He suddenly woke up in a bed, unaware of his demise, which he thought might have been a little bit better than continuing with such a dreary life.

‘What was that thing? How did I make it into bed? Is it possible that I was just hallucinating? I must have been tired… I suppose I did fight for my life that day…’

Sunlight gleamed through a small stained-glass window at the edge of the room, bathing the once-polished wooden floor in a bright yellow glow. Lifting a hand over his eyes, Lumière sat up in the bed he had awoken in, and knew that he was still alive because of it.

The red sun meant he was still a denizen of a cruel world. He was still a liar, a terrible person. If he was still alive, then it meant he was still the servant of an evil deity. He knew it hadn’t been a dream. He still felt the aching pain of the wounds on his arm and leg.

Placing his hands against his cheeks, he pulled down on his skin as if to tear away the fatigue from his eyelids. Despite the continent being in its age of constant rainfall in the weather cycle, his skin had nearly dried out, so dragging against it felt like rubbing his fingers against paper, and so he felt amused.

“You’re awake, finally.” A voice said jovially.

Lumière glanced to his side to see a woman dressed in stark-black robes and a headdress that covered the entirety of her hair, except for a small strand of blonde that fell down her forehead.

“What is it to you, Sister Alinde?” Lumière sighed out loud.

“Now, it means you can help with the morning service.” She smiled, her head tilting to the side. “Father Benedict already has his hands full, yet he still makes time to feed the hungry every morning. Caladan and Carlisle have busied themselves with cleaning every morning, and Sister Hildegarde is growing weary with old age each passing day. If you’re going to keep living here, shouldn’t you help out with the day-to-day tasks?”

Although her expression was full of pious happiness, Lumière could tell that her smile was full of some sort of teasing trickery. She was like a loving, caring devil.

“Is raising money for the hungry not good enough to pay off my moral debts to this place?” Lumière sighed. He was still wearing his dirtied coat from the night before, so he reached into a hidden interior pocket and procured the money he had swindled from his audience. He then handed it to the Sister, who accepted it curiously. When she peered inside, her eyes widened.

“How did you obtain this much in such a short period of time? With this- we could feed the hungry meat for a week! Do you know how long it’s been since they’ve had meat? They’ll be so glad to hear of this!”

Reaching into the singular pocket her robes had, she tucked away the money and then pulled out a pair of circular black-framed spectacles, placing them softly on Lumière’s blinded face. She ruffled a hand through his dark-brown curls. His dull greyish-blue irises expanded, and from his perspective, he could begin to see her face clearly. She waltzed about the room for a bit, her long black robes shifting with each step.

‘When did I lose my glasses? Was it her that got me into bed late at night?’ Lumière’s face paled. ‘I hope she didn’t discover my wounds. Seeing as I’m still dressed in my clothes from the night before, it’s unlikely…’

“You forget so many important things…” Sister Alinde sighed aloud. “I have to thank the Goddess you’re still in one piece, don’t I?”

‘I wouldn’t blame the Goddess for my survival… that’s surely all my doing. Well, maybe it’s also the doing of Lord Sinner as well…’ Lumière grimaced internally.

“Aren’t you disallowed from having pockets?” Lumière asked of her in a surprised tone.

That was a practice of the Goddess of Thorns, disallowing material possession in such a way. In the eyes of the core tenets, it was to be free of lust and greed.

“Perhaps the Goddess told me to have pockets, so that you may be spared the trouble of faulty eyesight.” Sister Alinde winked in return.

He let out a sigh, and his focus returned to sitting up in bed.

Lumière’s whole body felt like the sludge that pooled at the edge of the street in the afternoon rain. As he sat at the edge of his bed, which had been stuffed with straw to keep it soft and warm, his legs which fell off the side felt weak and limp.

Yet, as he placed the back of his hand against his dull-aching forehead, he could not seem to recall the day prior.

“How long did I sleep, Sister Alinde?” Lumière asked of her.

“No more than a night, which I’m sure is more sleep than you deserve.”

‘This woman…’ Lumière cursed in his mind. ‘Doesn’t she know how hard I work to support this place?’

“Where’s Father Benedict?” Lumière asked of the coy nun, a dozen more questions piled up in his mind that he chose to keep tucked away.

As she walked towards the door, placing her soft, long fingers on its bronze handle, she turned towards him and spoke simply.

“Out on the hillside, as usual.” She replied. “The sun has just barely risen, after all.”

As soon as she had finished her reply, she did not leave immediately, hanging at the side of the door with a longing in her gaze as she stared at the sleepy-eyed liar who sat softly on the bed.

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“Are you going to keep standing there? Do you want to see me dress that badly?” Lumière chided with jokingly.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” She winked once more, her face growing slightly blushed, before shutting the door behind her and leaving the magician in the quiet reverence of his room.

Without wasting any time, Lumière immediately ran to the chipped wardrobe which sat in the corner of his room. It had been lined carefully by him with lavender sachets with the flower petals collected from the garden to protect against moths.

He pulled a ruffled white shirt over himself, with black cropped trousers held up by suspenders, his long black coat with chipped buttons along its sides, and a black flat cap nestled atop his head of messy hair.

Eyeing the simple polished wooden table at his bedside, Lumière debated inwardly before opening its singular drawer and retrieving a silvery glistening item from its contents. It was a simple pocket watch with a singular engraving on its surface; a single sentence that read ‘Everything is okay’.

He tucked it gently in his front pocket after winding it with a solemn, reminiscent expression.

Then, he stepped out of his room, walking down the monastery’s staircase until he reached the main prayer hall. At the end of the large room decorated with ornate stained windows, a large statue with flowing locks of hair caught up in a crown of thorns stood regally. The statue, which resembled a woman, was crying black tears, a symbol of madness within the orthodox church’s legend.

As Lumière stared at the statue, pangs of fear resonated in his heart. ‘I wonder if the Goddess knows of the ordeal I’ve tied myself up in. Will she inform her Saints of my presence? Will an archangel of the Lady of Thorns come to strike me down?’

Lumière let out a sigh.

‘And if Sister Alinde or Father Benedict were to hear of this, what would they think? Would they try to reason with my existence, or would they bend to their ideals and start to hate me?’

Ainsworth Benedict had been the head Priest within the Cobbler’s Street monastery for five years, after his father, the head Priest, had suddenly been stricken with illness and subsequently passed away. Ten years prior to the death of Ainsworth Benedict’s father, Lumière and Elise Alinde had arrived. Elise had previously had problems with her memory, failing to recall the first ten years of her life, and Lumière had come dealing with problems of his own.

So, for the next fifteen years, they had grown up alongside each other. They had come to know of each other’s intricacies, likes and dislikes, experiences, and hopes and dreams. Still, recently, it felt like there had been a divide between him and them.

While Elise and Ainsworth had gone on to devote themselves to the Goddess in order to thank the church for raising them, and to follow his father's legacy, Lumière had grown averse to serving the Goddess of Thorns. He could not understand why such a kind deity would allow the constant horrors around them to occur.

The starvation of the Dwindlers, the casualties of war, the constant strugglr to survive- he couldn't understand why they would praise a Goddess that didn't seem to care.

That was why he called himself a half-believer of the Goddess of Thorns. He trusted in her existence, but not her benevolence.

In fact, he had grown to despise anything involving the Orthodox churches. He hated even more that it was a reason for everyone to be content with their surroundings. As Father Benedict would say, the 'sun in the cruel world' was hope, hope born from the idea that one day the benevolence of some uncaring deity would make their world better.

Of course, Lumière thought that that eventuality would never happen.

So he had resolved himself to change everyone's lives for them, whether they wanted it or not. That was why he had begun to delve past his position as an entertainer, seeking more from the audience, even if it meant manipulating their hearts. From Lumière's perspective, those who could afford to see him perform were already well-off. Swindling a bit of pocket change from them was nothing, especially if it benefited those around him.

Lumière let out another sigh, turning his attention to the twin silhouettes that sprinted back and forth between the pews, holding out his hand as one past by him. His fingers gripped tightly onto the collar of a shirt, and he lifted the silhouette up in the air with a stern look on his face.

"Why are you making so much noise, Carlisle? Are you making your brother participate in one of your 'tricks' again?"

The small, round face in front of Lumière's began to pout. "You said that the first principle of a magician is to distract! Haven't you been adequately distracted?"

"Yes, but you've already forgotten. The second principle is that your distraction must contain a leading purpose. What is the goal of your distraction, Carlisle, besides being a nuisance to our guests?" Lumière critisised the child he held up in the air.

"I'm sorry, Lumière..." Carlisle apologised. "I just wanted to be like you..."

Lumière set the child down, sighing as he reached into his back pocket. "Do you know what the greatest purpose of being a magician is, Carlisle?"

"Is it to be loved, and to be showered with gifts?" Carlisle's gaze grew curious.

"No, not that." Lumière laughed. "Above all, the purpose of being a magician- an entertainer, is to make people smile. If a magician forgets this key principle, then none of the following principles matter at all."

From his back pocket, Lumière produced a handful of sweets wrapped in thin cellophane, offering them to Carlisle. The other boy, Caladan, immediately ran up beside them, like he was a magnet to anything made of sugar. The two twins sported pitch-black heads of messied hair, and emerald-green eyes that made it impossible to miss them in the dark. Trailing behind Caladan, a golden-haired dog wagged its tail happily.

"Are you training Renlause well, Caladan?" Lumière smiled.

The boy nodded his head succinctly. "Yes, thank you, Lumière!"

Recently, Lumière had begun to notice that Caladan, unlike his brother, lacked a sense of purpose. While Carlisle had begun his pursuit into the world of illusion, Caladan had been aimless in his day-to-day life. So, Lumière had used his connections in the show hall to source out a puppy for Caladan to laud over. It had seemingly filled the boy's day with smiles, so Lumière had considered it a success.

Still, it meant one more mouth to feed. It meant Lumière had to work even harder. However, as he had said before, cultivating smiles was the purpose of a magician. If he couldn't do that much, he had no right to stand on the stage each night.

After he had finished conversing with the two boys, he reminded them of their duties within the monastery. They had come to the monastery the year previous, same as Lumière and Sister Alinde had been taken in so many years ago. That was why Lumière was sure to treat them with both sweetness and sternness. They both reminded him all too much of himself.

Lumière stepped out of the monastery's front door, greeting the cold spring air with a calm, pensive expression. At the edge of the grassy hilltop, past the garden's canopy of trees, dozens of men, women, and children in ragged tattered clothes had gathered. They all sat and ate from carved wooden bowls, with a mixture of weariness and satisfaction on their faces. They were the Dwindlers of Cobbler's street, who had gathered near the monastery to partake in the food that Lumière's swindled money would purchase.

He felt no disdain for them. He only felt a wish to wash away their weariness. He had only hoped that one day, something would begin to change.

'I wonder, now that I've been gifted power by Lord Sinner, can I make that change myself...?'