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Lumine is the strongest star child, and merely the latest of many.
She was born of an entire dying galaxy, her essence made up of all the remnants of hundreds of billions of stars, unlike others who were made up of only a few thousand, maybe a few million if they were lucky. She is by far the strongest and brightest of the star children, and they name her Lumine for it. Solar flares alight on her core’s surface as often as thunder in a storm, and both power and light burst from her every pore. She was their beacon, their light to chase away the darkness, their protector with far too much power swirling at her fingertips from birth, and they all knew she would only get stronger from there. She gathered her kin in a galaxy of her own making, placing her core star at the center and shielded them from the dark that threatened to consume their kind. She shone brighter every day, and more star children, young and old, flocked to her, seeking her warmth, light, and protection.
(This was her first of many mistakes.)
In the hundreds of thousands of years that it took for her galaxy of star children to form, she grew complacent, blinded by her own brightness and lulled into a false sense of security by peace, unable to see the severity of the threat until it was right on top of them.
(This was her second mistake, and the subsequent condemnation of her kind.)
Those born of energy and light with burning stars as their core were called star children, but those born of dark matter and void with black holes as their core were called abyss crawlers. They were nothing but seething masses of hunger, unable to be sated and always, always searching for something more to fill it, especially light. Some sat at the center of swirling galaxies, biding their time until all the star cores could eventually be consumed. Others wandered the universe in search of something more. All ate dead matter called planets and swallowed entire star clusters whole, so it was no wonder they would eventually converge on the most condensed galaxy in the universe, and hone in on the most powerful star core: hers.
Lumine’s kin screamed and disintegrated as their cores were consumed into the gaping maw of thousands of abyss crawler cores. Power flew from her hands in bursts as her galaxy’s inhabitants quickly winked out despite her efforts. They begged her to run, to leave those she’d protected for so long so that she may survive to see another day, because they knew they would die here. She refused to give in, fighting even as her people crumpled like ash beneath the power of an abyss crawler’s core.
(This was her third mistake, if only because the deaths of her people were permanently imprinted in her memory, and if she’d left sooner she would have missed it. She'd never know whether it’s a blessing or a curse that she didn’t.)
Lumine was young in comparison to others, still a smaller, brilliantly bright blue star but with just as much mass if not more than most, and to her kind she was still a growing child. An older woman with a neutron star core had always indulged her whims when she visited, telling her stories of the far reaches of the universe and some of their own kind. There were none younger than her, and she easily became the darling of their people.
That's what ultimately saved her in the attack.
She was smaller, faster, stronger than all of her people, but not strong enough.
Lumine watched them all fall as she ran, and ran further, pulling her core farther even as she felt the galaxy she'd worked so hard to build begin to collapse and her kin dissolve behind her. Solar flares wept from her core’s surface, longing to rejoin the fray, to save her people, but she couldn’t because the lights behind her had already dimmed to nothing before finally winkling out. She almost hadn't left them behind, almost died with them by choice, but her people had smiled at her. Even with palpable terror all throughout their very beings, they asked her to run and live life in their place. They were buying her time to flee, and she was wasting it by staying. Who was she to deny their final request?
She sobbed and cried into the darkness until her tears ran dry for the people she’d abandoned, but would never forget. She dragged her core towards herself, condensing it further and further until it was the size of a marble in her palm, and dimmed it’s intencity to nothing more than blip. She couldn't let anything give her presence away. She wouldn't let her kin’s sacrifice go to waste, so she had to make it count.
Lumine bided her time until she was strong enough, then she began to hunt down abyss crawlers one by one, finding the stragglers and crushing their cores with extreme prejudice. She chased down the ones that attacked her galaxy first, mercilessly making them bend and break beneath the power of her fury until they were nothing before going after the next. Sometimes, she wondered if their deaths set her people free, but there was no one to ask because she was alone and had been for centuries now. There could be no new stars without the matter of old ones to grow from, after all.
But loneliness could only persist so long before she gave in. In a fit of desperation and grief, Lumine pulled at her very soul, harder and harder until it began to tear down the center. She dug her fingers in, yanked, and it finally gave way, splitting her being in two. She was left holding a small child in her arms, one that blinked up at her with wide, golden eyes that shone with all the brightness of her star core and power identical to her own that pooled in his chubby fists. He blinked a few times before smiling at her innocently. Her face softened in turn. Although unexpected, he was now hers to protect as an older sister. As the keeper of the other half of her soul and the holder of the light and power of her core, she names him Aether for it.
(This was her fourth, and greatest, mistake, though she could never see it that way.)
---
Lumine quickly learned that young ones, star children or not, required lots of attention. As she bounced him on her hip while he chewed on his own fingers, she wearily wondered if she'd been the same. Granted, she’d been born with the body of a pre-teen and only gained a teenager body within the past few millennium while Aether was formed with the body of a toddler, but form mattered less than mental age when one lived as long as star children did. Or at least, were supposed to.
Though the one thing she hadn’t expected was his voice, rather, his lack of one. She originally thought he'd just be a quiet child, but the longer he went without making any sort of noise, the more worried she became. She'd taught him to read and write their people's language, the language of the stars, and spoke in it nearly exclusively, but he never said a word. It hadn't taken long after to figure out that he couldn't use his vocal cords at all. He wasn't broken, she knew, as they were identical halves, but he’s somehow more even without it and she couldn't figure out why. They could still communicate being the same soul, but something didn’t settle right in her chest at the imbalance.
Lumine knew her soul was split right down the middle, so he should have been her equal in every way. But the end result is that he wasn't, which meant she had to protect him until he could do it himself. She wasn’t naive enough to think that he won’t fight alongside her one day, but she prayed that it wouldn't happen for an eternity anyways.
When Aether was young, maybe only a few hundred years old and body not fully grown like Lumine yet, he'd asked a question in their shared mind space.
'Why don't I have a voice?'
Lumine had looked to him, a heartbroken expression on her face. "Oh, Aether," she breathed as she scooped him up in a tight hug, comforting arms wrapping around him. Regret seized her chest because he deserved an answer, but she didn’t know .
"Everyone has a voice,” she started, hoping that her meager words would be enough, “It's just that sometimes the universe isn't ready to hear it yet." A feather light kiss to his temple and an unsure squeeze, even as guilt settled low in her gut like it belonged there. "One day, the universe will be ready, and when you need it most, you'll have it," she lied, desperately hoping it wasn't one.
They stayed hidden from the abyss crawlers while he was young, visiting many different worlds and planets orbiting stars that lacked star children, allowing him to age without the threat of abyss crawlers hanging over his head, even as they hung over hers.
He grew into a slightly mischievous yet subdued boy with an innate talent for fighting, more so than herself, so she took it as a sign to learn the subtleties of threatening diplomacy. She learned to peer into people’s minds and pick out what she needed, and he learned to look into people’s hearts and illuminate their souls.
Lumine taught him everything she knew. She taught him the form of all-speak that she knew, so that they may understand any language spoken to them. She taught him everything she knew on how to fight, because while he's a natural, he didn't have the same structure she had. (He started to beat her in spars once he did.) She taught him how to take care of his wounds, how to use his powers and the environment around him to heal himself. She taught him how to survive, how to melt into crowds and blend into a society. She taught him how to appreciate the animals and world around them, because they were fleeting, but lovely all the same.
(She didn't see how he stared into the night sky, watching the empty, childless stars and see the longing in his eyes, or feel the way his chest ached each time they passed by one too closely.
He wanted to reach out, to grasp, to touch, to connect , but Lumine clearly didn't feel the same pull he did, so he pushed the feeling down, ignoring the gnawing itch that settled in his chest.)
Lumine watched with sad eyes as Aether eagerly inspected the one of the flora of a planet they’d recently arrived on, a lone bright yellow flower that could heal. It was clearly foreign to this planet, evident in the way it dimly glowed with the light of star power, but Aether had no idea. He was so innocent, so good that it almost hurt her to watch. He didn’t know about the threat of the abyss crawlers, so while he's still free of that fear, he’d grown up alone with no permanency and without the kindness and light of any of their people.
She’d told him stories about their kin, and all that they used to be. When he asked where they all were, she couldn’t bring herself to answer that she’d left them all to die, so she always answered that they were the last one and left it at that. He grew up and learned not to ask questions he didn’t want answers to.
Lumine never told him that they were one and the same soul, though he could likely feel it even if he didn't understand. He had nothing else to compare it to. She never mentioned that no two star children had the same power, because their powers were identical. She explained that their power came from their star core, but not where the core was, that she had fashioned it into an earring Aether received from her for his thousandth birthday when they finally decided to traverse worlds. She barely even explained that abyss crawlers existed, never mind what they were and what they’d done to her people.
There were many things she didn’t, or couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
(This was her fifth and final mistake. She wouldn't live long enough to make another.)
(The last time she’d ever see him would be against an abyss crawler that finally caught up, just as he darts away and she gets trapped with her sword. She caught his terrified gaze with her own fearful ones, and the gaping darkness swallowed her whole.)
Aether is half a star child, and he is the last one left.