Jane stumbles into a tavern, bleary-eyed and shaky from lack of sleep and food. She makes her way across the room to the corner where a lone stranger sits and collapses into a chair. Her plain dress hangs limply on her thin, starved frame. She orders nothing because she has nothing. 

“Where are you from?” The man next to her asks in a foreign accent she has never heard before. 

“Far away, yes, I come from far away,” Jane responds, looking up at the man, who on further inspection is really only a boy of fifteen or sixteen years with the airs of a man of certain significance. The boy stifles a smile on hearing her answer, he, a Duke, who has traveled across the stars, across limitless time, sitting here in a dingy tavern listening to this determined young woman who thinks she comes from far away, she who is so educated, yet so ignorant. 

“And where do you hail from?” Jane inquiries.

“I guess you could say I too come from far away,” the duke answers with a low chuckle. Jane observes this curious boy intently. He talks in a strange accent, wears strange clothes, moves with strange, smooth movements, has strange blue-tinted eyes, and an unnerving, placid, yet all-knowing expression. She concludes that overall he is a strange character. 

Wishing to know more she asks, “Your name?” 

“Atreides. Call me Atreides,” he says proudly as though his name holds some importance. 

“I’m…” Jane pauses, for she has forgotten that she is done with her old life entirely and must go by an alias. “Elliot, my name is Jane Elliot,” she finishes. Atreides shifts slightly in his chair, just enough that Jane catches the glint of a hidden dagger by his hips. She freezes. He follows the line of her gaze and laughs, stroking its shining blade. 

“Don’t worry, it's not for you,” he says with an odd almost animal-like, menacing air that makes Jane shrink from him. It’s now clear that whoever this man is, he is dangerous and extremely capable. 

“Paul,” a female voice says. The duke looks up across the room where a girl about his age dressed in the same strange clothes as he is with the same strange blue eyes is poised gracefully by the door. 

“Sihaya,” he says gently and the hard lines of his face begin to melt. 

“We must go. The Harkonnens approach,” the girl says. 

Atreides nods, “Of course, I only require a moment more.” The girl’s blue eyes lock with Atreides for a second longer in a silent, intimate conversation before she disappears into the darkness of night. 

The boy turns to Jane, who has been watching this interaction with the utmost attention and says “It seems we must be cutting our acquaintance short. A shame. ‘Till we meet again.” He walks stealthily to the door before looking over his shoulder once more and says “Oh I almost forgot, the place of help and care you seek is in that direction.” He points to the left path in a fork in the road ahead. Then, in a few fluid movements, he is gone.