#if you havent watched the Dune movies yet do yourself a favour and DO IT

[darethshirl]

time comes round again (it's etching at your bones)

In honour of me watching Dune 2 last night (which was AMAZING) I'm reposting my paul/chani fic I wrote in a breathless flurry three years(!) ago. Honestly I'm still super fond and proud of this, how did my past self write this?? 😂 can i have some of that inspiration back please lmao

anyway! here's a snippet:

The desert spreads under his gaze, as vast and impersonal as the deepest ocean. It’s sunset time, when the sky gets painted in a myriad soft hues of pink, purple and orange, when creation itself winds down for peaceful sleep. But not so on Arrakis: there are no clouds here to soften the sun’s rays, no relief to be had when the true day‘s work is just starting. The sky bleeds a bright, fierce crimson, the sun a wound that slowly seeps between the sandy hills. Paul stands alone, during this sunset-turned-sunrise, and watches. The wind hisses its susurrus as it dances over the dunes, threads rough caressing fingers through Paul’s hair. It’s an irritant so insignificant it doesn’t even bear noticing. He continues as is, a silent, enduring pillar, his mind going over and over the same infinite loops. Computing the branching paths of his inevitable future, the indelible grooves left by his past. My father is dead, he thinks, pensive, too distant by far. And I cannot mourn. The emptiness where his soul should be yawns wide, an arctic wind scouring his insides. He is remote, a mote of dust aware of the nonsensical, random dance of the sandstorm around him. What does one single existence matter? How can he bring himself to care? He thumbs the heavy ring on his finger with all the unconscious casualness of newly formed, everlasting habit. The black obsidian is an ice-cold weight against his skin. Suddenly, emotion overtakes him with all the abruptness of a thunder strike. But it’s the wrong kind of feeling, not grief but anger, potent and heady. It fills him up with proudful fury, the same impulse that makes him toss his head and snarl at each injustice witnessed. How dare you, he thinks, flings the thought at everyone and no one, an injunction against the entire uncaring universe. How dare you. In this moment, he hates them all. The Emperor, for his craven politics; the Harkonnens, for their brutality; the Bene Gesserit crone, for her smug eyes and her twice as cruel test. His mother, for giving birth to him, shaping him into who he is; his father, for loving him, for stepping into this trap open-eyed and not being strong enough to survive it.

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