((Content Warning for the violent death of a child))
When she fled Near Harad, she was a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. What Lumina liked the most about her home in Near Harad was that the nights were always quiet. If you tried hard enough, and she did, you could hear the stars speak to you, her mother used to tell her.
When she woke, it wasn't quiet at all, though. Lumina was nestled into bed with her younger sister, and the shouting and screaming that came from outside was something she could barely comprehend. Before she could try, her mother was upon them, speaking harshly and thrusting a few things into their hands. Lumina's other siblings were crying or they were running outside, and her younger sister started to cry too.
Her mother took her harshly by the shoulders, her eyes wilder than Lumina had ever seen. "You have to run," she said, pulling Lumina to her feet. She shoved a packed bag into her hands and Lumina took her sister's outstretched hand and that was the last time she saw her mother, screaming at them to run as they fled their house. When the screaming was abruptly cut off, Lumina did not look back.
They ran as fast as her feet would take them, momentarily stopping to scoop up the toddler and wrap her in her arms. There were bodies everywhere, blood was on the ground wherever she stepped. Lumina watched a man get struck down in front of her, and the blood splattered across her face and the back of her sister's head. She pressed a hand against the black curls, holding the toddler so tightly against her chest so that she could not turn her head and look.
Her sister was crying. Without thanking her rescuer, she turned and ran down the path that took her to the village entrance, but a blow to the back of her head caused her to fall. She tumbled into the dry grass with her sister still tightly in her arms, but another harsh hit parted them and Lumina fell back, her vision blurry. When she gathered her senses, she crawled over to where her sister had fallen, horrified.
Though she couldn't hear herself, she was wailing, pulling at lifeless arms. Someone picked her up and she beat his shoulders with her fists, wailing for her sister as she was carried away in the arms of someone she didn't know.
Lumina woke with a start, crying and screaming and her hands clutching desperately at the blanket on the bed for something that was not there. Parvati, she had told Blid earlier that day. That's what I'm going to name my daughter.
