Timeskip Information - Work in progress.

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina COURT Unseelie TITLE The Impling OCCUPATION Chocobo Breeder! ABLE TO FAST-TRAVEL Lumina can teleport to all of the major cities at this point, and about half of the minor ones. She is slowly collecting smaller ones when she gets bored. RESIDENCE IN 2,701 A small chocobo ranch on the outsiders of Mair, and her room at Caer Scima. RESIDENCE IN 2,702 A somewhat more developed ranch, and also still her room at Caer Scima! MAJOR EVENTS HIGHLIGHT Description [ ✖ ] HIGHLIGHT Description [ ✖ ] HIGHLIGHT Description [ ✖ ]

PLANS Large plans for development or activities for the timeskip, etc. SUMMARY OF KNOWN DETAILS Lumina will be working on developing her Chocobo ranch into an actual ranch and not the three-birds-and-a-little-girl that it is right now. With the death of the Jabberwhelp and her attitude being shaken somewhat, she'll also be turning more towards learning how to actually fight, and not just be a little pest. Somewhat. When it amuses her. Her seelie friends may find she isn't speaking to them much, because she's going to finally be pretty pissed at the other side of the war, instead of just not caring. Anyone who is friends with her on the unseelie side can expect to have her drop by at least once a week just to check in and say hi and be a pest. She's not exactly good at being by herself, and the loss of the lockets is going to hit her hard. TIMELINE OF EVENTS SPRING IN 2,701 (Mar, Apr, May) MARCH - During the cold spell, Lumina and Lemina will be working to get magical heating set up in Lumina's chocobo ranch. The second round of eggs will be born as well, numbers and colors not yet determined. APRIL - Lumina won't really mind the harp, her emotions are already pretty chaotic. That said, she is going to have a breakdown towards the end of the month that will result in her smashing the harp. Need someone to be around while she breaks down. May - Lumina will be hunting the swans for the cash money! Also people may find her training young chocobos in their magic while she does it! The third set of chocobo eggs will be born this month, numbers and colors not yet determined.. SUMMER IN 2,701 (Jun, Jul, Aug) June - As people prepare to clean up the Jabberwock stuff, Lumina will basically run away to a boat adventure with the Outsider in order to avoid thinking about it and getting sad again. She will be heading to the tournament in Treun to watch the excitement but won't be fighting! July - Lumina will return from sea adventures! The fourth clutch of chocobo eggs will be born here, numbers and colors to be determined. As the ranch becomes more crowded, Lumina's focus will be mostly on it for the next few months until she adjusts. August - Forest golems in the trees surrounding Lumina's ranch will do some small damage to the ranch and buildings there before being driven off by the chocobos and Lumina and whomever happens to be around. Lumina will be at the festival of light in Leathann! FALL IN 2,701 (Sept, Oct, Nov) September - Lumina will be at the harvest festival, and probably watching the bread riots with great amusement. The language problems won't change how she speaks (FFXIII doesn't really have languages as a concept) but she won't be able to understand anyone who is not speaking 'English', for the sake of convenience! October SAMHEIN! Lumina may try to talk to the Black Shuck. The Fifth clutch of chocobo eggs will be born this month, however owing to the nature of the month, all eggs will be Black Chocobos. November - Lumina will have some run ins with the escaped prisoners, probably helping to catch them or letting them go depending on her whim, really. WINTER IN 2,701/2,702 (Dec, Jan, Feb) December - Yule! Lumina will be getting gifts for all of her friends! She will also attempt to talk to the white hart, rather than hunt it, which may result in an animal transformation? January - Reclaiming her room in the rebuilt Caer Scima, being happy to see the city in one piece again. Shard training with Ganondorf/the shade in exchange for chocobos for his soldiers? February - Lumina will be at the feast, oblivious to the violence towards the elves! The first chocobo clutch of spring will be born, the largest yet as the various chocobos from last year begin to come of age. SPRING IN 2,702 (Mar, Apr) March - Lumina will spend a chunk of the month protecting her ranch from the skeletons, until she's managed to teach her chocobos to kick the creature's skulls off. Several chocobos will be killed, which will have her pretty angry. April - Three of Lumina's imps will go missing! Along with many she is friends with in the court. She will be exceedingly upset and begin searching for them everywhere she can.

( codes by whambam )

Comments

[scorchedchivalry]

"..."

That was not the way any breeder should be treating their flock. Saber didn't know very much about the birds, so she tried to think of them as horses and not giant dinners. Though she did wonder what fried chocobo would taste like...

But back to the moment and the upset girl. The king didn't buy the reaction, instead bringing her other hand up to rest on Lumina's other shoulder. Now she had both upon her, though her grip was light. She wanted the girl to focus on her, not the rock.

"I care because I would like to think us as friends. I do not have many of those, so I apologize if I am incorrect. And even if we are not friends, I am king and the concerns of those under my care are mine as well. Tell me what is wrong, Lumina."

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina hopped back a step and shrugged. "Normally you'd be right, we'd be friends! I mean, why not, right? Clever useful kid, powerful, intense general? Totally friends! Buuuuut...nope." She threw her arms out to either side.

"It's not because of any 'oh the strong general must walk alone' garbage either," she certainly liked calling that garbage. "You're compleeeetely fine. It's me. I'm the problem."

She leaned forward. "'Cause I'm not real! And fake people don't get to have friends."

[scorchedchivalry]

Actually, it was the king walks alone, but that was something Saber was still learning was incorrect. She didn't want to be alone, but it was entirely too easy to fall back into that role when things got hard and she didn't feel like she was being supported.

Saber let Lumina bounce out of her grip as she didn't want the girl to feel trapped. She listened and tilted her head. Not real?

"What do you mean by not being real?"

[chaoticwhimsy]

"I mean exactly what I said. I'm not real. I'm fake. I'm like...like a shadow. I-" She paused, and sucked in a long breath, as if trying to take control of emotions that were swirling out of control.

It worked, if only a tiny bit. "It's pretty weird to explain." She managed, and then something seemed to strike her, and she smirked.

"Oh, I know. How about I tell you a story?" She hopped up onto the fence that surrounded the stable building proper and grinned. "A sad story about a little girl who wasn't real."

[scorchedchivalry]

Saber was confused but didn't show it. Whatever reason Lumina thought she wasn't 'real' could not possibly be true. The girl breathed, she acted of her own free will, and Saber was fairly certain she bled. She was real.

But the king wouldn't say that just yet. No, she reached her hand out to stroke the chocobo's feathers, trying to give the bird some comfort, as she nodded to Lumina.

"I will listen to your tale, but I will determine through it whether you are as you claim or not."

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina just snickered. "Because your opinion will change things somehow, huh?" She turned to the side and started walking down the fence, balancing without much difficulty.

"Okay. Where to start...hmm...Oh, I know. A thousand years ago," she threw her arms out in a grand gesture to emphasize her words, wobbling on the fence but catching her balance as she let her hands flop back to her sides. "Well, a thousand and twenty-three, if you want to be specific, there were two sisters."

She stuck her hands out to both sides. "Serah Farron was the younger sister, innocent and sweet and everything a younger sister is supposed to be. Claire Farron was the older sister," she lifted her other hand. "Hard and strong and fierce, she was the kind of older sister who took on the whole world, ready to throw a punch or shout a curse at the heavens if she had to. She called herself Lightning, I mean, how pretentious can you get, huh?"

Saber might remember that name from their conversation in the ruins of Caer Scima.

"As these stories always seem to go, everything was fine until there was a tragedy. Their parents died, of course. Claire, I mean Lightning, realized that she would have to be the one to take care of her sister, to protect her and the world, so she swore to herself that she was going be as hard and strong and determined as possible. And to do that, she decided to cut out all the parts of her that would hold her back."

She twisted around to face Saber then, stretching out just one hand, cupped, as if holding something. "Joy, laughter, happiness, love...she threw it all away." A wiggle of her fingers as she turned her hands over. "Casting it into the universe, leaving just the steel soul of a warrior goddess behind."

"And then, well, life went on," And she was back to walking along the fence, back the way she had come. "They were forced into a grand and terrible adventure where they changed the whole world, struck down the false gods that had trapped humanity, freed them from a prison they hadn't even realized they were in! It was very noble and amazing, of course. There were grand sacrifices and noble declarations of love and revenge and everything in between!" She smirked. "The kind of things people write fairy tales about."

"And then everything went sideways. Lightning was stolen away by Etro, the goddess of life and death, to become a timeless knight, to defend her from an ageless and terrible immortal, and she wound up spending five hundreds years fighting a war at the end of...well, of everything. But she could do it, because she was so dangerous and strong and determined. Poor Serah though, she was lost without her sister, and wound up joining some silly time traveling boy and racing into the future to find her." She clapped her hands together.

"Can't you just picture it? One sister fighting desperately while she waits for the other to come and join her? It's like piling another fairy tale ontop of the first one! Buuuut..." She stopped walking, her head bowed, then smirked, looking aside at Saber. "This one doesn't end as nicely as the last."

"In the end it was a sham. They'd been tricked by that twisted immortal who was determined to stop time and end the world. And he did it, cleverly, right at the end when Serah and Lightning had thought they'd won. Lightning fails, Etro dies, the cycle of life and deaths and..." She snapped her fingers. "Click, no more time. Instead, the gates to that cold, immortal world shattered, and the great cloud of Chaos swept out to swallow up the whole planet!"

"And there at the end, Serah died." Lumina sucked in a breath and turned completely away, but for a second she had looked like she might start to cry. "It was a stupid death, everyone should have seen it coming, but they didn't. People never do, huh?" She seemed to have settled herself again as she turned back to Saber.

"But Lightning, she had spent her entire life protecting her sister in one way or another, right? Five hundred years of life. She wasn't willing to lose, not like that." Lumina bobbed her finger as if teaching a point. "So, she sacrificed herself too. She caught her sister's soul before it could slip away, and then sealed herself in eternal, immortal crystal, with Serah hidden inside her. A stone monument to a pair of seemingly dead sisters. But not quite."

"See, Etro wasn't the only god out there. There was another one, the grand creator of everything, long forgotten by everyone who was still alive. But there, at the end of the world, he came back. And for five hundred years he waited, and he plotted, and he planned what he was going to do with his dying world. And it was dying. The chaos that had come when Etro died had swallowed almost everything, there were only a few thousand people left, scrounging out their existence in the last few safe places of the world."

"So this god, this grand creator, decided that he was going to make a new world. You know how it goes, if your old toy is broken, go get a new one, right? But he couldn't just start again. With Etro gone, he couldn't create life, he could only...mm..." She waved her hand vaguely in the air. "Repurpose it. So he reached out into the Chaos and he found the crystal statue of Lightning, and he brought her where he needed her to be. But he didn't wake her up, not just yet. He knew what she had done, how she had faced down gods and won, and he couldn't risk that, right?"

"So, he reached into her, and he pulled the one thing that he knew she had left to fight for. Serah's Soul." Lumina hopped down off the fence with a little grunt. "Lightning was already half a person, and with Serah gone, she would be...less dangerous. More focused. He would tell her that if she did as he asked, if she became his savior and led the people left on this dying planet to his new world, he would bring Serah back to life."

Lumina walked slowly, in a long circle around Saber and her chocobo as she spoke. "Of course, he wasn't really planning on doing that, he just needed bait. So when he ripped Serah from Lightning, rather than keep her to fulfill his promise, he just cast her soul into the chaos, to be swallowed up like all the other people that had died."

"But that's a terrible thing to happen to one of our heroines, right?"The child came to a stop in front of Saber. "She can't just die alone in the chaos at the end of the world! And Lightning would never allow it either, of course! Even trapped in stasis, even half a person, she couldn't let her sister die. But she couldn't save her either, not as she was."

"So, something else had to happen. Do you remember, way back a thousand years ago, when Claire had made a promise and cast so much of herself away? Well, it turns out, when someone does that? Those bits and pieces, those emotions and needs and fears, they don't just fade away. They're still out there, somewhere in the universe. And when Serah's soul was cast into the Chaos, Lightning's desperation and the magic of that chaotic force came together and called those long-lost pieces of herself to save her sister. And they all came together..."

She trailed off, and smirked. And that anger was flaring behind her eyes again.

"And what do you think they turned into, hmm? You've been paying attention, you can figure it out, right general?"

[scorchedchivalry]

Saber's first thoughts as Lumina told her story was how very much Lightning reminded her of herself. In fact, the similarities and the things they did - if not the actual actions but the motivations - were eerie. When Saber had left the girl 'Arturia' had been behind when she became King Arthur, she had cast aside her human emotions, for a one could not protect the people with human emotion. And all it had ever amounted to was a life of misery. To hear another had subjected themselves to the same damn thing...

But then the point of the story came to the front again with the way Lumina was looking at her. She knew immediately what the girl before her was - the physical and magical manifestations of those emotions Claire 'Lightning' Farron had cast away to make herself stronger.

"Did you save Serah?"

Because that was what mattered to Saber. Not Lumina's origins, but her actions.

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina certainly was not expecting that question, and the fire in her eyes vanished for a moment, replaced by something else. Sadness, maybe? She took a half step backwards, and her hand instinctively moved to her chest.

"I...sure. Technically." She tapped herself softly. "She's still in here."

Lumina didn't know if she had her own soul, but she had a soul. It was just Serah's.

[scorchedchivalry]

Lumina may have stepped back, but Saber moved forward, her steps slow and nonthreatening as she came closer to Lumina. The king gave a gentle nod of her head before asking another question.

"And was that by your own choice, your own decision, to do so?"

[chaoticwhimsy]

Another question she wasn't sure how to answer.

"I guess. I wasn't really trying to save her, I had her when I woke up, I just...held on."

She would've saved her anyway, though.

[scorchedchivalry]

Saber pressed on with questions Lumina most likely wasn't expecting.

"And how do you feel about it? Are you glad you held onto her or do you regret it?"

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina took another half-step back at that. How did she feel about it? That was a stupid question, why did it matter how she felt about it? She'd just answer. But she didn't really have an answer.

"Uh." Another beat, the usual wordy girl clearly off her game here. "I don't regret it. Of course I don't regret it." Faster then. "I'd be pretty awful if I regretted it!"

[scorchedchivalry]

And Saber continued to keep the same distance between her and Lumina, not letting the girl get out of arm's reach, not that she was trying to touch her.

"And why is that? Tell me, Lumina; it is important."

[chaoticwhimsy]

"B-because..." The anger was coming back now, but was fighting with her frustration, with her confusion. "Because she's family, of course I care about her, I can't just let her die!"

The words kind of spilled out in an angry, declarative huff.

[scorchedchivalry]

There. There it was. Saber took that final step forward to place her hands on Lumina's shoulders, lowering herself to a knee so they could be eye to eye.

"You feel that? You feel those emotions, that determination, the will to make decisions, to take action... All of that?" That was the key. "That is what makes you real. Your origin, how you came to be, means nothing, Lumina. What matters is what you do with life once it is given."

[chaoticwhimsy]

Lumina was pretty sure it wasn't that simple. What Saber was saying sounded like wishful thinking, like ignoring the obvious thing in the room to believe in something better outside. But there was such intensity in her voice that it was actually pretty hard to argue with.

And with her emotions basically in a whirlpool, she didn't have the footing to fight the point anyway.

"I..." She tensed up, looking like she wanted to argue, failing, and then looking like she might cry. But not managing to actually say anything.

[scorchedchivalry]

Saber's expression softened and she pulled Lumina to her. Saber had always thought hugging her was like hugging a rock, but Rin had proven that to be untrue. But, much like a rock, Saber was something steady that could be held onto and used as an anchor.

And she was waterproof. If Lumina needed to cry, Saber was there.

[chaoticwhimsy]

Hugging was something that Lumina did to other people, not something that was done to her. So she didn't quite react at first, frozen there, until her mind caught up. Thinking through everything they had said, everything she had said, combined with the harp was enough to finish what few defenses she had left.

Which meant she basically started sobbing into Saber's shoulder.

[scorchedchivalry]

When Lumina began to cry in earnest, Saber fully wrapped her arms around the girl and held her. Her words were soft as she spoke to Lumina and just let her cry everything out.

"It is okay, Lumina. It is okay..."

Sorry about the delay, I have had no luck with this tag.

[chaoticwhimsy]

[Lumina wasn't sure how long she cried on Saber's shoulder. A few minutes at least. When it finally faded, and she pushed back, she seemed...calmer. Whatever had been causing her emotional explosion had faded, at least for now. She almost looked...embarrassed, though she covered it up in the act of rubbing at her swollen eyes and blood-stained cheeks.]

Well! [She said, but the word came out broken and hiccuped and she sucked in a breath to steady herself before she continued. Then she smiled a sardonic smile that didn't reach her eyes, dropping her arms to her sides.]

That was fun, huh? Now you know my terrible secret.

[scorchedchivalry]

I do not think it a terrible secret. But I will keep it to myself, if you have any worry I will repeat it. There is much that I know but do not speak of.

[Saber offered a small smile.] And I will always believe you are real. And nothing can change that.

[chaoticwhimsy]

It's moderately terrible, at least. But hey, it's unique, right? Not a lot of people can claim something like that for their heroic origin story.

[She managed a little laugh, the normal Lumina starting to surface.]

Thanks. Just remember that if my 'family' ever shows up. You get to be on my side.

[scorchedchivalry]

I will concede that it is not a pleasant secret. And I agree; it is very unique.

[Saber was glad Lumina was seeming more normal. Saber nodded.] If they show up, make sure to let me know so that I may be prepared.

[chaoticwhimsy]

...Actually, you and Light would probably get along.

[Or murder each other.]

[scorchedchivalry]

We sound very similar in a lot of ways. Though, I am not sure we would get along because of that.