#the asterisms of viatrix || headcanons

[lumenstellaris]

IMPORTANT HEADCANONS TO CONSIDER

CAN THEY USE CHOPSTICKS? yes. it may have taken her until her six thousandth birthday to learn how to use eating utensils in general, but she learned. chopsticks are her favorite for how simple they are to use; a single pair is all that's needed for appetizers, entrées, and sometimes, even desserts!

WHAT DO THEY DO WHEN THEY CAN'T SLEEP? stare at the ceiling. sneak out of the serenitea pot and visit the important tree of whichever area she feels like visiting (e.g. vennessa's tree in mondstadt, the frostbearing tree in dragonspine, the dragon-queller in liyue, the roots of the sacred sakura in inazuma, or arama in the land of grounded dreams.) stargaze, tracking her friends' constellations in teyvat's sky. get a midnight snack via regisvine consumption.

WHAT ORDER DO THEY WASH THINGS IN THE SHOWER? shampoos her hair, washes her face, conditioner (assuming she remembers to use it), the rest of her body. once the conditioner is rinsed off, she washes her nape and the back of her ears. she used to recite these steps when aether first taught her the concept of bathing.

WHAT'S THEIR COFFEE ORDER? she doesn't like bitter things, usually preferring hot chocolate with extra whipped cream on top. if she has to drink coffee, she'll order a mocha and swap the cocoa powder for chocolate syrup. it's not a hot chocolate, but it's sweeter than a plain black coffee.

HOW DO THEY ACT AROUND CHILDREN? in some ways, she's still a child herself. for the most part though, she keeps her brother's example in mind, and tries to be a good influence on children. this doesn't mean she won't encourage some of their shenanigans, like klee's fishblasting.

WHAT WOULD THEY WATCH ON TV WHEN THEY'RE BORED AND NOTHING THEY REALLY LIKE IS ON? kid's tv shows, like the little einsteins or mickey mouse clubhouse. if those are unavailable, random music videos via a music channel will do; she'll just read or fold laundry in the meantime.

tagged by: dilucisms

tagging: anyone who feels like doing this!

[lumenstellaris]

she is stardust and the debris of a supernova forced into a body too small and too fragile for what she truly is. the universe has two children, a son and a daughter, and its youngest has yet to fully adapt to the lifestyle of those tiny lives dotting the fabric of their parent.

the traveler has never been human. to believe she is such is a mistake one will pay dearly for.

[lumenstellaris]

CHARACTER STUDY: TRAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS

bold = applies to your muse

italics = sometimes applies

EYES: blue | green | brown | hazel | gray | gray-blue | other

HAIR : blond | sandy | brown | black | auburn | ginger | grey / white | multi-color | other

BODY TYPE: skinny | slender | slim | built | curvy | athletic | average | muscular | pudgy | overweight

SKIN: pale | light | fair | freckled | tan | olive | medium | dark | discolored

GENDER: male | female | trans | cis | agender | demigender | genderfluid | other | doesn’t like labels | don’t have any definite headcanon either way

SEXUALITY: heterosexual | homosexual | bisexual | pansexual | asexual | demisexual | other | unsure | doesn’t like labels

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: homoromantic | heteroromantic | biromantic | panromantic | aromantic | demiromantic | unsure | doesn’t like labels

EDUCATION: high school | college | university (sat in on classes in other worlds, but does not have a degree) | master’s degree | PhD | other (learns as she goes!)

I’VE BEEN: in love | hurt | ill | mentally abused | bullied (this is why she lets others do the talking) | physically abused | tortured | brainwashed | shot

POSITIVE TRAITS : affectionate | adventurous | athletic | brave | careful | charming | confident | creative | cunning | determined | forgiving | generous | honest | humorous | intelligent | loyal | modest | patient | selfless | polite | down-to-earth | diligent | romantic | moral | fun-loving | charismatic | calm

NEGATIVE TRAITS : aggressive | bossy | cynical | envious | shy | fearful | greedy | gullible | jealous | impatient | impulsive | cocky | reckless | insecure | irresponsible | mistrustful | paranoid | possessive | sarcastic | self-conscious | selfish | swears | unstable | clumsy | rebellious | emotional | vengeful | anxious | self-sabotaging | moody | peevish | angry | pessimistic | slacker | thin skinned | overly dramatic | argumentative

LIVING SITUATION: lives alone | lives with parent(s) / guardian | lives with significant other | lives with a friend | drifter | homeless | lives with children (paimon) | other

PARENTS / GUARDIANS: mother | father | adoptive | foster | grandmother | grandfather

SIBLING(S): sister(s) | brother(s) | none | other (found family!)

RELATIONSHIP: single (most likely) | crushing | dating | engaged | married | separated | it’s complicated

I HAVE A(N): learning disorder | personality disorder (BPD) | mental / mood disorder | anxiety disorder | sleep disorder | eating disorder | behavioral disorder | substance-related disorder | PTSD | mental disability | physical disability

THINGS I’VE DONE BEFORE: had alcohol | smoked | stolen (it's borrowing without permission) | done drugs | self-harmed | starved | had sex | had a threesome | had a one-night stand | gotten into a fist fight | gone to hospital | gone to jail | used a fake ID | played hooky | gone to a rave | killed someone | had someone try to kill them

TAGGED BY: @erabundus

TAGGING: @vzorexa @scarletooyoroi @eternitei @caelune

[lumenstellaris]

WHAT IS YOUR TRUE ROLE IN THE STORY?

THE ONE AT THE CROSSROADS.

questioning yourself again? well it's a hard choice is it not? you always decide you've made your mind but you seem to nevertheless return to this state of uncertainty. are you good or evil? dark or light

alas, i am not fit for such details in morality. in my slightly skewed sight of it, neither truly exist. they are but a mindset, but mindset or not, they still give you quite the anxieties hm? you are one who has lived in fear, your heart is hidden, and you don't know who to trust. you doubt you can even trust yourself.

the caustic words of poisonous people have corroded into your skull. "you are evil. you are a monster. you are bad." well that is a bunch of poppycock, mind my language, for the only one who may decide that is you.

my dear, you are torn between never allowing others to hurt the ways you hurt, and from running away from all who might harm you again, with gnashing teeth. you are a cornered animal who has been kicked by the ones it trusted. you do not know whether to trust again, for your mind is screaming, don't. but if i may, you can be both. it is not the question of whether you are good or evil, it is the question, what do i deserve and how might i reach that? you do not deserve pain, correct? so never chase that, instead kindly decline and flee from those like your past assailants, but trust the ones who you know are good. sometimes you will find people to be a messy combination of both pain and love, but so are you and i.

my advice is to simply be kind, but be willing to question. always question, always wonder. do not give away your heart on a silver platter my dear, it is worth far more than the sun himself, but don't fail to allow healing. you deserve good things in life. so as you stand between two roads, walk between the third you just now have noticed. life seems to be made of entirely preposterous choices, but if you look close enough, you'll reveal the right ones that are normally hidden from sight. breathe my dear, things will be well. trust yourself, and carve your own path.

yoinked from fatedevour tagging: @erabundus @risingsol and anyone else who wants to do this!

[lumenstellaris]

lumine (the traveler, really) had to have been good at charades. how else would they have spoken to paimon in the two months they were learning teyvat's language? this said, i raise a lumine who forgets the word in teyvatian, but knows it in a language that isn't from teyvat.

paimon is unfortunately somewhere else, maybe being a taste tester for xiangling or at the grand bazaar. what does lumine do when her handwriting is okay at best and indecipherable at worst? charades.

[lumenstellaris]

i touched on this in a thread a while ago, but lumine doesn't have any internal organs. no heart, no lungs, no spleen, no nothing. aether taught her how to "breathe" the way people do, as well as how to fake a pulse. feel along her wrist and the underside of her jaw for a pulse, and you'll find something steady and strong, fitting for someone who looks like a healthy young adult. but feel for a pulse over where a heart is supposed to be, and there won't be anything.

though she's long learned to regulate both her pulse and breathing, she still gives herself away in the most... conspicuous way possible: both pulse and breathing stay steady even after a physically demanding activity, be it a fight or constant running. then again, no one ever pays attention to either of the two, so she believes herself to be in the clear.

the only ones who might know about her lack of proper organs are venti, albedo, and kazuha. possibly nahida as well since they exchanged bodies in dreams, emptiness, deception (act 3 of the sumeru archon quest).

the closest thing she has to an organ is her "stomach", though that's just a mini void located around her abdomen. and unfortunately, it doesn't get full from normal human food. she could eat just as much as paimon does, but the only thing that'll sate her appetite is elemental energy—like hypostasis cores, the energy inside a delusion (or vision), regisvine cores, or even the oceanid/thunder manifestation.

her plan when it comes to enemies capable of wielding the elements is simple: eat their attacks. not only does that tactic offer an element of surprise, it also means she can eat while in battle. she gets materials after eating, which is great! paimon also enjoys this fact after being shocked for a while—this means lumine's share of the food often goes to paimon, which helps keep their food cost down.

lumine's ranking of teyvat's edible elemental beings: aleph, beth, daleth + electro, anemo, cryo slimes (best-tasting) cryo regisvine he ayin zayin thunder manifestation oceanid (tastes like angry water) bathysmal vishap herd (the twin vishaps) pyro regisvine electro regisvine jadeplume terrorshroom gimel energy from delusions golden woflord / rifthounds (worst-tasting, do not recommend)

tl;dr: lumine has no internal organs. while she can eat regular food, she only feels full when eating elemental energy. the hypostasis cores are her favorite, simply because they're a bite-sized meal to her.

[lumenstellaris]

the universe has two children, born from cosmic debris and the death of a massive star. oh, they can pretend all they like, but its children will never be human. not when they bleed light instead of red or gold, a light so blinding it renders mere humans stunned from the wound.

the universe's children will never be human, not when their blood calls forth the universe's wrath.

[lumenstellaris]

my brother is my mirror, and i am his. aka a look into lumine's perception of herself.

Sometimes, in an effort to escape a thorough scolding from a clearly peeved Paimon, the Traveler uttered these words: "Sorry, there's no Lumine here!" It's become something of an inside joke amongst the most frequent visitors to the Serenitea Pot. Any time the duo returned from an adventure that left the Traveler's clothes looking a little worse for wear, Paimon would have a screech of "LUMINE!" at the ready, while the blonde outlander deflected her companion's scolding with those five words.

But there's some truth to her words. There always is. And no other words have more truth to them than those, for there truly was no Lumine without Aether. It was Aether who found the starchild that would eventually become Lumine, and it was he who consecrated that starchild's existence with a name on its millionth year of existence.

(It was for this reason that Lumine always claimed to be three-and-a-half million years old. Rarely did anyone in Teyvat believe her, but those who did often raised a brow at the mischievous grin playing at her lips. None thus far have asked the starchild for her age, only Lumine. And truly, the existence that is Lumine has only been around for three million, five hundred and seven thousand, thirty years.)

Even with a name, the first thing out of her mouth when she's made to introduce herself is "Aether's sister." Never her own name, partially because Lumine was an existence that only Aether was privy to, and partially because she didn't like socializing much. For the next three-and-a-half million years after they left the nebulous cloud of cosmic debris that served as her crib and their home, Aether spoke for both of them. His words were hers as well, save for whenever he took a lover. Then, and only then, did their sentiments differ.

But then they came to Teyvat, and she who called herself the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles tore the Universe's children away from each other, and forced them into the flesh prisons that the worldly inhabitants called bodies. Lumine slept for five hundred years, and in that time, Aether changed from the kind and caring older brother she'd known her whole life. While she slumbered for five centuries, Teyvat had hurt Aether—and she refused to think about the possibility of her being wrong; it had to have hurt him, why else would he become the cruel and aloof Abyss Prince?

She meant to get rid of the reflective surfaces in her (their—it's hers, Paimon's, and Aether's after all) room. She really, truly did. But the Crux Clash happened, and in the whirlwind that was Inazuma, she barely had the time to look around the Serenitea Pot, much less get to the bedroom and sleep there. Indeed, where sleeping was once a pastime, now it was a necessity. More often than not, she slept in the barracks with the other members of the Resistance. On the rare occasions she slept within the Serenitea Pot, it was on the sofa. And so this would continue until they reached Sumeru—the Traveler crashing onto the couch and sleeping as soon as they stepped foot within the mansion.

Yet it was only after finding a page in Nara Varuna's handwriting that she remembered the mirrors and reflective surfaces, and how she'd come to loathe her reflection in them.

Someone—either Paimon or Tubby, she wasn't sure, but stars bless them both—covered the mirrors with a heavy piece of fabric. That was the first thing she realized after stepping into their room for the first time in months. Still, covering them didn't remove them from the room, so she rolled her shoulders and got to work.

Then immediately got distracted, because the fabric slipped off just enough for her to catch her reflection, and she scowled. It was easier to ignore the yowling void left by Aether's absence when she didn't look at the space he was meant to occupy. She reached over to tug the cloth back over it, before she paused.

Huh. Her hair's gotten longer. With the addition of the Inteyvats in her hair, she wondered if he'd still recognize her when they reunite at her journey's end. She hoped he would.

Before anything else, Aether is her brother. Before she is the Traveler—Honorary Knight, Savior, Captain, First Sage, or even Golden Nara—she is Aether's sister. Surely, despite how much they've changed, they would still recognize one another. At the end of the day, she is but a Traveler looking for her brother.

(Eventually though, she tires of her reflection, and decided that tossing the damned thing out the window was the best course of action. Tubby awoke the following morning to shattered glass and the mangled frame of what had been the mirror in the twins' bedroom.)

TL;DR > Lumine is old, though she won't disclose her actual age unless the right question is asked. > Her identity and self-worth hinged on being "Aether's sister" for as long as they were together. Only in Teyvat was she forced to exist without him, and she often questions her worth as a result. > She despises anything that could remind her of Aether's absence, including mirrors and her own reflection. > Despite the long list of titles and accolades under her belt, she still sees herself as "Aether's sister" first and foremost. Very little can be done to convince her otherwise, or so she thinks. > Since their encounter in the Abyssal domain from We Will Be Reunited, she's begun to doubt her importance to her brother, and in turn, her own self-worth.

[lumenstellaris]

she's always been a messy eater. it's one of the things aether scolded her for, thumbs rubbing at the splotches of ichor around her mouth. still, she does know how to be a neat eater. she had to.

[lumenstellaris]

starchild, the traveler

pip's notes: hello! the following piece of writing is my personal take on the twins' origins, as well as an introduction to something i incorporated into my portrayal of lumine. i suppose you can take this as an introduction to lumine, as written by me, pip. i hope you enjoy reading it ^-^

Before Teyvat, before she was the Traveler, she was Lumine. She was the second starchild, born of the supernova of a dying star. The formless mass of energy left behind gained sentience, and while the body known as Lumine had yet to be formed, it recognized the presence of one like it. A black hole millions of lightyears away birthed a starchild like it, and what-would-soon-be-Lumine’s first memories were of a blond starchild flitting around the forming neutron star.

It was the other starchild that named her, patted its hair and cooed over it. The other starchild named it Lumine, after the light of the neutron star that birthed it. Later, when the older starchild taught it all that it needed to blend in with those of other worlds—a lengthy process further prolonged by its questioning of “pronouns” and why the starchildren needed them—he introduced himself as Aether.

Aether offered Lumine his hand and invited her to travel with him. With nothing better to do, the starchild took his hand, and off they went, Aether and Lumine, space and light.

As time passed, Lumine grew comfortable in the form it had taken. When once it refused to be addressed as anything but Traveler—for that was what they were—she learned to accept the other names people referred to them as.

Lumine is a starchild.

Lumine is a traveler of worlds.

Lumine is a sister, and her brother is Aether. Where one was, the other was sure to follow, for they were inseparable.

Aether is home to her, long before she understood the adage “home is where the heart is”. He insisted that home was where they were together, possibly inspired by the adage, and she simply agreed. Who was she to question the wisdom of a starchild eons upon eons her senior?

For a time, Viatrix and Viator were content. For a time, the starchildren had a home.

And then they arrived in Teyvat. When the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles stood in their way, Lumine struck first. She didn’t mind losing it to the odd cube structures that deity used, mildly surprised that she couldn’t summon it to her side once more. She and Aether could forge another one if needed, but then the god took her brother.

Their eyes locked in the brief moment before the cubes swallowed him whole, and for the first time, Lumine saw fear in his expression. There’d been no time for her to reflect, to think, too blinded by rage and terror for her mind to clear. Light coalesced in her dominant hand, blinding and searing to anything or anyone other than a starchild. 

Were anyone else to make contact with that much energy, they would not have survived. This… Sustainer of Heavenly Principles, as she called herself, was nothing normal. The starchildren had power enough to destroy gods, consume their energy for sustenance.

She would make a delicious meal, Lumine decided, honey eyes tracing the cloud of constellations floating over her hand. Once her sojourn in this world ended, once she reunited with her brother—either as an ally to the Abyss or as the one to defeat him, she cared not—the starchildren will defeat the Sustainer.

There’s a hunger itching under her skin, her eyes dilating at the thought of consuming a god. It had been too long since she had a meal of that magnitude and quality. Lumine’s tongue darted out and licked her lips; oh, she would thoroughly enjoy it. For now…

“Paimon, I’m going out to find something to eat.” The little sprite had been with her for little over a month now, and at this point, Paimon knew what she meant. Though initially weirded out, Paimon grew accustomed to it, and no longer batted an eye when Lumine devoured elemental beings.

Slimes, whopperflowers, hilichurls, creatures of the Abyss… None of them were filling enough. There’s a void in here where her powers once were, and though the hum of electro, the gusts of anemo, and the steady pulse of geo made a home in her, it still wasn’t enough. It’s with a ravenous smile that she ran off, the void that could be her heart thrumming at the thought of food.

Lumine is a sister.

Lumine is a traveler of worlds.

Lumine is a starchild birthed from a neutron star, and Teyvat was the neighboring star pulled towards her. One day, the neutron star will consume its neighbor. One day, Lumine will consume all that came or will come between her and her brother.

Maybe then, she would become a black hole, just like the one that birthed Aether.

[lumenstellaris]

tags !!     ignore.