deercountry | alive and breathing in the desert sand [open]

Entry tags:

alive and breathing in the desert sand [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: July catchall
When: July, late month
Where: The beach where she died

Content Warnings: Nothing yet, will update as it becomes necessary

a. a long and bitter haunt by the callous words of gods

What Anna has been looking for, she thinks as she watches the waves roll in on the black sand, has changed so drastically even in the past few weeks. It started with vengeance, but the sword sticking up like a monolith behind her, vileblood seeping into the ground and poisoning everything around, she hasn't had the strength to pull it up yet. She'd think it were poetic if it weren't so fucking on the nose. Pity and self-loathing had had their time in the limelight, as well, and though Anna had never sought it out, she found both of them all the same. She's searching for peace, now, she thinks, peace in solitude and answers within the raging storm that Mariana has become within her own chest. There's no guarantee she'll find it; there's no guarantee she deserves it. But she can try.

She looks over her shoulder while she's perched on a rock overlooking the ocean. One leg is bent up while the other dangles, sways idly with each thought. People come, people go. Her decisions choose who remains in her life, and god fucking damn has she been making a lot of decisions lately. Leaving that blade where it is, she thinks, is the one that will end up mattering most; she can see it out of the corner of her eye as she breaks the silence.

"Did you cross the earth to be silent among the castle walls?" she asks quietly, her voice still low and scratchy. It feels like an appropriately dramatic way to address whoever's approaching her, whether they're invited or not. (She only made a point of inviting people she was pretty sure she was still on okay terms with. But that list is shrinking by the day, and the people she thought she was the most secure with, they're refusing to even speak with her except under duress.)

This is no solution, but maybe, as the wind whips at her hair and the salt fills her nose, she can get a little closer to one.

b. drowning cast in iron at the mercy of the undertow [wildcard]

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's a lot of waves crashing around this month and wind is whipping around so Ruby misses whatever Anna happened to mumble as she approached the rock she was on. Which is why Anna gets a high pitched but still coherent yell in return.]

WHAT!?

[It's followed by a clump of wet black sand mud flying at the back of her head before Ruby starts trying to clamber up the rock.]

You had better not be planning on jumping into the ocean like the other nut jobs! I'm getting really tired of trying to pull people out of there.

[anna laughs, despite it all. the drama of everything cut through like a scarlet knife, and on the other end of it is ruby rose. it's incredible how she stays this resilient.]

I'm not going anywhere, Ruby. I've spent enough time running. [she shifts a little so she can at least be looking at ruby.] I have to live in the world that I made for myself.

they were talking death and glory for the sake of all our mournful lives.

Before all of this, though, before the wind blowing her hair and the echoing of a battle that ruined whatever tenuous alliance anyone within House Atreides seemed to have had with each other, Anna stands at dusk on the selfsame beach that, not ten days earlier, had been her open grave. Over the ocean, the sun is dying in the sky, but the sickly orange of the Reckoning's moon rises on the other side of the town, refusing to let anyone truly find peace.

She stands as a woman who is not prepared for a fight. Her clothing is still stained with blood from the ritual, hanging loose and tattered off her body. She knows in her heart, or whatever it is that she truly has, that if Paul were to order her to walk into the water and not stop, it would spell the end of her. And for the murder of Falco Grice, she would deserve it.

A few paces ahead of her, the vileblood-coated blade that she had plunged into the earth from her talons still remains like it's begging to be ripped from the ground and used. Like it longs to rip into flesh and manifest the slow, agonizing death that Anna had been cheated from. She is making no move for it yet; her first priority is greeting her opponent.

"Annalise Lehmann of House Amarande responds to House Atreides' summons," she says. It's the only thing that seems appropriate.

Paul was kneeling on the beach facing the buried blade as Anna approached, his expression obscured by the thin black scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face even in this heat. He unfolds to his feet as she comes closer, watching her impassively, without a flicker of feeling.

"Atreides recognizes Amarande," he says, flatly. In contrast to her ragged, worn demeanor, Paul looks ready for a battle. He looks ready for a war, a weapon sheathed in matte black, two knives holstered at his hips and nothing in his dark green eyes.

His anger pulses inside, beneath his icy surface. It flares at her temerity to attempt to mimic a formality she cannot possibly understand, at her dull, sad look, at her guilt draped over her like a torn banner. He wants her to be sorry for what she's done. He loathes that she dares to be, after all her fierce and bloody bluster.

"You came," he says, and not any of the rest.

"Yeah. I did," she says, falling into speech patterns that fit her better. Stolen authority never fit well on her tongue, in her mouth, but it had never really stopped her from trying in the past. She takes in the person she's going to be dueling in only a few short moments, she's sure, and recognizes that it will be over far sooner than that. He's armed in ways beyond weaponry; he's steeled himself to this. The murder of which Anna stands correctly accused had been, in charitable-if-incorrect terms, an accident, but the scion of House Atreides does not look like he has ever done this sort of thing accidentally.

"I don't know what my house is going to be known for," she continues, feeling the sand shift under her weight as her body rocks to the other foot. "But it won't be for running away." Whether she has a say in that is a legitimate fear, boiling within her own throat as she stares at Atreides'.

Only for a second, though. Then her only remaining eye looks into his instead. "I've never been challenged to a duel before," she says with the tone of someone saying they'd never played volleyball before. "How do you want to do this?"

Paul breathes out through his nose, a minute flare of his nostrils. He shifts his weight as she shifts hers, noting the displacement of sand under her feet, the smoothness of her mechanical animation. So human, until it's not.

"I suppose that's one less epithet to bear." He doesn't keep the anger at bay. He can't. There's too much of it, a towering wave whose shadow they both stand under, waiting to be shattered under its fall. He is acutely aware of the location of every weapon and sharp-edged wreckage on this beach.

"It's a duel. You draw a weapon. We try to kill each other. One of us does."

There are more elegant forms. House Atreides has never, when all is said and done, been a House of elegance over efficiency.

"Tell me why you think we're here," Paul says, low and ratcheted with tension, "Tell me what it is you think you've done, and why it was wrong. I want to know that first. I want to," he tilts his head a degree to the side, words darkly laced with undefinable emotion, "Understand."

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for atreides

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a(yyy)

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A

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cw for past abuse/smoking

A (Late Month, obviously)

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a!

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