On Centauri, you were born a star-weaver, one who can read the heavens and predict the future. Earth does not appreciate your talents nearly as much, but it won’t stop you from continuing your ancient practice. There is a great prophecy, one you’d read since you were small, one that tells of the end of an era. You aren’t supposed to mettle with the future you see, but for the sake of everyone else, tradition will be broken.
BIOGRAPHY
What most humans don’t seem to understand— indeed what most other species besides the centaurians seem to dismiss— is that time is not linear. It is not a river that runs from one point to another. It is not a singular path in which the living are set upon, and to think so has always seemed incredibly arrogant to Elijah. Instead, time is like a chorus, crying out endlessly, and everything that is and ever will be are parts of the universal melody. Elijah has never known why anyone would prefer to deny this fact, why they would shut their eyes and plug their ears against the universe’s will and struggle uselessly against the current of time. They have a theory that it has to do with the dangerous self-importance that other species have such an overabundance of. Elijah can see it start to spread like a disease. The concept is catching among their own people until soon there will be none left who will listen to the universe when it sings.
This is why Elijah has come to Earth, even though the ache for home is a physical thing inside their chest. There is a prophesy that rings in their ears always, humming louder and louder as it’s time approaches and Elijah knows it will be the brightest thing the universe has ever revealed to them. It signals an ending, and usually that would not bother Elijah so much, because only a fool or a novice Starweaver thinks that endings do not come accompanied by new beginnings. But this one, this vision that was the first thing the universe ever showed them as a child, it might mean the ending of Elijah’s culture, their way of life, and it all starts on Earth. This is not something they can just let happen. There is too much that hangs in the balance. Too many lives.
The prophesy cannot be ignored, because when the universe speaks it will make itself heard, one way or another. Its voice echoes endlessly and reverberates through the bones of every living thing that shares its energy. That was Elijah’s first lesson as a Starweaver, told to them when they were only four years old by their mentor and caretaker, Priam Hecuba, a Starweaver who worked at the pleasure of the Chosen. At the time, Elijah was unable to recognize the weight of those words, or what they would mean, though as they grew and their ability as a Starweaver manifested just as Priam had predicted it would, Elijah found that nothing was as absolute and all-consuming as the universe’s will. They still remember the first time they’d realized that fate was something that hung around their shoulders like a shroud, a clinging shadow. It was when they’d first asked Priam why they did not live with their parents like most of the other children who had shown a knack for glimpsing the universe’s will at a young age.
Priam had replied that on the day of Elijah’s birth, she had a vision, one that compelled her to go to Elijah’s parents and explain that their child was meant for Starweaving and that she personally would like to oversee Elijah’s education. At the time, Elijah believed her, because she had never lied to him before, but Elijah would soon realize that there was a difference between lying and deliberately hiding parts of the truth. Only a few months later, while they lay half asleep in their bed, Elijah heard their father cough wetly, painfully, the sound ripped from his throat and coming from nowhere. It was then accompanied by a vision of their father, older and thinner, wasting away from disease. Elijah’s mother was absent from his side, but the bandana she often wore in her hair was wrapped tightly around his wrist like a talisman.
In all their time as Priam’s apprentice, this was the lesson that was hardest for Elijah to learn: Not everything that the universe shares can be changed, and not everything is set in stone. The true talent of Starweaving is being able to tell the difference between the two. And here on Earth, the line that is drawn down the middle is more blurred than ever.
CONNECTIONS
THE KELVIN: Something hangs in the balance with them, they are a potential catalyst for greatness and ruin. Your not certain they’re the center of your apocalyptic vision, but it seems more and more likely by the day. They don’t seem to believe you, but their actions speak louder than their words. If it’s advice they want, you’ll freely give it. To save the worlds, you’ll give them everything.
THE HOLO: It is tradition for the picked heir to seek the guidance of a star-weaver, but they seem completely uninterested in what you have to say. You thought quiet meant thoughtfulness, but with them it means contempt. They’re planning something, they must be, and it can’t be good.
THE SILICATE: Your cousin has always been interesting, clearly filled with contempt for all those who remind them of their lost sibling. You’ve never wanted to glimpse the future of a family member, but the universe won’t let you be. It’s not good, it’s tragic in fact, and you can’t tell them what you see. Ever.
THE NOVA IS PORTRAYED BY EKA DARVILLE AND IS CLOSED
Please note that since THE NOVA and THE SILICATE are cousins the faceclaim the applicant chooses must be at least one-half black.
Admin Ais: I absolutely love Elijah, from his dedication to their culture, to how they interacts with others. You’ve managed to find a great balance with him, with how seriously they takes their role as a starweaver and how easygoing they seem while interacting with others. Your para sample did such a great job showing this, from how they use their gift to how they treat others.
You’ve been accepted as THE NOVA with the faceclaim of EKA DARVILLE. Please follow allrules and regulations as laid out by the Roswell Town Council, especially concerning any non pre-approved biologic. All UFO’s outside of city limits must be stickered or will be towed. Enjoy your stay in the first city of extraterrestrials.
NAME/ALIAS + PRONOUNS: Lottie – she/her or they/them
AGE: 22
TIMEZONE + ACTIVITY: Eastern – It’s summer but I’ll also be working a lot so I’m gonna say a 6 out of 10
TRIGGERS: Removed for privacy.
ANYTHING ELSE?:
Honestly, you’re both just lucky I haven’t copy and pasted the bee movie script in here.
IN CHARACTER.
SKELETON TITLE: The Nova
FULL NAME: Elijah Helenus
Elijah originally took the surname of their mentor, fellow starweaver, Priam Hecuba, and was named Helenus Hecuba until they chose the name Elijah when they came of age.
GENDER + PRONOUNS:
Agender – they/them pronouns
SEXUAL + ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:
Pansexual
DATE OF BIRTH + AGE:
By Earth’s dating system they are 30 years old, born on February 4th, 2031.
OCCUPATION:
Starweaver
FACECLAIM: Eka Daville
BIOGRAPHY:
What most humans don’t seem to understand— indeed what most other species besides the centaurians seem to dismiss— is that time is not linear. It is not a river that runs from one point to another. It is not a singular path in which the living are set upon, and to think so has always seemed incredibly arrogant to Elijah. Instead, time is like a chorus, crying out endlessly, and everything that is and ever will be are parts of the universal melody. Elijah has never known why anyone would prefer to deny this fact, why they would shut their eyes and plug their ears against the universe’s will and struggle uselessly against the current of time. They have a theory that it has to do with the dangerous self-importance that other species have such an overabundance of. Elijah can see it start to spread like a disease. The concept is catching among their own people until soon there will be none left who will listen to the universe when it sings.
This is why Elijah has come to Earth, even though the ache for home is a physical thing inside their chest. There is a prophesy that rings in their ears always, humming louder and louder as it’s time approaches and Elijah knows it will be the brightest thing the universe has ever revealed to them. It signals an ending, and usually that would not bother Elijah so much, because only a fool or a novice Starweaver thinks that endings do not come accompanied by new beginnings. But this one, this vision that was the first thing the universe ever showed them as a child, it might mean the ending of Elijah’s culture, their way of life, and it all starts on Earth. This is not something they can just let happen. There is too much that hangs in the balance. Too many lives.
The prophesy cannot be ignored, because when the universe speaks it will make itself heard, one way or another. Its voice echoes endlessly and reverberates through the bones of every living thing that shares its energy. That was Elijah’s first lesson as a Starweaver, told to them when they were only four years old by their mentor and caretaker, Priam Hecuba, a Starweaver who worked at the pleasure of the Chosen. At the time, Elijah was unable to recognize the weight of those words, or what they would mean, though as they grew and their ability as a Starweaver manifested just as Priam had predicted it would, Elijah found that nothing was as absolute and all-consuming as the universe’s will. They still remember the first time they’d realized that fate was something that hung around their shoulders like a shroud, a clinging shadow. It was when they’d first asked Priam why they did not live with their parents like most of the other children who had shown a knack for glimpsing the universe’s will at a young age.
Priam had replied that on the day of Elijah’s birth, she had a vision, one that compelled her to go to Elijah’s parents and explain that their child was meant for Starweaving and that she personally would like to oversee Elijah’s education. At the time, Elijah believed her, because she had never lied to him before, but Elijah would soon realize that there was a difference between lying and deliberately hiding parts of the truth. Only a few months later, while they lay half asleep in their bed, Elijah heard their father cough wetly, painfully, the sound ripped from his throat and coming from nowhere. It was then accompanied by a vision of their father, older and thinner, wasting away from disease. Elijah’s mother was absent from his side, but the bandana she often wore in her hair was wrapped tightly around his wrist like a talisman.
In all their time as Priam’s apprentice, this was the lesson that was hardest for Elijah to learn: Not everything that the universe shares can be changed, and not everything is set in stone. The true talent of Starweaving is being able to tell the difference between the two. And here on Earth, the line that is drawn down the middle is more blurred than ever.
MUSING + HEAD-CANONS.
HEAD-CANONS:
- As a child, Elijah, who then went by Helenus Hecuba until they came of age, could have been described as studious, serious, and quiet by most people who knew them. However, when Helenus renamed themself Elijah, it marked a gradual shift in their personality. Elijah was still just as dedicated and passionate, but this was now also accompanied by an irreverent humor, an open, yet shallow friendliness, and a flare for the dramatic. When asked, Priam speculated that this shift was directly correlated to the increase in people coming to Elijah for their talents in Starweaving. “We all adopt a persona of sorts,” she said. “We have to. It’s a way to distance ourselves from the things we see and the lives that we touch. We’d be crushed under the weight of our responsibilities if we didn’t.”
- One of Elijah’s greatest fears is the gradual disappearance of Centaurian culture. They don’t want their practices and values to be swallowed up by the glamor of human and luytan life in particular. That being said, Elijah doesn’t have anything against either species’ people as individuals, and wouldn’t mind sharing their culture with any species that came to it with an open mind and a humble heart.
- Elijah also appreciates music from all the species that have gathered on Earth, and has accumulated quite a collection of different genres and different sounds. It’s an idealistic notion maybe, but Elijah believes that any species that creates great music cannot be truly deaf to the universe’s will.
- Also, birds. Elijah loves the birds on Earth. They have a pet cockatoo named Nina who they got a year after relocating to Earth.
- When Elijah first got the vision that signaled their parents’ death, the first person they went to was Priam, only to find out that she had known for some time that this was how Elijah’s parents would meet their end. “It was part of the reason I took you from them,” she said, her eyes sad. “I didn’t want you to see them suffer.” She’d always been an especially blunt woman. Elijah was furious at first, and ran from Priam, deciding to go back to their parents and tell them the ugly truth in order to do something to stop it. But when they got to their parents’ house and saw how happy they were just to have Elijah there, the words wouldn’t come. Elijah stayed with his parents for two whole months, and only returned to Priam’s side when he first heard his mother start to cough. Only a few years later, the technology that the humans and luytans provided essentially annihilated the disease that took both Elijah’s parents.
- Elijah came to Earth when they were twenty in order to join Priam and the Chosen who had relocated to Earth a few years prior. They would have held out longer and stayed behind on Centauri if it were not for the ever-looming promise of the prophesy. Now, Elijah has lived nearly ten years on Earth and has become quite accustomed to life there, even if they long to return home.
PLOTS + CONNECTIONS:
I’d really love for Elijah’s views to be challenged and for them to experience doubt in the universe’s will since it’s something that they’ve believed in so strongly from such a young age. Their principles are what they’ve based a great deal of their identity around and I’d love to see what kind of person Elijah would become if for a short period of time, they were not able to starweave. I’m also very interested in the prophesy mentioned in the skeleton and expanding on it, maybe getting more details about it and how it will play into the larger plot.
I think also it would be cool to have Prima as a playable character eventually. She’d obviously be an older woman, but as I see Elijah being someone that people would come to for advice, I think it’s also important that they have someone in their life that they can also confide in and go to for advice. Elijah is friendly, but they’re also closed off because they have to be. They keep people at arm’s length always in order to protect themself from seeing terrible things about the people they love. It happened with their parents and they don’t want to experience that again. So, obviously, I’d like for someone to break passed that barrier and for the same thing to happen again. Elijah sees something and has to desperately find a way to stop it. I want them to have to fight the universe’s will.
WRITING SAMPLE:
The sun is sitting high in the sky, sizzling the pavement and drawing fat beads of sweat from Elijah’s temples. They wipe them away with the back of their hand and keep their eyes fixed on the intersection a few feet away. It’s a little after noon, and the streets are busy with cars and people alike. The pedestrians are walking quickly in an effort to make it to the next air conditioned building, but Elijah stands perfectly still. In their pocket, an alarm from their phone goes off. They take it out and check the time.
Its 12:33.
There is a leather-bound journal on Elijah’s bedside table, its pages filled with ink. There have been many like it over the years, the first one given to Elijah when the letters still came shakily and unrehearsed from the pen. Elijah can’t remember the last time they spent a night where one journal or another was not just a few inches from their pillow. Some nights there’s no use for it, but most nights, in the grey areas between sleep and wakefulness, the visions spill from the universe’s mouth in a way they never do when Elijah is fully conscious.
It was two week ago exactly that Elijah used the journal to write about this intersection. They wrote about the sound of cars speeding passed, the engines spitting out heat. They wrote about the sun, an unwavering white circle in a sea of dull, cloudless blue. They wrote about the crowd of people approaching the cross walk as the light turned green. They wrote about the time.
It’s still 12:33.
Elijah has been waiting at this crosswalk every day for the past two weeks, arriving at 12:30 and then leaving at 12:35. Every day until now, nothing has happened like they saw it, and so every day until now, they have gone home. But today, there is that familiar feeling of déjà vu, which is a wonderful phrase that the French people of Earth coined that makes Elijah suspect that Earthlings are not so deaf to the Universe’s song as they pretend to be.
The light at the crosswalk turns red and the people on the sidewalk stop. The cars a few yards away start to approach.
It’s 12:34 now.
There is a man who is looking down at his phone and he does not notice that the crowd has stopped around him to wait for the cars to pass. He keeps walking, the metal frames of his glasses catching the sunlight. Elijah wrote about too.
He takes a step off the side walk and into the street.
But Elijah is already there, their hand wrapped around the man’s arm, pulling him back amongst the crowd of people who have all turned to stare at the displacement. The car that would have hit the man dead on blares its horn as it passes and Elijah can feel the wind on the side of their face even after it’s gone.
“Shit, thanks a lot, man,” the man says, looking down at Elijah with wide, awestruck eyes. His voice is deep and rumbles in a way that doesn’t match his fragile features. Elijah decides they like it. “I wouldn’t be anything but a smear on the pavement if you hadn’t been here.”
Elijah smiles at him. “Buy me a cup of coffee and we’ll call it even,” they say and watch as the man’s slack jaw constricts into an answering grin.
They have a nice time, but Elijah does not call the man after he gives them his phone number. Instead he writes it down in a page of his journal, just underneath the paragraph that spells out the man’s death that never happened.
