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Recipient: Lies are intended to be heard or received by someone else. The recipient of the lie may be an individual or a group of people.
“Pate de Fruit.”
He searches her eyes, looking for deception. “Pardon?”
“Pate de Fruit,” she repeats.
“As a meal?”
“You said anything. I choose Pate de Fruit. Make me a fine dessert, Lyney.”
Recipient: Lumine.
Intention: A lie starts with the intention to deceive or manipulate. The liar consciously decides to present information that is false or misleading.
It’s so windy. Lyney makes Lumine trek with him to find fresh Bulle fruit, plump amongst the Cuihua trees. She’s in luck: they’re in season. Enough people have weathered the terrain that heading to these patches of greenery isn’t a difficult hike. But Lumine is a seasoned traveler, and she flits through lesser explored fauna and waters, picking up pretty objects and flowers like a greedy treasure hunter for beautiful things.
Lyney has to have the stamina to keep up. She’s challenging him. She might not explicitly be aware of it, but it’s one of things where if he fails, this tentative not-quite-friendship will shatter.
He flirted with her before his trial of first-degree murder. You know, for fun. She was incredibly witty and could keep up with all that he threw at her. For a non-local, Lumine had that joie de vivre without the paired burden of meddlesome nosiness most Fontaine people possessed. Lynette, in her own strange way, approved of Lumine first even before he got close. It was an added bonus that she didn’t know a damn thing about him.
It felt good, to not have to pretend so much.
Lumine seemed to like him too. He saw her in the front seat of his and Lynette’s show, marveling at his magic. The part of him that thrived off validation flourished under her attention.
Yet, sometimes it felt like she looked at him in all the wrong ways. She would brush off his airy jokes and zero in on the minute insecurity he typically could successfully glamorize behind thick velvet curtains of deceit. Then, she would call her out on his bullshit. The worst part was that he knew she had no malice aforethought.
Othertimes, it was as though she looked even past him, invisible. She would stand to the side and watch him hand Lynette a homemade bowl of onion soup when she forgot to eat lunch or gift Freminet a new set of leather journals, and from the corner of his eye, Lyney would catch her scrunch her nose and clench her fists.
He does not comment on her wistful, longing gaze whenever she lays witness to these scenes. He does not.
He’s got a bag filled to the brim behind her when she suddenly halts, shouting something about jam. The domino cascade follows soon after, and he falls, spilling the Bulle fruit everywhere.
What an undignifying fall, he thinks. His knees are plastered with blood, clothes caked in dirt, and there’s a dense sinking of his intestines, like they’re about to be displaced from this human body of his.
But even worse: there’s fruit juice. In. His. Hair.
Lumine is immediately beside him, supporting him to stand and meticulously checking for fatal wounds. As though he was a soldier in a battle and not merely a boy trying to impress a girl.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he hears himself speak. This is a lie. How is he going to wash orange staining off his blonde hair? How is he going to come back from this humiliation?
As they’re picking up the fruit, he watches himself gather themself in his arms and begin to juggle three, four, five, six of them in the air. He gets them high enough for him to grab his bow, and shoot them with burning arrows. They half-heartedly topple to the ground, scorched but slowly distinguishing with the dry cushion of the earth.
Lumine’s face is indescribable besides her lips, which are slightly parted. The magician takes a bow.
“Tada.”
Before he was his Father’s son and before Lyney and Lynette really had anything to their names, they were just servants of some stupid ugly noble. No really, he had a crooked nose and there was a wart under that man’s left nostril Lyney always had wanted to shoot as target practice.
He remembers the first punishment he was dished out. Three slashings for his “insolence.” He’s always been a bit mouthy.
Then, he remembers overhearing a conversation between the noble and his equally ugly friends leering at Lynette, making suggestive comments.
Fancy this: you are twelve years old pouring tea and preparing eclairs for grown men as they openly discuss how they would defile a young girl. You don’t know entirely what the words mean, but the tone is objectively nasty. This young girl is your sister, and she’s the only person you have in this ugly, corrupt world.
Fancy this: you are twelve years old and you are out of easy options to save yourself.
You are twelve years old and begin scheming your first major magic act.
He doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe, subconsciously, applause. Or, more dramatically, for Lumine to swoon with a hand on her forehead and to exclaim, “Sacré bleu! Mon dieu!”
She doesn’t do any of that. Instead, she cocks her head to the side in puzzlement, as if she can’t quite figure him out.
“You’re so weird,” she sighs. “You would rather be seen as an all-bravado performer than to perceived as human.”
He can’t help but stare.
She walks toward him, clasping her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s head back. We still need to mash some jam for the purée.”
He barely bites his tongue back to defend himself from all the truths she’s hurled at him. Barely.
Intention: Lyney desperately cannot let Lumine know he’s just a little bit of a loser.
He expected to meet lowly subordinates in this midnight rendezvous. Every magic act needs succinct preparation to succeed, and this one is no different.
He pulls his hood higher to hide the taut skin and deepens his high pitch prevalent in youth. “I have enough gold, as promised, for the atropa belladonna.”
The informant does not move or speak.
“Hello?” He thrusts the lantern deeper into the dark alleyway.
Silence.
“Do we have a deal or not?” First-degree murder isn’t easy to commit, and he’s on a tight schedule. If poison didn’t work through this route, there were four other possibilities he had to explore instead.
Finally, the informant chuckles, striding toward Lyney in confident strides. They yank on his hood.
“You’re just a child,” they state. “What are you going to do with the belladonna? Be honest.”
This androgynous person is testing him. He’s a bit delirious at this point. As they got closer, he could see those boundless dark eyes marked with ruby red X’s. This is the Knave, a dangerous woman that is not bound by Fontaine laws. Most people are tethered and corralled into obedience through laws. Those who aren’t are wholly unpredictable and dangerous.
He shouldn’t have made fun of Lynette’s sloppy braid this morning. He should have given her the round, crunchy part of his baguette. She doesn’t know what he’s doing right now, and he might not see her again.
He licks his dry lips. “I’m doing a magic trick.”
The Krave raises a brow. Good. Interest means that he might get to live even a second longer. “Oh?”
“Yes. I am going to make a man disappear and never come back.”
Reinforcement: Sometimes, a liar might need to reinforce the lie over time to ensure its persistence. This can involve repeating the false information, incorporating it into other narratives, or convincing others to vouch for its accuracy.
A couple of kids stop him and Lumine as they’re walking back. After performing some easy tricks, like “Pick a card,” and “Is this your mora behind your ear?” Easy tricks. He has a rule for himself to never repeat a performance, but he’ll repeat these small street gatherings anytime a wide-eyed untainted child looks at him with innocent reverence.
Still, as soon as the tricks are performed and the spare napkins are signed, Lyney feels the strain of his cheek muscles from smiling a little too hard. He lets his posture slouch a bit. It’s not automatic, this switch between “performer” and “man.”
Lyney doesn’t quite know how to act around people when there’s no expectation, no standard for him to meet. He raises his hand, hesitating, before ruffling the children’s hair. “Stay healthy and youthful until next time.”
Lumine’s a fine picture of grace. She already has two lollipops ready. “These are from Mondstadt. You can eat them, and you won’t get a toothache.”
“That’s magic,” he says.
Lumine tucks a stand of hair behind her ear, smiling. “It’s not. My friend created this candy with an alternative molecular structure to sugar that cavities can’t form from eating these. I have more if you can find me again.”
The children gingerly accept her gift. “Thank you, madam.”
“You’ve got such natural charisma,” he tells her, once they’ve run off and they’re back to a steady pace back to the hotel.
“I don’t. Ae – my brother – he’s the kinder one of the two of us. I used to be the boar in the fine china shop and he was the diplomat who did all the damage control.”
Ah. He sees it now. How she strains herself to compensate for her brother’s absence.
By the time they reach Hotel Bouffes d'ete, Lumine stops to greet the Chief Justice, make promises with Navia to get tea sometime, wave hello to Charlotte, and hell, even his recluse brother shyly tips his head at her in acknowledgement when they pass through. It’s funny that he’s lived here his whole life, yet Lumine seamlessly blends into the country. Her shoulders relax with each friend she greets, her head held high. She’s only been here for a few weeks, good god.
“Even your accent is perfected to a T,” he says. Is she really a traveler? Each place she visits is only temporary, why get so accustomed to a land’s culture and community when she’s bound to leave anyways?
Lumine glances at him. “There’s so much good in this world. You just have to open yourself up to receive it.”
He thinks that’s a subtle dig at him hiding his loyalties to the Fatui. Before he can start feeling defensive, she continues, “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but sometimes, you look so, so sad after you finish an act. Like the attention is a burden, and like you don’t think the audience is really applauding or appreciating you the way you want.”
He grins. “If I’m not constantly reforming myself, I won’t be interesting anymore. No one wants a show with boring parts.”
She tells him that’s a terrible way to live. Lyney doesn’t quite get it.
Reinforcement: Lyney has lived a lie inside-out for years now. He doesn't know any other way to live.
Delivery: How a lie is presented matters. This includes the tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, and choice of words. Skilled liars might intentionally modify their demeanor to appear more convincing.
Motivation: People lie for various reasons, such as to avoid punishment, gain advantages, protect their self-image, or manipulate others. Understanding the motive behind a lie can shed light on the intent of the liar.
They head to the main kitchen. Boundless sunlight pierces through the glass windows, nondiscriminatory to whose skin it kisses. Still, when he looks at Lumine’s shining white dress and her spun-gold hair glinting so captivatingly, he thinks that the sun still has favorites.
“When’s the last time you opened up to someone?” Lumine is beside him, washing some berries.
He looks down at the sunsettias he’s cutting. There are some dead ants burrowed in the concavities of the fruit. He feels bad for them. If somebody like Lumine comes along to sweep them away, they’re helpless captives. She likely took them from somewhere with boundless sunshine like Mondstadt, stuffed the sunsettias in her bag, and now they’re in Fontaine, far from home. The thing about ants is that they’ll die in exhaustion searching for their colony once they’re lost. “I’m opening up to you right now, aren’t I?”
He can feel her dubious surprise on him. “Seriously? This is you opening up?”
“Yes.” He watches the corpses of ants slowly flush down the sink. Maybe he’ll also meet his demise if he keeps following this compulsion of his towards Lumine like a moth toward a flame. Fuck it, he might as well throw her another bone. Detach a clavicle of his for her—those are small. “I’m a cat person, by the way.”
“You’d make more progress by talking about the weather. Come on. Tell me some hot juicy gossip no one else knows,” she teases.
“Lynette was the first of us to get her vision. It’s not that I was jealous, but moreso that I would be cast aside, weaker, and she wouldn’t need me anymore.”
“No, she’ll always need you.” Lumine’s tone is pleading, as if this conversation was of personal sentiment to her.
“I tried to fight my fate as much as I could. I begged my Father for a Delusion, even, but in the end, I accepted that I couldn’t lower myself in that way to stay by her side.” He remembers those long, restless nights planning for some magic act or mission filled with longing that he could implement elemental flair into his performances. “By the time I accepted my grief, a Pyro vision saved us during a mission. It was as if Celestia were testing my loyalty and because I submitted to my mortal helplessness and because I didn’t resort to other life-draining methods to wield an element that I passed her test.”
“Maybe it didn’t have to do with Celestia. Maybe it had to do with how deep down, you’re a good person with your own moral compass.”
He’s never been granted such kindness from anyone besides his family. He looks at her to see only earnestness in her wide, defiant eyes. His heart beats twice in one tempo.
Perhaps guided by the momentum, he gives her his whole ribcage. He acts out his delivery rather whimsically and airily. “I killed someone for the first time when I was twelve,” he confesses. “I’d do it again.”
“To protect my Family,” goes unsaid.
While he often opted for small lies to disguise as truth, Lyney sometimes utilized the truth, fully expecting them to think he was lying. This technique kept people guessing for more. Was he lying? Being truthful? If she truly believed him, she would hate him. He’ll be taken to that damn opera house again in the defendant seat, but this time, she’ll be the prosecutor instead of his lawyer.
He expects her to nervously laugh off his comment. Yet, “weapon of choice?”
“Poison, although I thought about using a bow. I didn’t really get good at shooting though, until my Father took me in,” he muses.
Huh. He thought she would back off cautiously before running away. Yet, when he looks at her callused hands and her eyes that look like they’ve seen millenia of battles, maybe it makes sense she wouldn’t.
She smiles at him. “I’m traveling through Teyvat to look for Aether. This is the fifth nation I’ve been in.”
She’s mentioned an “Ae” previously. “Is he older or younger than you?”
“I’m younger than him by three minutes. We’re twins.”
Oh. That explains a lot. He does not tell her all that this explains to him. Instead, “I bet he holds that over you. Lynette’s two hours and twelve minutes younger than me, and I remind her at least three times a week.”
She laughs, twinkling bells, and he thinks he falls in love with her a bit more. “Yes. You remind me of him a bit.”
The moment is forever ruined. He is family-zoned. “That’s disgusting. Never compare me to him again.”
“Sorry.” She is not apologetic. He can tell. She takes all the sunsettias he’s finished cutting into a large bowl, beginning to mash in the berries and sugar. “You are the most amazing person I have ever met, and no one else can light a candle to your charisma and flair for drama.”
Against his greater wishes, he cannot contain his choking laugh. At most, he quickly covers it up with a cough.
Delivery & Motivation: Lyney can’t help but like Lumine. He’ll do anything to make her like him – he’ll be funnier, wittier, cooler. A version of him unnaturally upgraded, evolutionized just for her.
All of the dishes he is best at cooking are sweet. It’s the same with Lynette. Initially, it was to survive. Living in that noble’s mansion, all child servants were trained to learn how to make delicacies like macaroons, eclairs, and tiramisu — something about small hands being good for intricate dishes. Yet, Lyney doesn’t actually enjoy eating sweet things.
Once, he wanted to make that ugly noble suffer. He switched out sugar instead of salt in one of the desserts. He was feeling particularly vicious that day. It was a petty prank, but the noble spat out the cake in front of the important guests he was hosting, and the satisfaction that came from successfully performing an act flared in his gut.
He thought he was prepared to face the consequences: to lose all sensations of taste. Yet, as soon as he let the hot fluids seep down his throat, he knew that the bland boiling water was going to be the last thing he would be able to taste for weeks.
Lynette scolded him for his impulsiveness. Every once in a blue moon when there’s no one to keep him company besides the crickets hidden among the bushes at 4 o’ clock in the morning, he’ll close his eyes and remember the pity reflected in her eyes that night.
Before, her eyes were a clear violet when she looked at him. Yet, in his first fall from perfection, he could begin to the cloudiness in her irises. Her perspective of him was tainted, and while he could try to purify the once pristine image he had, a splattered backdrop would always be slightly smudged even after repetitive scrubbings.
So, even after his taste buds eventually rejuvenated themselves, Lyney doesn’t really trust his gums and teeth and tongue anymore. He’d try the most sugary pastry Father would bring back from Snezhnaya and all he could do is lie, lie, lie about the metallic taste.
Lumine’s sitting at the edge of the kitchen now on a stool. He had stationed her there, telling her that he was in charge of this desert and that too many chefs in the kitchen were illegal. She threatened to press charges in the name of the Court of Fontaine, but eventually acquiesced.
After letting the several multi-colored batches of purée boil, Lyney finally can shape the jelly substance, malleable in his hands.
A comfortable silence has elapsed between the two of them, a rare moment for him as someone who loves talking. But not for long.
“So… if you were a performer, what would you be known for?”
Immediately without hesitation, “I would sing. I’d want live musical accompaniment too. I’d like to be the solo singer, but I also wouldn’t mind being a side singer to something else happening on stage, like a live play or something.”
“So I have a business proposition for you.”
“Oh? What could it be?”
“I think you should…”
“Yes?”
“You should do the mic check for my shows.”
“…wow.”
“You know, the people who go up and say ‘testing, one-two-three’ on the stage before the main act goes up. They also–“
“No, don’t worry. I don’t need an explanation.” Lumine is clenching her stool, her knuckles a blanched white. Lyney vaguely gets the impression of a pouting snapping turtle from looking at her.
“Can you sing a song for me?”
“Is this my audition piece?”
“Yes, but you need to sing, like right now.”
“No vocal warm-up? What if I injure my precious pipes?”
“You’re right. I’ll give you five minutes to compose yourself. Start anytime.”
“Thank you. You are so merciful.”
“That’s what we Fontaine people are known for.”
“I thought it was the baguettes.”
“That too.”
Lyney is coating the jellies in sugar now. His specialty is plating arrangement. Creating equi-sized proportions, balancing contrast and vibrancy to guide the gaze of the consumer first to the focal point, and then everywhere else—these are all transferable skills he’s mastered over the years. After all, this is how he makes an honest living.
He’s adding the final garnishes when he hears Lumine sing, faintly at first until she builds confidence to sing loudly enough for him to hear without straining.
It’s a tune in an otherworldly language he’s never heard before, yet it rolls off her tongue easily. It’s another reminder just of how she’s lived lifetimes without him and how little she does not need him. Her singing invokes sentiments of devastation in him, but the melody itself is actually quite light and hopeful.
The song ends.
In the past few weeks he’s gotten to know her, Lumine has shared pieces of herself here and there. Yet, what she’s just sung held the most vulnerable emotion he’s heard. It’s not the common Teyvat tongue, and he doesn’t understand entirely what she means to communicate, but Lyney thinks he gets it. This is her heart—encased within her own ribcage that she’s sharing with him.
Consistency: To maintain the lie, the liar must strive to be consistent in their story. Inconsistencies can raise suspicions and lead to the exposure of the deception.
“Your Pate de Fruit, mademoiselle.”.
“Finally, I’m famished. I held in my hunger, but a girl’s got to eat and—“ Lumine stops to look at her dessert.
“This is so lovely, Lyney.” She ignores the fork he had so delicately placed beside her, opting to pick up a cube with her hands. “Thank you.”
“You take one too.”
He shakes his head. “I made this for you to eat. I don’t need any.”
“You didn’t even taste-test any. I was watching.”
Lyney thinks of a burnt tongue, metal, and scalding hot water. But now Light is with him when she wasn’t before. He tries a burnt orange colored cube.
The Pate de Fruit is a thing of saccharine sacrement. It’s the closest to goodness Lyney’s ever tasted.
Consistency: The thing is, Lyney isn’t sure when he’s lying and when he isn’t anymore.
This is the anatomy of a lie. It's self-inflicting violence that’s survived with him since childhood. He’s dissected out every calcified blood-clot and tugged out stringy fascia and cleaved out all the gristly internal tissue. And with the same level of meticulousness, Lyney knows all about the recipient, intention, delivery, motivation, reinforcement, and consistency necessary of a lie. After all, Lyney resides in the wake of his own artifice.
Lyney thought he would rather locate all the rot inside of him, gorge it out, and shove it back down his esophagus so that no living soul could ever find it again than to bare it out, vulnerable and defenseless, for someone to see in all its ugliness.
Then, Lyney meets Lumine.
They spent the rest of their evening at an indoor restaurant eating food of actual filling substance suiting a dinner inside the hotel. It’s tranquil and serene and exactly the sort of state Lyney wants to capture in a tophat to store away forever.
Lyney watches Lumine pick at her peas and make spitballs with their straw wrappers. He feels younger again, making snow forts with his mashed potatoes to protect his territory of his side of their shared table.
They sit there until they’re the last two in the restaurant. Lyney’s butt feels numb, but he can’t bring himself to get up and shatter this tender iota of time.
Nothing lasts forever. “Why did you place them beside my Pate de Fruit?”
He knows she’s talking about the heads of the lumidouce bells – those forlorn flowers that symbolize parting.
“Because you can’t stay,” Lyney says quietly.
She sighs. “And you can’t open up.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“How about you consider being honest with me for once. Do you want me to stay? Do you want to follow me wherever I go?”
Lyney, simply put, is a liar.
In kinder words, he is a magician, an entertainer for the masses. He can embellish his title all he’d like, plaster a ridiculous amount of polish, aggressively shine it all he’d like, or even scourge out his own spit to clean—as if the contribution of his own biology untainted by the outside world could act as a salvaging ingredient—but in the end, Lyney is not an honest man.
And yet for once, Lyney opens his mouth and doesn't tell a lie.