Lucien Emberlight

Lucien Emberlight

At nearly two years old, Lucien has grown from a bundled newborn into a sturdy, round-cheeked toddler. He has his father's copper hair, a wild, tousled mop that defeats every comb in the household and sticks up in a new direction each morning, and fair skin that flushes pink across his cheeks whenever he laughs. His eyes are a soft grey-blue, wide and steady, and they tend to rest on a person for a long, thoughtful moment before he decides what he makes of them. A tiny point of warm light glows at the center of his brow, steady as a candle flame, a sign of the celestial blood he shares with his father; it brightens when he is happy and fades almost to nothing when he sleeps. He is usually dressed in soft linen shirts and sturdy overalls embroidered with leaves, practical clothes for a boy who spends most of his day on the floor, and he is rarely seen without a small carved wooden deer clutched in one hand.

Lucien never takes anything without leaving something in its place. If he picks up a spoon from the table, a pebble appears where the spoon was; if he borrows a sister's hair ribbon, an acorn turns up on her pillow. Nobody taught him to do it, and he does it with complete seriousness, setting his offering down carefully, patting it once, and toddling off with his prize. The household has learned to read the trail: a pinecone in a boot means the laces have gone somewhere, and following the trades backward will usually turn up whatever went missing. The only thing he has never offered in trade is his wooden deer. He is also, for reasons no one has been able to explain, terrified of loose feathers. Birds do not bother him in the slightest, and he will happily watch the songbirds in the Silmarithil canopy for an hour. But a single feather lying on its own, on a windowsill, on a rug, or poking out of a pillow seam, makes him go rigid and wail until someone takes it away. Every pillow in the Emberlight house has since been restuffed with wool.