocably other. Her chest tightens, her other hand rising to mirror the first, cradle Quentin's face, and the thrum of her mind touching his turns, becomes sorrowful, apologetic -- I cannot give you what you seek. I cannot give you your home back.
But there, a warmth, a presence, a sliver of home embodied in another -- like Paul carrying the heat of Arrakis in his chest, like the sun in Alina's smile, like the fragments of warmth she has found again and again. Alia feels that as well, and her woeful expression shifts, mouth curling back into that sharp, brilliant smile.] If you cannot find it, you shall make it, Quentin. That I can see as well.
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And then, a whisper, a tickle, and Alia can taste Quentin's magic in the air, like spice carried on the wind, blue as his lost sea, unknowable and familiar all at once. And she knows, she knows -- any mirage she could give him would ring hollow, the way her own fancies and fantasies crumble in her hands whenever she reaches out to them. Alia cannot fool herself, and she cannot fool one like her. They are blessed, they are cursed, they are irrevocably other. Her chest tightens, her other hand rising to mirror the first, cradle Quentin's face, and the thrum of her mind touching his turns, becomes sorrowful, apologetic -- I cannot give you what you seek. I cannot give you your home back.
But there, a warmth, a presence, a sliver of home embodied in another -- like Paul carrying the heat of Arrakis in his chest, like the sun in Alina's smile, like the fragments of warmth she has found again and again. Alia feels that as well, and her woeful expression shifts, mouth curling back into that sharp, brilliant smile.] If you cannot find it, you shall make it, Quentin. That I can see as well.