i have so much i should i be writing (personally, academically) but after the new dune: part 3 trailer dropped i am instead gnawing on alia atreides being a daughter of the reaper emperor, returning to the idea i mentioned a while back about her being honed and shaped, made healthy and violent by khorne.
alia tearing herself apart until the reaper emperor comes for her, she who is like her in all things (witty, cruel, violent, hungry). chosen when jessica drank the water of life, the little sandworm calling upon its almighty aunt to take the child away from the atreides matriarch as it was drained to make the dose. (o extinction, they are making me feed a human! please, i do not want my water to be given to a human! i am for you! take her child, o extinction, turn her into a daughter that will eat her! in your name! iä! iä!) because all water of life is for the reaper emperor, it is the thing shai-hulud has made for her since she was an infant, drank since she was an infant; passing over the fremen to make the first daughter of the atreides, the abomination of the atreides, hers.
alia whose body first becoming like the offspring in romulus, her human body contorting as the truth of what she is, the reaper emperor's genetics pushing and devouring her insides, turning her organs into writhing indigo masses. alia who is alien to jessica, alien to paul, alien to humanity, her difference making her divine and horrific. she is so hungry, she eats and she eats and it is not enough. alia who is found by the neomorph, the most violent of all the daughters, the most hostile of all the princesses. the neomorph sees her as her mother's gift to her, to finally be bonded to a sister just like her, vicious and beautiful.
alia, whose body matures into that of a pale white xenomorph’s, no longer entirely human. alia, crawls her way through the oceanview motel to enter the ziggurat, to sit at the feet of entity that is god and mother and extinction. alia, who screams as she cries into the reaper emperor's robes, spice-laced blood and tears and saliva leaking over thread spun from black holes and carcosa's nuclear suns. she is kissed by the neomorph first, the violent princess pressing her mouth against the hot blood and tears. and then the hand upon her head, the hand of extinction, cold and sharp as it cradles her head that swarms, fine brown strands almost dull against alien pale skin and adorned fingers and nails that have peeled back the flesh of multitudes of stars.
and it is the first time alia feels safe and loved.
(shai-hulud allows its sibling to keep alia, so long as it had its granddaughter, so long as chani is safe from the coming harvest, the coming end of the atreides. the great family has irulan, she who will be protege to lilith, archivist and historian and information broker. it is only right that extinction should have the only atreides daughter.)
alia, who is full of love and rage, is given to khorne to be shaped and mentored. taught in thing incomprehensible to the bene gesserit. blood for the blood throne. blood for annihilation. blood for your mother, your only mother, the who saw you when jessica could not and did not. alia is carried in the arms of those favored of the blood god, given lessons in wrath, courage, and violence, as huge swaths of life are extinguished. alia is a prince of rage, a prince of blood, full of violence, an appetite for violence, screaming, consuming, a stomach filled with slaughter and spice. khorne's hand twists and mutilates the harkonnen genetics within her, keeps the hunger within her, pulls out the ectoplasm of her grandfather's corpus that not even nurgle wants to touch. khorne is a crucible, fire hollows her out, blood fills her back up, xenomoprh girl draped in white, the cobalt blue replaced with tar black and red, like all daughters of extinction.
and when alia comes back, she sees the face of her mother for the frist time, sees the holy red scarification carved into her angular face, sees the vantablack of her hair, sees her eyes of celestial death, sees the blue spice that lines the inside of her black mouth, her sharp black teeth. alia is minuscule compared to the reaper emperor's immensity, she is sacred dust, an atom at the feet of a colossus, a supermassive black hole. still, she is welcomed to stand beside her, a great arm extending itself to cover her in the darkness of her robe, the inside sewn with glyphs from when the crawling chaos was nephren-ka. alia feels great tentacles move behind her, pulling her closer. the darkness does not smother her, it is a comforting shroud that quiets her mind. the neomorph is there, it kisses her, and whispers her name.
alia has no brother. alia only has sisters.
there is no jessica, no reverend mother. there is only mother who is god who is the end of all things.
