The workshop was quiet at first. Aether perched on the drafting table, mechanical legs clicking as it adjusted the parchment. Callista hummed to herself, sketching a simple, elegant schematic. Everything was going smoothly.

Then the fire started.

Callista yelped, spinning around just in time to see smoke pouring from the small oven where her dinner had, apparently, self-immolated. She lunged for it, grabbing the nearest rag to smother the flames—only to realize, a second too late, that the rag was also flammable.

In the background, Aether remained at the drafting table, methodically adjusting the schematic as Callista dashed back and forth at the speed of mach Valthyra, flailing the burning rag like an unhinged windmill. Eventually, order was restored. Callista, slightly singed and thoroughly exasperated, collapsed into her chair, brushing soot from her notes.

“Alright,” she muttered, breathless, “where was I...”

A loud crash interrupted her. She turned just in time to watch the shelving unit teeter precariously… then collapse in slow, inevitable destruction, sending gears, blueprints, and an entire set of teacups cascading onto the floor.

Aether rotated its head slightly. “Structural integrity: insufficient.”

Callista groaned, rubbing her temples. “You don’t say.”

A short while later, Callista found herself inexplicably crawling along a ceiling beam, toast clamped in her mouth, as she stretched toward a loose bolt that had suddenly become very important. Below, Aether continued working on the schematic, utterly unbothered. Callista extended her arm just a little further—

CRASH.

Gravity, as always, won. She hit the floor in a pile of parchment, toast, and regret, Aether barely pausing to acknowledge the incident before adjusting another line.

Later, in a moment of deep contemplation, the two of them stood side by side, tin foil hats firmly in place. Callista’s goggles had been haphazardly stitched into hers, making her look half inventor, half conspiracy theorist. She sipped her tea thoughtfully from a broken cup, eyes locked on the schematic as if divining its secrets.

Aether’s head tilted. “Purpose of headgear: unclear.”

Callista tapped the tin foil. “It helps me think.”

Silence stretched. Then, as if nothing had happened, they both turned back to the schematic, resuming their work.

After what felt like an eternity of revisions, side notes, and an incident involving tweezers and a bit of chalk that neither of them wished to discuss, Callista finally lifted the parchment, eyes gleaming with triumph. “Perfect.”

Aether, now inexplicably covered in stray bits of string and a few errant feathers, twitched an antenna. “Probability of failure: 72%.”

Callista grinned, undeterred. “Oh, I like those odds.”

But the creative process was never really finished. No sooner had she declared victory than she noticed a smudge on the schematic, which obviously meant the whole thing needed to be redone. “Aether, fetch the extra parchment!” she declared, already reaching for a quill.

Aether did not fetch the parchment. Instead, it regarded her in eerie silence, its glowing eyes flickering as though calculating the exact likelihood of her needing to start over again in ten minutes. “Suggestion: test first, redesign after.”

Callista gasped, looking genuinely offended. “Aether! That is not how innovation works! Testing is just the proof of concept for why we redesign!”

She dove back into her work, completely unaware that she had somehow dipped her quill in the soot still clinging to her sleeve. The page steadily became a chaotic mess of ink blots, smeared fingerprints, and increasingly frantic side notes like “WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA” and “STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: TBD”.

Across the room, a small candle wobbled dangerously on the edge of the table.

Aether turned, noted the candle’s position, and let out a small mechanical sigh. “Fire risk: high.”

The candle toppled. Callista caught it—barely—only to knock over an entire inkwell in the process.

“Noooooo—”

The two of them stared at the ink-stained schematic, eerily still. The tin foil hats were gone now, replaced by expressions of quiet resignation. Callista took another slow sip of her tea before carefully setting the ruined schematic aside.

Aether finally spoke. “Probability of failure now: 89%.”

Callista exhaled through her nose, slow and measured. Then, with great care, she reached for another sheet of parchment. “Alright. Round two.”

Aether twitched its antenna. “Correction: Round seven.”

Callista ignored him, already scribbling again. The creative process, after all, must go on.