After recovering his shaky mental state using the remnant clarity from Fear Transmutation, Lumière had bandaged the wounds on his arm and leg using some spare cloth pulled from his coat pocket.
Lumière's long coat was quite different from the traditional coats worn by the working men and tourists of Leiden. Because the area surrounding Leiden was stuck in a state of constant rainfall, long coats had become the norm. Lumière's coat was carefully fitted with various mechanisms and hidden compartments for his trick-related items. This was related to how he kept flash paper in a certain hidden back pocket, and how it was alighted using the strips of coarse striking paper on its side.
Thus, at all times, he kept useful items alongside him. While he was eager to return home, he knew that those who waited on him would worry if they saw him in such a state. That was why he took the time to refresh himself. It was just another of his lies, his tricks, his illusions.
Now that he was freed from the present danger, countless thoughts began to trickle into his mind.
'Why did such a creature suddenly appear in Leiden? What could have caused such an occurrence? I know that monster was at least a fraction of a human person…' As Lumière parsed through the previous events, he tried to distance himself from his emotions and think logically, but it proved quite difficult. 'And how did Thomas Hawthorne know to appear at that moment? He said that the Lord Sinner had been watching me with interest for some time, so does that mean that Thomas had been watching me from a close distance as well? Or does he have some sort of magical ability to close long distances in such a short time?'
In the Western Continent, the concept of magic had been highly stigmatised, and near-to-all knowledge of the systems of magic had been suppressed by the church. Lumière had grown up in a monastery, so he understood that much. Of course, being able to access the library within the monastery, he had been able to glean far more knowledge than the average person would, and so he didn't fear the concept of 'magic' like others did. If that were the case, he might have died of fear the moment that Thomas Hawthorne had appeared before him.
Strange occurrences like the appearance of the monster had been known to happen in Leiden. It was why in recent times, the capital of the Western Continent's empire had been sending in Peacekeepers, a militant force tasked with maintaining order, into Leiden in order to protect it from anomalies that interfered with daily life.
Of course, most times, Lumière was not concerned with the events that happened within the middle borough of Leiden, where wealthy merchants and well-off government workers enjoyed mostly-peaceful lives. That was because he had grown up in the lower borough, the section of Leiden that remained at the lowest point of the city. That was because the area that Leiden had been established on was quite hilly-terrain, and so it had been built onto three separate layers that divided the population- the lower, middle, and high boroughs.
Lumière stepped down a long pathway of flowering steps enveloped in brush and foliage, almost as if it was a secret path to the middle borough, where the show hall was, to the lower borough, where Lumière lived. Because of constant rainfall, there was a large stone slope plastered onto the large hillside separating the two boroughs, so that the rain would avoid pooling in the middle borough, and make its way far below. As such, a large portion of the lower borough was flooded, and so boating services were common in the massive stacked city.
The stacked housing district of the lower borough, named 'Etten-Leur' by the people around it, meaning 'false hope' in the local language, was an amalgamation of towering slums that had been desperately stacked atop one another to avoid the floods of constant rainfall. The lower level had become a waterway for the transportation of goods for organised crime groups- and of paltry transportation for workers who worked in the middle borough, or sectors of the lower borough.
However, many chose not to live in Etten-Leur, for fear of the gangs, or of wanting to avoid the floods, without money to live in one of the many hovels that had been crudely plastered onto the face of the towering district. They became homeless wretches that gathered on Cobbler's Street, which lied apart from Etten-Leur on a grassy hillside, where Old Leiden lie uninterrupted by the machinations of the city's advancement. Cobbler's Street was where the monastery that Lumière had grown up in stood, welcoming all that needed aid. It was the place that Lumière worked hard to support- or rather, lied to others in order to support.
As Lumière finished descending the flowering steps and continued down the street, he soon came upon a man dressed in tattered cloth that seemed far too worn to be patched up, and too dirty to truly even be considered clothes.
He had bright-white hair that fell dirtily against his shoulders, and a nose as red as roses that incessantly dripped snot onto his upper lip as he muttered to himself and scrawled etchings into the stone wall beside him.
Sitting down beside the raving old man, he eyed the scribbles upon the wall. Each sentence that had been scrawled in spotty chalk was by his short descriptions, in how fractured they could be, the 'secrets to the endless expansive universe'. Of course, how true the mutterings of a crazed elder could be was completely subjective to a person, and Lumière did not agree to pay his thoughts any real attention.
Lumière was a man whose heart had been carved with pity for the miserable, for he too was someone fate didn't often smile kindly upon. So, every day that he worked at the show hall, he would make time to visit the old man, even if it only meant providing him with company.
"Mr. Carthel, have you eaten anything today?" Lumière asked him with a gentle smile.
The old man's gaze flipped immediately over towards the poor magician. Continuing his incoherent ramblings under his breath, he reached his hands out as if to accept anything that Lumière would offer him.
Slowly, Lumière slipped his jet-black performer's gloves away from his long, thin fingertips with a sigh.
The career liar then reached into his coat jacket, where a pocket had been sewn carefully into the interior, and pulled out a white linen cloth that had been bunched up carelessly. Tucked inside was a small piece of bread, one made of inferior flour from the hill-strewn lowlands- a piece of bread that had by then grown stale and cold.
"Father Benedict always makes sure I'm carrying something to eat… but I know well that within the lower borough, there are those that are far hungrier than I." Lumière spoke in a hushed tone.
'That fool cares for others far more than himself…' He cursed inwardly.
As he lamented, he could only sigh once more.
Hurriedly, the old man accepted his offering, sparse as it was, and in an instant, it had been tucked away within his frail gut. For a Dwindler of the city-state of Leiden, one would urge them to eat slowly, after living for days without a single bit of food crossing their lips - as if to save them the sickness of an upset stomach.
However, in the case of Aineth Carthel, Lumière was not so afraid of refusing him the instant pleasure of quelling his hunger. He was sure that no matter what he would say to the skeleton whose skin clung desperately to his bones, he would not live much longer.
Such was a world of tragedy, the type of life that was lived down below the land of the fortunate.
Still, for some reason, the harsh beating in Lumière's heart wished he would live to see many more ruby sunrises. That was why he would often make his way to the man on the street, if only to feed him whatever he could, and make sure he was warm. Although the monastery Lumière was taken in by would often feed those without homes that gathered outside of it, and would shelter them from the cold of night, Aineth Carthel seemed completely opposed to gathering in a group, and so he stayed by his muttering lonesome on the side of the street. Even if he were to try and socialise, it was unlikely they would accept him. The sane feared the insane. It was the nature of humankind.
"Be sure to come by sometime, Mr. Carthel." Lumière smiled as he stood up, bidding his farewells to the old man. He knew that his words meant nothing to him, but they were really only meant for Lumière. He was a complacent man, who could say that 'he had at least tried'. It was a half-hearted invitation, selfish.
After a short time walking through the rain within the sculpted-stone city, Lumière came to a wooden sign standing up on a large pole, with lettering carved into it in the Thalis language- a lettering system bound to the greater Iles language, spoken almost exclusively in the west of the continent.
'With a linguistic system so simple, even wretches could easily learn to read the signs to the wayside, couldn't they?' He thought simply, trying to wave his worries away.
Lumière didn't for a moment consider himself a poor bastard. The Monastery had taught him the minute details of life, of literature and language, and of art and music. It wasn't as if he allowed himself to bolster his ego, however. He didn't think himself completely different from those tarnished by the whims of fate. He too had his own troubles to suffer.
As long as he was a denizen of the cold ground within such a cruel world, even he was no better than an illiterate rotting fool.
He stretched out a hand towards the sky, blocking out the lettering of the sign in the foreground as he tried to grasp at the stormy clouds to no avail. Pulling his hand away, the lettering on the sign came back into view, and he read it haphazardly as he passed it by.
It spelt out, in thick sprawling text- 'Cobblers Street'.
Despite its amiable name, one who traveled along it with no prior knowledge would be shocked to realise that most all of those who lived within Cobblers Street wore no shoes.
It was a street where those without a home would stray, stay, and die. It was a street where no business sought to open, where those with minute amounts of fortune were sure to stay away from, and where a single monastery rested silently on a hill at the end of its winding cobble path.
Still, because of the Monastery, and because of the previous Father's kindness, he had been allowed the boots on his feet that had been repaired and refurbished many times over, now cracked and worn in appearance.
It was, as Father Benedict would put it, the 'sun within a cruel world'. There was hope in all things. Lumière couldn't understand his view, no matter how many times Father Benedict would repeat it. How could you enjoy something when your entire life revolved around survival? He was a practical man. He couldn't believe that someone with nothing at all, like the Dwindlers, could afford to enjoy their lives. He thought it was a stupid ideal to tell them that hope existed when fate actively worked against them.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Croft." A man spoke suddenly from beside him, Lumière not realising he had been there as he lost himself in thought.