WILLY NIMBLEWICK

“Oh, no, no, no, no!” dressed in a white shirt and brown double breasted vest, Willy whimpered erratically as the smell of burnt chocolate took over what little breathing air he had left. “What did you do, Zeph?! Oh, come on! Very wrong timing! Very wrong timing, Zeph! The investors will be at the factory anytime soon!”

Smoke filled the small box he called a room, or a kitchen, or whatever it was at this moment, and as well flaring emotions, both from his being and the other tiny, almost unnoticeable creature that existed alongside him within the space.

This creature, even as humane as it looked, would no doubt seem weird and strike a petrifying shock to the eyes of anyone who might come across it—anyone who wasn’t Willy Nimblewick.

It was a he, there was no doubt about that, and Willy had never once thought that to be otherwise, even though his abnormal little friend, who was of the name Zephyr, had a feminine like tone of speech—a voice soothing, calm, and intelligent.

But that was not what stood out about Zephyr the most.

Besides his beautiful green eyes and bright blonde hair, he also had long pointed ears, a physical characteristic that had never been once associated with humanity in all of history. On top of that, he was also dressed in a green pointed hat, short sleeved tunic, and breeches; all which were made from magical unwithering leaves woven finely together, and his sandals from intertwined twigs.

Although, that, along with his six inch height, paled in shock factor when compared to what he was currently doing. Floating in the air!

Flying to be more precise…

And that ability he used to shift further away from the thick smoke that swirled about Willy’s chocolate machine.

“Hey, Nimblewick!” Zephyr voiced after a barrage of low pitched coughs. “Don’t you go shouting at me now!”

“Are all pixies really this way? Filled to the brim with unending thoughts of mischief?” Willy was not yet calmed down, and he made sure he passed that across. “Couldn’t you have picked a different occasion to act pixie-like?”

“If I was acting mischievous you wouldn’t just be coughing, dimwit.” Zephyr put his hands on his waist with a pout and rose up so high that he almost came in contact with the wooden beams making up the ceiling of the room.

“Just shut your mouth and open the window. Let the smoke out.” Willy tsked and retracted his hold from the crank handle bestowed to his chocolate machine, a metallic box which was as wide as five yards and as high as five feet, situated in a corner of his room.

Accursed setback… Will I be able to make it in time at this rate…?

Willy took that moment to throw his suppressed frantic gaze around his plain looking room as Zephyr went on to heed his words.

In his twenty two years of life he’d never felt this much pressure before; his heart was pounding faster with every second, and that did nothing to lessen the nervous feeling acting as a cloak over his body.

It was only two or three hours left at a maximum before his life ahead was decided. Once he made his workings known to the investors who would be arriving at Cleavenger’s Dark and Milk chocolate factory, and gave them a reason to invest in his skills, then he would finally be able to achieve his father’s dream.

He would finally become an actual chocolate maker, and lots of people would relish in his creations!

Willy was both excited and anxious, the former directed at his future once everything had gone the way he’d planned, and the latter at the fact that everything he’d planned was already showing signs of cracks.

His plans molded together appeared in his head in the form of a building made out of wood, and the situation he was currently in was the first termite out of many to start eating into it.

But there was no way in the world he would let that happen. Especially not today.

“Do you think we can still make a little extra chocolate?” Willy asked Zephyr, the little pixie heaving out a huff of relief after his struggle of pushing up the shutter of the room’s window bore fruit at long last.

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They always kept it closed because of the factory smokes that filled their living area, which was the Merchant’s District. It disrupted their breathing as it would do any other. And there was also the toxic materials it carried; they were not of the mind to allow that to mingle in with their oh so precious chocolates. But at this moment, there was no difference between the smoke of the outside world and that in their room, only the densities were dissimilar.

“Just one chocolate takes an hour.” Zephyr flew toward his friend and sat right in the center of his full brown curly hair. “How many extras are you talking about here, Nimblewick?”

“I don’t know. We were only able to make twenty, and we’ve been working nonstop since yesterday.” Willy sighed. “If only there was more time.”

“You can’t blame yourself, Nimblewick,” Zephyr said as Willy trudged away from his chocolate machine toward the center of his room. “We only found out about the investors yesterday.”

“That’s just an excuse.” Willy scoffed while squatting down and scrutinizing the countless mixing bowls and stirrers made out of stainless steel. His light brown eyes were placed on each one simultaneously as he knew not what to begin with to resume his chocolate production.

It was not like he had completely forgotten how to make chocolates or had run out of ingredients; he still had loads of cocoa beans and powder milk after all—half a bag of each, if he was to be precise. The main problem with the production was that he did not have the manpower the factories had, which was why it had taken him and Zephyr since the afternoon of the day past to produce twenty bars of chocolate, both of them only getting three hours of rest during the whole process.

Yes, his father’s greatest invention, 'The Inevitable Spirit of Chocolate Lives Through Me’ maker, in short ‘TISCLM’, was in his possession, and that increased the rate of his productivity by eighty percent. But still, he had to extract the cocoa liquor from the cocoa beans nibs himself.

That took a lot of time.

There were also the hours he had to take to carefully mix in butter and sugar and milk with it. And also his wait period to allow his special ingredients to settle in with the mixture—ingredients which were none other than a teaspoon each of the extracts of a strawberry fruit, apple fruit, lime fruit, yuzu fruit, and last of all, Zephyr’s pixie dust. The last of them taking at least thirty minutes to mingle in with the ingredients because of its illusory powers.

Of course Willy knew nothing about how the dust worked, and he only believed what the owner had told him.

Zephyr had said, on the first day they’d agreed to make use of the dust to boost the quality of their chocolates, that it had a mind of its own. If rushed it would retaliate and might cause severe damages to whoever would take a bite of the chocolate it was thrown into; but if it was given time to settle down, then its illusion powers would no doubt be effective beyond human imagination.

Willy trusted his skills in chocolate making, which he’d gotten from countless cooking sessions with his father, but after he’d taken a bite of his chocolate mixed with the pixie dust of Zephyr, he found himself sauntering into a new world.

The dust had enhanced every single savory taste of his chocolate, and as well had him craving for more and more. It was addictive, far too much, though not to the point that he’d lost his senses.

He had known then, he and Zephyr both, that the dust would be a gateway for them to break into the world of chocolate business.

Relying on mere skills alone when squaring off with someone such as Baron Orsted Cleavenger, the number one in the business, would never prove successful. If he himself was to become the number one, then he had to stand out. Zephyr’s dust was vital in that regard.

“So, what is it you want to do now, Nimblewick?” Zephyr flitted down from the top of Willy’s hair to instead lie on his shoulder, arms tucked behind his head with one leg over the other. “Isn’t twenty bars of chocolate enough? We’re not going there to feed a whole factory, you know?”

Willy was pulled out of his thoughts with Zephyr’s words, and at that he blew out a sigh in exasperation as he came to an agreement with what his little pixie friend had said.

Yes, he was not going there to feed the whole factory. If he could get between two to four investors to try out his chocolate bars and invest in him, then he was okay with that for starters.

This was the only effective option he had left.

He’d already tried advertising his products in Ur’s Tribune for a whole month, but it had not given him any return for his money. A single investor never came his way. And he knew he could not blame anyone for not coming all the way to his apartment to try his products out.

Unlike creations related to engineering—whether civil, petroleum, aeronautics—which never lacked investors due to their constant breaks in the world on account of their endless possibilities, chocolate making was like the pauper of that society.

Baron Orsted Cleavenger was also not making it easy in that regard.

Why invest in someone without a factory who might never be able to compete with Baron Orsted in the industry when there are other sorts of companies working on newer creations never seen before to invest in?

Obviously the investors thought in that manner. And that was why Willy had decided to push away his moral ethics after he’d overheard a discussion between ladies while he’d been purchasing ingredients at the Market Quarter.

If he was going to make his father‘s dream of owning a chocolate company come true, then stealing just a bit of Baron Orsted’s investors shouldn’t make him feel bad about himself.

He was sure no investor would look away from him once they’d had a bite of his chocolate; and since they won’t come to him, then he would go to them.