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Abigail is the original protagonist and POV character of the Staarusverse, being the sole first person POV of Flauraan and Halapatov. She is co-protagonist wiht Sophie in Werayne and Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? with switching first person chapters in the former and more random alteration in the latter. Her first person perspective is the most prominent in the series, though she technically appears in less stories than Sophie due to the Alliance stories and Some of the Travels of Sophie, which are mostly written in third person and often feature her in a more minor role.

She is also a paladanian, and is unique for possessing powers that allow her to manipulate matter as a form of telekenesis, which she hones over the course of the series. She is a lesbian, and forms a close friendship with Sophie which eventually becomes a romantic relationship, though their history is quite complicated.

She has a very analytical approach to the world around her and is prone to overthinking or 'spiralling' as she often calls it. She is dark skinned with grey eyes, and has varying hair lengths throughout the series, sporting long hair that reaches below her shoulders in her original appearance but cuts it to pixie cut length prior to Werayne.

Biography

Abigail was born on the planet of Flauraan in the Staarus system 14 years prior to the events of Flauraan. She is raised by her mother and father in a small town a bus ride away from a larger city. Her town borders a small forest and has agriculture as a prominent industry. Abigail's grandmother's had helped maintain a specific plot of land until one of their deaths, when her other grandmother had adopted a nomadic lifestyle and passed the business onto Abigail's mother, who continued to maintain the land and also ran a stall in the town market, trading in vegetables and herbs.² Her father worked in a quality assurance position in a technology store in the town, which often assessed devices from nearby cities³, and had emigrated from a larger city on the other side of the continent, where most of his family still remained.⁴ Abigail had an older brother named Nyles who she had an adversarial relationship with, due to her powers manifesting at an early age and her difficulty in navigating social situations. She was prone to analysing people's expressions as a child and blurting out information she'd learnt, and was perceived as somewhat of a know-it-all who enjoyed feeling superior to others.

She had been quite social as a child, but following an incident where her powers manifested and scared several of her playmates during a schoolyard game that she didn't remember, she had grown up isolated from her peers who avoided her following that incident. Her only friend for most of her childhood was Leila, who had not been present for the incident with her powers.⁵ Abigail and Leila had a very close relationship until Leila's family moved to Halapatov prior to the events of Flauraan and had often had sleepovers where they stargazed and drew star charts together. Abigail is quite affected by her friend moving away and they exchanged letters frequently prior to the Weraynian Scare on Flauraan.

On a clear night not long after Leila's departure to Halapatov, Abigail was stargazing on the hill near her home overlooking the forest when she witnessed a spaceship approaching and watched it land in the clearing beyond the trees. She decided to get closer to observe the situation and while running through the forest she met sixteen year old Sophie Lestari, who had teleported to the planet following the same ship and collided with Abigail. The two girls formed a fast friendship, with Sophie being in awe of Abigail's observational powers, and Abigail fascinated to meet an alien who travelled the universe. They observed humans exiting the ship and arming themselves for some sort of conflict, and Sophie sent Abigail to her town to warn her people. The town counsel decided to erect a forcefield around the humans and their spacecraft to prevent conflict while they assessed the situation, and Abigail was sent back to rescue Sophie before the force field was put in place. Abigail invites Sophie to stay at her house, and the two set to work trying to find a way to learn more about the human's plans. Sophie turns out to be a technological genius, building gadgets including a communicator from bits of technology around the house. The two use the teleport watch to breach the force field, utilising Abigail's powers to find a weak spot that they use to slip through, though the experience ended up being quite painful. While watching the spaceship, the two are caught by a human named Jon who they fail to convince that they are Eridanus crew. He threatens to shoot him but they manage to get him to tell them about the human's intentions, and on hearing their side of things he reconsiders his stance and allies with them on an infiltration mission on the Eridanus to try to convince the humans that the Paladanians are not their enemies.

Abigail learns that the humans have been to the planet Werayne, which they should not have been able to visit due to a force field surrounding it following a decades old war with her people and the Halapatovians. The Weraynians have told the humans that the neighbouring city to Abigail has captured a human spaceship and incited them to attack the Paladanians as revenge, while calling for backup forces with a distress signal. Abigail and Sophie set to work discrediting this claim and manage to convince some humans that the Weraynians had lied to them, leading to a heated debate in the ship's cafeteria. They learn that the human's have a plan to blow up the force field, and Abigail is sent back to her town to warn the Counsel leaders so they can come up with a counter plan, while Sophie stays behind to try to convince more humans not to fight the Paladanians. The Counsel decides to drop the force field prior to the explosives being set off, and travel towards the ship with defensive weapons to attempt to negotiate. The negotiation is somewhat successful with the help of Abigail and Sophie's insider perspectives, though it ultimately fails when weaponry from the ship is used to attack the crowd, and while Sophie travels inside the ship to investigate the weapon's source Abigail navigates the chaos that ensues as both humans and paladanians blame each other for the bloodshed and conflict breaks out. Abigail manages to cease it by projecting with her communicator live footage of Sophie inside the ship, where it turns out a stowaway Weraynian has seized control of the ship and has been trying to manipulate the conflict between the two species.

Abigail enters the ship as well to rescue Sophie and help fight the Weraynian, accompanied by some human, Paladanian and Halapatovian leaders. She manages to locate Sophie and after a brief fight with the Weraynian the two are incapacitated. The Weraynian carries them around the ship and makes them watch as he murders some of the humans. He takes special delight in taunting Abigail and breaks Sophie's arm and then heals it for unclear reasons. Abigail and Sophie's perspectives are at odds here - Sophie attempts to reason with the Weraynian whilst Abigail sees all Weraynians as evil and irredeemable due to her upbringing and what she has been taught about Werayne. When the Weraynian eventually leaves them locked in a room with unbreakable handcuffs, Abigail gives up hope of escaping until Sophie urges her to try using her powers to get the handcuffs off. To Abigail's surprise, this works, and the two are able to navigate the ship in secrecy. Sophie heads to the circuit control room to attempt to seize back control of the ship and cease the distress signal, while Abigail is able to free some of the people the Weraynian has trapped and evade his notice, sending a technician to Sophie with information that will help her. Abigail has a confrontation with the Weraynian in which she narrowly avoids death, but sustains a broken ankle in her escape. Once Sophie has achieved control of the ship, the two girls reunite and design a makeshift weapon to incapacitate the Weraynian, as paladanian backup arrives and subsequently takes him into custody. In the aftermath of the incident, known as a Weraynian Scare, the humans and paladanians negotiate a treaty, and Sophie and Abigail are asked to represent the species at the treaty ceremony. Following their adventure together, in which Abigail learnt that Sophie had been searching for a different ship, one that had gone missing with her father on board, Sophie decides to briefly pause her search and do some research on the Staarus system so that she can stay with Abigail for a few weeks.⁶

Abigail becomes a bit of a local celebrity following her involvement in the Weraynian Scare, and returns to the Learning Centre where she attends school with some notoriety surrounding her. She begins training with Counsel Leader Reeina to learn about her powers, as the leader also had a unique power, the ability to see events outside of her range of perception, an ability that had been quite useful during the events of Flauraan. The heightened use of her powers unearths the repressed memory of the first manifestation of her powers as a child, and gives Abigail insight into her childhood isolation that helps her reconnect with and apologise to her childhood friends Jayne, Sierra, Zax and Runer, and she is also able to make friends with a new student Jason in their friend group. Around the same time, Abigail's brother Nyles and girlfriend Mari visit Abigail and her family, causing some unease to Abigail due to their childhood opposition. She finds it difficult to avoid conflict with him, as he is critical of her life choices, her involvement in the Weraynian Scare and Sophie. Abgail figures out that Nyles and Mari are visiting so that they can announce their engagement, and mentions it before they are able to broach the subject, enraging her brother. The two part ways on bad terms, and Sophie offers to take Abigail on a trip to the jungle to cheer her up.

On the return from their trip, when Abigail expresses sadness that she has not heard from Leila for a while, Sophie arranges in secret a trip to Halapatov so that Abigail can see her friend and also fulfill her dream of visiting the planet. They use the teleport watch to travel there, with a strange diversion upon their arrival, but are quickly able to return to their planned tour of some of the planet's major sites - both natural and manmade. At the end of this tour, Abigail drops in on Leila and learns that Leila was not expecting to see her again and has been holding some resentment against her due to her powers and her involvement in the Weraynian Scare, and is implied to have perceived Abigail as replacing her with Sophie. The two formally end their friendship and Abigail is devastated in the aftermath. Sophie plans a few more outings to cheer her up, but the two are quickly distracted when they witness a ghost and learn of a person nearby who was killed by a similar apparition. They believe the ghosts are somehow linked to the teleport watch and try to learn more about them. They meet up with a journalist named Riowyn who reveals that the ghosts are not new occurences but that she has been investigating them for a long time. They go ghost hunting and learn that the teleport watch somehow interacts with the same plane of existence the ghosts occupy, and has assisted in drawing more of them into the physical world. Through Riowyn's research, they discover that the ghosts originate from an experiment by a dead Halapatovian scientist which transformed Halapatovians into beings of Staar matter, who live an ascended existence in another dimension and want to bring more people into their world. As Halapatovians have telekinetic powers related to Staar matter, Riowyn and Abigail plan to use their powers to combat the ghosts. After an attempt to alert authorities backfires with them trying to arrest Sophie, the girls flee to the site of the orginal experiment and discover the machine that is helping hold the ghost world open. Sophie, having blamed herself for the deaths that were happening and fallen into a difficult mental state due to this and her past trauma, is lured into the ghost world and Abigail is pulled along with her while trying to save her. While they briefly enter the other dimension, Riowyn uses her powers to overload the machine and sever the connection to the ghost world, pulling Abigail and Sophie back to the physical world. The exertion of this action leads to her death, which compounds Sophie's guilt and leads to Sophie leaving abruptly after dropping Abigail back on Flauraan.⁷

The Halapatovian trip, Riowyn's death and getting left behind by Sophie have a profound effect on Abigail, who struggles to adjust to normal life in the aftermath and adopting a state of hypervigilance, especially since she is anticipating a Weraynian war to break out at any time with the Weraynians escaping the force field. She studies healing to try to prepare herself to be of use during the war, and is distraught due to Sophie's extended absence. Sophie eventually returns to Flauraan and tries to make things up to her. Following the resolution of Sophie's search for her father, Sophie returns to Flauraan again to seek Abigail's advice on what her future plans should be, but the two ultimately reach no conclusions, and Sophie's decision is made for her upon her return to Earth when she has been asked to join a relief team with the Alliance and heads off for training.⁸ Sophie remains in contact with Abigail while she works at the Alliance, often videocalling her.⁹

When the Weraynian war breaks out, Abigail intentionally withholds the information from Sophie in an attempt to protect her, but is ultimately happy when Sophie finds out about the war and visits her, finding comfort in her presence as a distraction from the war. The two are asked to join a secret team on the Staarus Headquartrs in opposition the Weraynians, alongside a Halapatovian tech genius named Rojjel, an Aandriggian girl named Alexa with the power to see visions of the future, and a Weraynian named Jayken who had been accidentally transported through a rift from Werayne to Halapatov, losing his memory in the process and helping Halapatovian forces stop a dangerous group of Weraynians from attacking Halapatov through the rift, and had been deemed a harmless ally to the Halapatovians and Paladanians in the aftermath. Alexa and Jayken prove to be sources of unease for Abigail, who questions what she has been taught growing up about Werayne and Aandrigo (a refugee settlement of pre war Weraynians on a Halapatovian moon) when witnessing the way Staarus forces treat the two. She ends up being involved in testing powers with the two, while Sophie and Rojjel are given secretive machines to work on, and the whole team is tasked to insert these machines into the now unused force field stations around Werayne. When Sophie's Alliance peers arrive with aid and observe the strange conflict, Abigail's prejudice against Werayne is further challenged by the outside perspective, and she starts to change her views to more neutral in the context of the war, spurred on by the secretive nature of their mission and not knowing what the technology they are working on is supposed to be doing. Alexa ends up seeking Abigail out to vent while Jayken and the others are away on an extended mission, and the two girls begin an uneasy friendship, relying on each other intensely but still not being sure what they think of each other. Abigail becomes jealous when witnessing Sophie's easy friendship with her friend Beth from the Alliance crew, and ends up internally tortured by what she considers trivial romantic feelings for Sophie. She ends up confessing to Sophie so that she doesn't need to waste energy focussing on a crush. It turns out Sophie returns the feelings, and the two start dating, adding to Abigail's mixed feelings in the middle of the war. After an attack on Aandrigo and a withholding of aid from Staarus forces, Alexa convinces Sophie and Abigail to help her visit Aandrigo themselves to deliver aid, using the teleport watch and Abigail's powers, and they do so, meeting with an Aandriggian leader in secret, who then sends an alien ally known as the Protector after them to discuss their involvement in the war, and try to convince them to defect to the Aandriggian rebellion, as the Protector has observed the Weraynians to be mostly victims of decades of oppression by Staarus government and having been imprisoned wrongly in the force field surrounding their planet. Abigail stresses over this in the aftermath, and in discussion with the rest of the team and Mickey and Beth from the Alliance, they decide to try to defect, with Alliance forces beginning to take a more neutral stance and exit the blockade surrounding Werayne. Before they are able to enact their plan of defection Abigail, Sophie, Rojjel, Beth and Mickey are sent on a mission to Werayne to install more of the machines in a facility there, but find the facility stripped of all technology and a trap laid by the Weraynians ends up catching Beth and Sophie in a blast, severely injuring Beth and traumatising Sophie similar to her state in Halapatov. When a Weraynian ship arrives to try to capture them, Sophie is still disoriented and ends up being taken away by them in spite of Abigail's attempts to stop them. The attempts to defect are stalled as Abigail focusses on finding out where Sophie has been taken, working with Mickey to this end and ultimately not achieving very much until a distress signal reunites them with Sophie after a stint in a Weraynian holding facility.

Trivia

Citations

1. Werayne
2. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
3. Flauraan
4. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
5. Halapatov
6. Flauraan
7. Halapatov
8. Some of the Travels of Sophie
9. Grouscycle Blues