Candlewick "Pip" Patchglow

Warforged / Fighter

Submitted character story

A Child of Lanternlight
No one remembers when Candlewick first appeared at the Witchlight Carnival.
Some say he sprouted from a decorative pumpkin left too long beneath a Fey-touched moon. Others insist he was carved as a prop and simply… stood up one night when the lanterns were lit.
What is known is this:
One autumn dusk, as music drifted across the fairgrounds and fireflies flickered between silk banners, a pumpkin near the edge of the Big Top split along a glowing seam.
Inside was a small figure with ember-light burning gently in his hollow chest.

 And he simply watched the lights.
Candlewick grew up among painted wagons and velvet curtains. He swept sawdust, polished mirrors in the Hall of Illusions, relit guttering candles, and reset carnival games after children ran laughing into the twilight.
He loved the lights most of all.
Lanterns. Candles. Sparkling illusions.
Light made everything softer. Kinder. Forgiving.
The carnival workers eventually stopped treating him like a curiosity and began treating him like one of their own. Candlewick worked quietly and tirelessly, happiest when he was useful.
Yet even in joy, there was a strange hollowness inside him — deeper than the empty space beneath his carved ribs.
When he was still young — still new — Candlewick wandered too far beyond the usual carnival paths.
He remembers moths glowing like drifting embers.
 Music that didn’t belong to any instrument he recognized.
 A tall silhouette standing between the trees, crowned in antlers and silver light.
A voice spoke.
It did not sound cruel.
It sounded curious.
Then—
Darkness.
He awoke the next morning lying just outside the carnival gates as if he had never left.
The lanterns burned.
 The music played.
 Everything was normal.
Except the warmth inside his chest had dimmed.
Something had been taken from him that night.
Not a physical thing.
 Not even a memory he can name.
But a feeling.
A certainty.
Before that night, he had felt whole.
Now, the glow within him flickers — steady, but never as bright as it once was.