Someone who remembers

When Lumière awoke in the morning, he quickly got dressed, buttoning up a white shirt and pulling up tweed trousers before reaching for his morning coat and flat cap. He then stepped out into the quiet atmosphere of the morning monastery.

After shopping, Lumière had returned to the monastery late at night, stepping quietly over the countless bodies that slept like frozen logs on the wooden floor. Luckily for them, the Sister was always kind enough to place wood into the singular iron-wrought fireplace in the corner, so the room was devoid of frost.

He stepped out into the fresh morning air which had been bitten by a chilled wind and let out a soft breath. A bout of steam escaped his lips, and through its bleary form, he saw the silhouettes of his companions. Raising a hand into the air, Lumière called out to him, and the Sister and Father both turned their heads with smiles on their faces as they waved back in return.

As he ran up to them, Father Benedict spoke towards him with a humoured expression.

"Will you finally be helping us in the mornings, Lumière?"

"Don't you think I help enough?" Lumière asked, puzzled.

"I think you help out about as much as the chill of the morning helps out in ridding us of the constant puddles from the rainfall." Sister Alinde joked as she turned towards him.

The two sat in the grass as they scooped hot ladle-fulls of porridge into the extended bowls of the Dwindlers who had slept out in the cold.

"May the Goddess bless you." The Father spoke as he scooped the warmth of the porridge into the bowl of an aged and wrinkled man standing helplessly before him.

The man nodded respectfully in turn, with a hurt smile on his face.

"May the Veridian star guide you."

He spoke in turn as he turned his tail and returned to his seat far on the hillside. It was something the Dwindlers would often say, referring to the Goddess of Thorns as the 'Veridian star', a bright green orb that would pulse in the night sky. Because of the assorted library within the small monastery, as well as the books kept in the show hall and fencer's association, Lumière had been able to gather a sizeable knowledge of history. He knew that the vagrant groups that came to the Forger Empire from many lands would refer to the various deities by referencing their star, at least before they had become worshipped orthodox beings. The tradition had been kept by the Dwindlers, who had no home, and so spent most of their life underneath the glimmering stars.

Lumière watched each man, woman, and child in turn come up to the Father and the Sister, with that same hurt and helpless expression of the previous man on their face. To live a life where pride had to be abandoned to survive, Lumière was sure that it was the cruellest existence of all.

Suddenly, a boy approached the three. He was malnourished in appearance, and his clothes were dirtied.

"Are you all right?" Sister Alinde asked of him.

He shook his head slightly.

"I've lost my mother." He spoke out with a calm tone of voice.

Despite the subject matter, he didn't seem fraught with fear. His voice didn't shake, and the small hairs on his skin didn't burst up in fright. Still, Sister Alinde reached out a hand in comfort with a smile, and the boy took it gratefully.

"I'll help you find her, so let's walk around the hillside."

Sister Alinde and the boy walked off hand-in-hand, and Lumière quickly brushed them from his mind.

He then looked out onto the hillside, eyeing each Dwindler with some sort of nascent pity he couldn't bear to abandon. Some had lost limbs, hands, or feet. Some wore bandages or crawled around on the ground at slow paces. Crutches, blindness, and illness were carried around like sickened apparel.

They were called Dwindlers because that was all they could bear to do. They could travel wherever they could manage to and hope that their surroundings would sustain them. Many had settled on Cobbler's Street due to the provisions of the church and the safety and management of the Blackfeather Group. Still, it was a life of menial engagement. It was one of surviving- of Dwindling until your heart's ember would burn out, and you would become a cold husk on the roadside.

Lumière would have called it prolonged suffering.

"Two years..." Lumière spoke softly. "It's been two years, and this is all that the government could have managed to do for them?"

"Two years isn't enough to recover the damages of a war of fourteen." Father Benedict smiled solemnly.

"And yet by that math, the reparations haven't even exceeded a seventh." Lumière sighed. "Shouldn't we expect more? Shouldn't they expect more? Why is everyone so satisfied with their lives...? I don't understand..."

Lumière put a palm against his eyes. His head felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton, muddled and heavy with a thick fog.

"Who is?" Father Benedict spoke suddenly.

Lumière opened his eyes and turned towards the man who spoke out.

"What?"

"Who said they're completely fine with their lives? Why is everyone a monolith in your mind? Are you even considering everyone's perspective?"

"I'm not... empathising?" Lumière asked with furrowed brows. "Isn't that all I do? How can you say that?"

Father Benedict simply looked out across the hillside, where many Dwindlers gathered together in groups. Some may have been related by blood, and others not.

"Isn't it great? They're all alive, Lumière." Father Benedict spoke aloud. "Despite a war, despite their circumstances... they're all alive, and they're together."

"They're alive, but are they living, Father Benedict?" Lumière posed with furrowed brows. "To eat, to sleep… to look only forward to the most basic human necessities, is that the essence of 'living'?"

Father Benedict seemed surprised to hear Lumière retort with reason, so he laughed slightly before looking back towards the gathering of the Dwindlers on the hillside.

"No, you're quite right." He smiled. "But I think that before you can triumph, you need hope to face the world head-on. To have access to a place to sleep, and a place to eat- to be alive, and to be together- isn't that the perfect foundation for hope?"

Father Benedict stood up, placing a hand on Lumière's shoulder as he spoke quietly into his ear.

"Of all people, I know well that you have the softest heart, Lumière. But I think despite that, yours is also the most closed off to all perspectives. I don't think you can completely understand them." He whispered. "These people, who have seen the heartache and anguish of war... they cannot change the world. They can't change the systems they live in. They live in a reality of lament. So why shouldn't they live just to smile at a cold morning's hot porridge? Why shouldn't they belove the sun that shines brightly on a cruel world? Who are you to rob them of that by telling them that they're fools to do so?"

Lumière's gaze fell towards the ground, his eyebrows twitching as he bit at his lip.

"Then, if I don't understand… what should I do?"

Father Benedict spoke simply in response, with his calm and stilled smile.

"Go talk to them."

Lumière looked at him with a puzzled expression. Usually, the Father's advice, despite his young age, was some sort of congealed mass of grand wisdom. He wondered if by being offered such simplicity, he was being treated as the focus of a joke of the Father's.

"I'm being serious, Lumi."

'My Nickname?' Lumière thought as his eyes widened.

Lumière knew then that Father Benedict was being serious. When the Father spoke to him as a friend rather than as a priest, he knew his words were completely genuine. It was because his mask as a priest was one that Ainsworth Benedict was scared to let slip away.

"But don't pay it too much mind. Right now for you, I'm not sure that another perspective matters."

Lumière nodded simply in response after hearing his words, and quickly turned away from him before walking down the stone path upon the hillside. He spotted Sister Alinde and the boy from before she had accompanied. Walking up to them, he gave a nod of acknowledgement.

"Good morning, Lumi." Sister Alinde smiled.

"That should have been the first thing you said to me." Lumière rolled his eyes in a humoured fashion.

His gaze fell back towards the boy, and in a cursory manner, inquired towards Sister Alinde.

"Did you find his mother?"

Sister Alinde shook her head. The boy in turn didn't seem saddened in the slightest. He just looked up at Lumière with astute curiosity as he placed his fingers against his lips.

"Do you mind watching him for a moment, Lumi?" Sister Alinde asked of him. "I would like to inquire further with the gathered. Perhaps one of the clusters would know the boy."

Lumière nodded simply, and as Sister Alinde adjourned once more, he was left alone with the boy on the hillside.

Lumière walked up to the child sitting by the wayside. He had a ragged robe draped over his small, malnourished form. Despite his weary looks and his dirtied face, he had a bright smile on his face as he stared at the steaming porridge in the warm bowl he held between his bony fingers.

"Ah, hello Mr. Croft." The boy smiled softly.

With a hint of surprise in his eyes, Lumière pointed up towards himself.

"You know my name?"

The boy simply stared back at him in confusion.

"I'm sure everybody here knows your name, Mr. Croft." The boy smiled humorously. "You, Father Benedict, Sister Alinde, Sister Hulgard, and Mr. Adler are the ones we all trust most."

He simply nodded in response, as if it made complete sense to him.

Lumière then thought for a moment, before straightforwardly asking the boy his curiosities.

"How can you smile at simple things like porridge, when your life seems so dull? Do you not ever wish for more?"

The boy looked at him with a strange expression, as if it had twisted in the most baffled state.

"How can I wish for more, when this is all I know?" The boy smiled warmly. "Sure, I've heard of all the exciting and magical things other kids may be able to do. But, that's not the life I live. We children of Cobbler's street- we can only think to grow up as fast as possible. We know our bodies are small and weak. We cannot take on labour jobs as much as the grown men can, so it falls to our mothers to lug us around like heavy burdens..."

The boy then looked up at the sky with his soft gaze.

"Despite that, I wouldn't think of living any other life. How many other children do you know who get to play so often with their friends? Because of you and the church, our welfare is secured. Because of Mr. Adler, our safety is assured." He spoke brightly. "So, as long as my friends and my mother are alright, I've nothing to complain of. I could wish for nothing more. As long as I have all of this, then this is a life that I have enjoyed living."

"Then life is alright..." Lumière repeated under his breath as he glanced off to the side. "Thank you for your answer. I appreciate it."

'Although I still don't get it... Is it because I don't live the life of a Dwindler that I can't understand?'

Lumiere grasped at his heart and let out a sharp, frustrated sigh.

Suddenly, Sister Alinde came back, leading a seemingly very addled woman by the hand. She immediately ran towards the young boy, holding him in her arms as she sobbed gently. Despite that, however, the boy seemed to hold the same still expression as he always did, looking towards Lumière as he spoke a final time towards him.

"It doesn't matter too much, Mr. Croft." The boy smiled gently, the skin around his eyelids folding up as his cheeks beamed.

"What does matter then?" Lumière asked the boy who peered at him over his mother's shoulder.

"Nothing really does, if you always remember."

'Remember? Remember what?' Lumière asked inwardly, confused.

"Well, that's why we always try to make each life enjoyable." The boy winked.

He didn't particularly know why he was talking to the boy as if he was an adult. He just seemed to give off some considerably mature aura, and Lumière couldn't help but confide in his calm and reserved nature.

Suddenly, however, the boy's mother picked him up in her arms, lifting him into the air as he smiled softly.

"It's goodbye for now, Mr. Croft." The boy spoke with a still tone of voice, raising his hand to bid farewell. "May the Veridian star guide you."

The 'Veridian star' was a common reference to the crown of thorns, a moniker left over from the age of vagrants, when one would have the constellations guide them. The three main orthodox goddesses would use the bright green, blue, and red stars to guide vagrants to promised lands to settle. The Architect was often attributed to the sapphire star, and the crimson star was the object of worship for many underground cultists.

'Ah, I forgot to ask his name…'

"It's Etta." The boy spoke with a warm, aged expression, winking slightly at the magician.

'Eh? How did he know?'

Lumière's eyes widened. Staring into Etta's gaze, it looked as if he held the entirety of time's depth in his irises. Lumière had been lost inside his eyes until they had trailed off into the mist of Cobbler's street.