Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.

You will never be lovelier than you are now.

We will never be here again.

― HOMER

〖 °❈° 〗

 𝐀 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 lived within Irina Naberrie's passion-burnt heart.

Her soul is born of soaring bliss and feathered sin, scarlet tendrils and golden infatuation. The center of her own idyllic portrait, light is hers. Cascading down in waterfall rays, rotten through the core. Held in the tortured fingertips of a planet half-dead, this sunshine is eternal - a blessing that never battles with the night.

But among the aristocrats of Naboo, daughters are raised as ancient creatures - sheets of glass, sharp and reflective, fragile and pure. Never supposed to know the warmth of rosy dawn and ripened day. Her first lesson: if given the choice to speak or to die, she must die every time, for her family has raised a queen and they must not feel the shame of the crownless.

Fate forgives, however, humming upon molten skin, ever-soft, ever-graceless as it embraces her hollow bones gently (destiny itself is envious of how entirely Irina is alive, every piece of her winged and defiantly alight). It is difficult for others not to fear such a statue of embers, trapped and radiant, blinding and incandescent; full of a joy so raw it wants to ravage the galaxy, to erupt into flame and revel in the smoke. Yet, besides a dashing stroke of unsubtle bravery, there is nothing within her to dread. She has never left the vulnerable arms of youth.

Distracted and ignorant, no soldier's reflexes line muscular memory, soft-throated skin shines open to spears of words and metal alike. Emotion is infantile in the way it fills her eyes with raptured, honeyed stardust, consuming her whole as if each stream of sanguinary joy or flood of fanged tragedy is being felt for the very first time. In such guileless naivety, Irina was no bride - a veil had never covered truth from her face, lies did not think to touch her lips.

Yet her sister had been the one bathed in reverence, possessing the rare silver tongue of both a poet and a savior, pretty words and ringing truth. Politics were sickness to Irina; a blazing girl addicted to beauty's edge could find no catharsis in the cruel-rot infection of comically defenseless lungs. There was no jubilation the web of twisted shadows which blotted out stars with the ink of a thousand treaties forged in deceit.

In her soul, Padmé was a city of strained diamond and silken youth molded in faith - she could stand to break a little more, to fight the weight of a sea for a little while longer without being pulled under. Irina already danced at the brink of hedonistic ruin, impossibly ambiguous, a leonine creation of discarded piety.

The opposite of sacred.

One sister had always seen the fissures of the world and the other had become her own little destruction, a crack in the credence bridled society held so dear, an outcast with a sparrow on one shoulder and a raven on the other. A single wound more and she would dissolve into a graveyard of detritus and bone. There was nothing to hold her afloat, for lineage cannot grant honor to all of its tributes.

A second lesson: in the tissued space between such polarity, there are secrets which cannot be shared.

Time and loyalty cannot be shared either. Within the grasp of vicious hierarchy, only one with full-hearted faith in blinding light or gruesome dark could ever truly rise. But for Irina, there was no point in loving what would never last.

So why live in a palace of carefully negotiated falsehoods and petty, half-moral comforts when the world was bright and bold and beautiful?

Naboo had flourished despite the shrouded daggers in its royal halls, as enriched and pristine as a softly-faceted jewel. Artistic revolution breathed upon its surface, a paradise of nature blossoming with hordes of petal-breathed dreamers. In her wanderer's utopia, Irina loved nothing more than swimming in crystal-mirrored lakes, tearing through fields gripped by the thrill of half-insanity, embracing the role of a heretic. She meandered through the galleries and studios which seem to sprout day by day, artists like bees in their hive of clay-caked hands, sepia-toned manuscripts, and brushes bleeding vivid hues into water.

Pomegranate juice would drip from her fingers, red as blood, beatifically sweet.

Home was hers, ripe, warm, thawing. A city of molded canvas-stone drenched in the pigmented song of philosophers and visionaries, Theed was a beating heart with its own phoenix-flame. Though carved veins of marble and ivy trembled as war draped it's sinewy curtain overhead, there was escape in rebirth, full of those who don't look up because they fear what they will find, caught in an endless, spice-hazed dream.

But when love fills the firebird's vivid breast, draping her in a sculptor's gentle hands, there will be no turning back. Bay leaves still tangled in her hair and the ardor of a newborn generation in her soul, Irina's summer will wane. But she is too late, for the galaxy is a cruel place, with far more to fear than dishonor and rivalry. Upon her awakening, terrible beauty will greet a heart still warm with slumber - a sky of purest ebony stretched above the wretched and divine. Haunting. Unforgiving. A charcoal abyss painted with ash and bone.

Empty of stars. 

〖 °❈° 〗

carrey mulligan as

IRINA NABERRIE

-ˋˏ the heretic ˎˊ

❛ there is the heat of Love,

the pulsing rush of Longing,

the lover's whisper, irresistible

― magic to make

the sanest man go mad ❜

HOMER, book 14 of The Iliad 

kylie bunbury as

ARAFEL

 -ˋˏ the sculptorˎˊ

❛let my loving song

come to a close;

the vein of my accustomed

art is dry, and this,

my lyre, turned at last to tears❜

PETRARCH, Sonnet 292

ALL OTHER CHARCTERS AS DESCRIBED

〖 °❈° 〗

𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑:

Arafel, Irina, other original characters and the original plot surrounding them belong to me, as do specific developments of planetary culture and events that deviate from canon.

Places, characters, and events derived from existing Star Wars media belong to their respective owners/creators.

Thoughts and actions of characters do not represent my own beliefs.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆:

This story will contain canon-typical themes of mentioned violence, warfare, mild language, and trauma.

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄:

Faceclaims are for graphics purposes - they are not perfect representations of either character, so please feel free to imagine them as you wish.

〖 °❈° 〗

𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐄:

hello hello hello !!!

this fic is basically the product of my love of Italian Renaissance/humanistic culture (hence the quotes I've used in this intro) - which I've melded into the environment of clone wars era Naboo, and am VERY excited about.

I'll also be using some influences from the planet Caladan in Frank Herbert's Dune, to emphasize the nerdiness of course (Irina herself is slightly based off multiple female characters in the Dune series, including Ghanima Atreides)

if you like exact canon, this may not be the right place... expect short, sporadic updates, and very free-form writing - it's mostly an effort for me to actually write without feeling stressed to do research or edit thousands upon thousands of words ;)

also, 'Apricus' itself means sunny or having sunshine! for once I kind of want to write about characters who are vaguely happy... 

thanks for giving this hot mess a chance <33

Love, Jynni