When his eyes opened, the world was different.

Everything had changed in his past days, weeks, when his choice had been made. The star had left the world he had broken so long ago, it was a memory that touched his mind and left him wondering if he’d even truly been there. If not for the burning guilt and terror that resided inside his mind, he’d believe it had been a dream and nothing more.

It was not, and he had caused such destruction upon his arrival. Had it truly been him, had he caused the tearing of the earth with the alien material, when his rock had slammed with such a violence, or was it simply an accident, the lining up of the path of his comet and the planet with no protection? Answers he’d never find, questions that would never be asked.

Cor Arrakis, so named for the star that it had been believe he had come from, woke.

The sunlight spilled across him, sand sending glittering light across him, as his head lifts.

Upon the beach he found himself, as the world around him came into focus. He remembered everything being lost from him, sliding down and what he had been porting upon his back had be torn from his side and fell away, gone, gone, gone.

So he had wandered until fatigue overrode him, and here he had rested. He did not know how long, but as he woke he drank in this strange new world. Every little detail, every piece around him.

Perhaps there was more here, beyond this beach. The soft, soothing sound of the waves finally broke into his reverie, and Arrakis slowly stood and closed his eyes as he welcomed the sunlight, thankful for another day he lived.

The alien, arrival upon the back of a comet, always glad to see the renewing of the day.

His eyes open and Arrakis watches the horizon and the swell of the ocean… unsure of where to go, or what path to take from here.

A year ago Antiope had stepped off a boat and onto the docks of Denocte like a goddess in new skin. Or like a new goddess, just birthed from the wind and the fire and the storm. Her eyes were the water, her body the earth and the clouds in the sky. Now, she walks the shore of the place she has called home for the time since then like she has known it all of her life.

She remembers stepping off the boat and onto the dock in silence, and how the other passengers had parted around her like a stream around a rock. She remembers how they had looked at her and her weapon distrustfully. The had only feared her because that is her purpose: to instill fear in others. To kill.

That is how she was made, to be a predator.

But now she is a Regent, a leader, a guardian. She does not wield her axe for battle but for light, or heat. She has used it to guide, not to harm. But there is still a lioness in her bones, rumbling, hunting, hungry.

Sometimes, she wonders if they should fear the lioness in her bones. Sometimes, she wonders if she should fear the thing the gods have made her to be, no matter how hard she tries not to be it.

There is a whole sea between her, vast and deep and dark, and the empty temple of dead gods she has left behind. There is a world between her and the truths and the memories, but Antiope has learned to let them rest in the places inside her where they fell all that time ago. She still has so much to learn, still.

The docks are bustling and loud behind her, but in the distance Antiope sees the distinct shape of an equine upon the shore. She most toward them, lithe and graceful and powerful, and the light fall across her like a second skin. “Hello,” she says, and upon coming to their side she can see that it is a man; one that she does not recognize.

For a time after he had woken, the body carved for this mortal coil and made in such a way that felt strange at first, all he had been was feared. They had seen him walk from the crater, the pit, and none had been able to look upon him without knowing who he was. Alien, killer, murderer, whose arrival had sewn death and destruction in such a way even he had been appalled.

It is these memories that plague him now in a world he did not know, that become stuck on a loop and are evident in the impassive look upon his face as his eyes turned to the stranger, who walked in unique skin and poised steps that matched her graceful appearance – and she was coloured, unlike none he had seen. All those where he had been different to her and he, made of blacks and whites and greys and so the colours she was garbed in was a sight in itself for the star.

She speaks, a single word and he feels it echo through his body. There was no fear nor recognition of who he was in her, and Arrakis seized that moment when he knew this was truly what he had been to those before – an alien world.

“Hello,” he echoes in a soft voice, the word strange to him. “Where am I?” he then inquires, after hesitating for a moment. Perhaps she knew – she looked confident and strong and maybe she knew.

He hoped she knew.

He speaks like he is not quite sure what the word means, and Antiope who is used to being something other and not quite from this world, or the next, or any other, gets a feeling from this man like he is the same as her. Different, but similar.

She steps a little closer, and admires the way he looks like he was formed from nebulas. The colors swirl and spread across his skin, where the rest of him is grey as a night of rain amid Denocte’s streets. The sun takes to him eagerly, turning every curve and sharp cut into a canvas on which it dances across. The Regent has never seen anyone quite like him.

“You are in Novus,” Antiope says to his inquiry, sapphire eyes as bright as the sea stretching out beside them, and as deep, too. “More specifically in one of her courts, Denocte. The Night Court.” She says it because it suits him, uncannily so. How has someone, who looks as though they have stepped down from the skies above, landed on their shores? There is no remains of a boat, no indication of how he arrived.

Her curiosity dances with gossamer suspicion. “I am Antiope,” she speaks, finally, her name. The gods called me Antiope. Some days, it still feels like yesterday and not a year. Not many years. She wonders when she will stop counting them.