//------------------------------// // If At First You Don't Succeed // Story: Something to be Proud of // by Eighth //------------------------------// Trixie wanders into the Witching Thicket and follows what is now a familiar path to Anonymous' towering hovel. When it's in viewing distance, Trixie notes that the roof is gone and in its place is an odd looking greenhouse or perhaps a cage. Once there, she knocks twice and waits. When there is no answer, she lets herself in. Anonymous never locks the door just in case he is taking a nap or in the middle of something when Trixie arrives. While she could just barge in as soon as she arrives, Trixie feels she isn't quite that familiar with Anonymous. Yet. "Anonymous, you around?" "In the aviary," he calls from upstairs. All of Trixie's visits have been on the first floor where the entire floor is a messy office, or outside in the courtyard where all of Anonymous' magical creatures roam freely. As if on cue, a firefly zips around Trixie's head. She watches the orange trail that it leaves behind as it whizzes around, propelled by the great gaseous flame coming from its butt. There's a faint smile that appears on Trixie's face as she recalls how one of the fireflies is terrified of heights and often gives a faint, high-pitched scream as it whirs about. "Coming," Trixie shouts. The stairs circle around the room as they ascend, she skips a few in a hasty glee to explore more of this strange tower. Once she reaches the second floor, she peers in to look for Anonymous. "Anonymous?" This room is the living quarters. On one side is the bedroom, with a few chests and wardrobes while on the other is the kitchen. There's even a long dining table with thirteen chairs in the centre of the room pushed and stacked up against a wall. But all of it looks so unused and clean aside from the dust. Though, in the centre of the room is a heap of clay oddly slapped into a bipedal shape. Knowing Anonymous, one might expect a mess of clothes but mainly papers and things for magical experiments to be littered everywhere. Instead, there is just a heap of earth. As Trixie wonders where Anonymous must sleep as the bed has collected more dust than anything else, his voice sings out. "One more floor." Trixie starts hopping up the stairs until she reaches the door to the roof. She opens it to see the roof where the greenhouse looking thing she saw on approach. Various bars hold a tinted glass in place to create a glass house but a few pieces. Anonymous is sitting at a desk painting an egg. He pulls up a stool for Trixie. "What are you doing?" "Painting an egg." "But why?" "I'm making," Anonymous pauses as he concentrates carefully on a precise brush stroke, "A phoenix egg." "What?" "I am making a phoenix egg." "I heard you, I just don't see how that is a phoenix egg." Anonymous pauses to hold out his creation, twirling it in his fingers carefully. White, yellow, orange, red, and blue swirl around like a vortex on the little egg. "Why blue?" "Do you know how a flame can burn blue?" "It's... because of how hot it is, right? But there are also some chemicals that burn different colours, yeah?" "Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, phoenixes are really hot, yeah? So... Blue," he finishes as he holds out his egg once again, this time with pride. "Phoenix eggs don't swirl like that though," Trixie finally mentions. Anonymous looks at his egg once again, now with a look of dejected disappointment. "Have you seen one before?" "Pictures, yeah." He grabs the paint and the carton with a dozen eggs to slide them over to Trixie. Taking her cue, Trixie grips the brush, washes it off in water, and begins to apply a base coat of red as Anonymous leans on his arm to watch. "How's school?" Trixie's mind flashes back to the Dynamic Duo's retaliation after the book sent Rotten into a sneezing fit. In a school of magic, you'd think they'd resort to magic. Yet their method of bullying is rather archaic and barbaric. Opting for throwing her bag on the roof, appearing from nowhere to trip her, and throwing things at her head in class. Trixie was, or rather still is, the type to lash out. Something with teeth usually did the trick on Floribunda while Rotten Apple was a bit trickier. His reflexes were sharp and his magic was strong for his age rendering her own barbaric options impossible. So usually Trixie just went for the one. But now? Now Trixie is feeling more confident. Anonymous was teaching her magic and if she could use magic even half as easily as Anonymous did, the Troublesome Two would have quite the backlog of payback coming. If Rotten Apple and Floribunda were actually the attentive types of clever, they would have noticed the sudden change in Trixie's reactions. If anyone were to go from constant counter-attack to acceptance in a day, you would do well to sense the immense ominous foreboding. A mind like that will always contain a list that tallies every wrong thing you do until they are ready to read them all back to you. "Trixie?" "Hm?" She replies once she realigns with reality. "Everything okay at school?" "Still behind on my lessons," she states in hopes that is enough to satisfy the question. Anonymous nods. He seems to accept her answer, though he is the type where you're never sure if there is such a thing as certainty. Or at least, you weren't sure if you could be certain around him. Trixie was at least sure about that much. "Done," Trixie says as she holds out the egg. Gingerly, Anonymous takes it into his hand and looks it over carefully. The red base is layered over with orange and yellow with white lining. He holds it up to his ear and gives it a shake. Trixie is unsure exactly what type of criteria she is being judged for, but it seems to pass as Anonymous smiles. "Worth a go." Bones creak and wheeze as he gets to his feet and heads downstairs. It's not a hard decision for Trixie, while painting flame patterns on eggs is an amusing way to past the time, Trixie is an extremely curious creature. If 'curiosity killed the cat' then Trixie would need to follow after it. So without any internal debate, she follows Anonymous. Downstairs in the living quarters, Anonymous dusts off what can be best described as a cooking bucket and places it over a freshly lit fire. Then the egg goes in and he takes a seat by the fire to wait. Trixie pushes a chair, the wood screeching along the timber wood floor the entire way, and sits beside the wizard. "How long will it take?" "Oh, all night I wager." "You're going to sit here all night?" "Well... Yes, I suppose. Haven't got much else to do." Trixie pauses as she wonders just how forgetful or senile Anonymous might be. "No, there's no way he'd forget," Trixie tells herself, "Then again... A free afternoon would be nice if he did." "How is this going to make a phoenix?" She finally asks as the question becomes too much for her to sit on any longer. "Phoenixes need heat to be hatched," Anonymous replies flatly. "But, that was just a regular egg, wasn't it?" "If you mean, before you painted it, yes. It was a chicken egg. Plain ol' chicken. But after your handy work--or would it be accurate to call it hoofy?" The nature of this question grips Anonymous' mind firmly and seems to take him away. His hand strokes his beard and his eyes gaze deeply beyond the fire as he wonders and ponders. "Anonymous," Trixie says with a nudge. "What?" "You said it was a chicken egg before I painted it." "Yes, and now it's a phoenix egg," he tells her in a serious voice. Sometimes, Trixie found herself staring at Anonymous' face to try and find some hint that he was joking or crazy. Perhaps the fact that he could say something like that and be completely serious about it meant he was crazy. If he were crazy, how crazy did that make her for coming to his lessons all the time? "I don't get how a bit of paint makes it a phoenix egg--" "The world is made up of things you don't know. If you know how to use that, well, Let me put it another way... If I don't know this sort of thing is impossible, then how will the universe know to stop me?" "What?" "That's a good point. You better start thinking that the egg in there is a phoenix egg or you're going to get me into a lot of trouble." "Trouble with who?" "Best we don't mention her name. She doesn't like when I forget to stick with the laws of physicals." "Physicals? You mean physics?" "That's the one," he clicks his fingers and points to Trixie, his eyes unbreaking from the fire as it crackles away. "You do know you don't make sense most of the time, right?" "That's right. Because I'm making a phoenix egg." Trixie lets out such a tremendous groan that she gets light-headed and falls off the chair. "You alright?" Unable to muster any real energy to open her mouth, she groans back from the floor. That was another thing about Anonymous. Let him talk for too long and you get a headache just trying to keep up. "Now see here. If I went around thinking about what my mouth was saying and where it was dragging the conversation kicking and screaming, then I'd have less time to focus on all the important things I need to do," harrumphs Anonymous. "Like hard boiling an egg?" Trixie replies in a sarcastic groan. "Look, you don't become the most powerful magic user in the eight observable universes without knowing a thing or two about how to make a phoenix. Alright?" "Eight observable universes?" "Yes. There are Eight observable universes and eight disobservable universes." "Don't you mean unobservable." "No, I mean disobservable. It will take too long to explain. Ask about something else." As the mind can only seem to take so much nonsense before sanity yields, Trixie just switches off. Deciding it'd be best just to let it go and that it's too exhausting to kick and scream along with the conversation. With a sigh, she sits upright and looks around the room. Eventually, her swivelling points her towards the lump of clay in the centre of the room. "What is that?" With a whizz, Anonymous spins around to see the half humanoid sculpture and half pile of earth sitting there. "Oh, that," his tone darkening, "Can't seem to work the golem thing out. I'm missing a key component." "Do you know what it is?" Anonymous nods. Then there's a silence. Trixie would hang on the edge of her seat if she were still on it, but instead holds her breath. Once again Anonymous' eyes seem to be looking at something but their real attention is somewhere else far beyond it. "Well?" Trixie finally asks, unable to keep the peace any longer. "A name." Again there is a pause. More due to the fact that Trixie is dumbfounded by the simplicity of the issue. She was expecting a rare magical crystal, the soul from someone pure of heart, dragon's blood, or something mysterious and magical. But a name is as common as it gets. "Do you need a special kind of name?" "No, any name will work." "What has a name got to do with a golem?" "Isn't it obvious?" Trixie shakes her head. "Everything needs a name. A name is what binds you because nothing is ever really real without a name. Until then it's just a thing." "Then... Why haven't you given him one?" "Can't think of a good one," shrugs Anonymous. "What about... Clay?" "Clay? What kind of a dreadful name is--Well, you've gone and done it now." Blue eyes like distant stars turn on in the golem's ceramic skull. The heap of clay at the base compacts and moves about as if every grain has a mind of its own and has democratically decided on a shape. The arms grow into a bulk, the chest becomes stockier and hunched, making the legs look short and stumpy in comparison to the upper half. Clay's face is featureless, save for the holes where its glowing eyes reside but it very clearly stares at the two occupants in the room. "Hmm, I forgot the mouth." "Do you have a quill and paper?" "Somewhere. Look, I best deal with this. I'll need you to go back to school and come back when you've got time." "What? You're trying to hatch a phoenix and you just made a golem come to life and now you want me to go back to school?" Trixie protests, her voice squeaking during the higher notes. "Yes, that sounds like a good explanation of the current situation." "I can't! This is going to be murder on me all day tomorrow. I need to know!" "I am sure. But it's late," Anonymous scoops Trixie up under her arm and carries her out of his tower. Trixie kicks, flails, protests, and even tries biting a few times but once she is placed on the ground outside all the fight leaves her. She does have a large and tempting voice in her head saying to sneak a peek in a window. But another, and sadly more rational voice, appears to say Anonymous would know right away and send her back anyway.