Tinkerbell woke up early for work the next morning. She knew that there were more fairies like the three she met last night who were expecting her to fail. It was now her goal to prove them all wrong. Even though she had been slow in blooming, she wanted to quickly become a good tinker. After all, if the queen designated her to be a tinker it must be her destiny. She looked over at Tinkerelias's bed. The large fairy was dead asleep and it looked like he was having a nice dream.

Tinkerbell walked over to the fancy mirror that the human tinkers had created and put her hair up into the generic bun that was a required part of the uniform for all female home fairies. She knew it to be a mirror because Tinkerelias explained it to her the night before. It had been slightly traumatic as she accidentally walked past the mirror and thought there was an intruder in her home. She had never seen her reflection before and she almost broke the mirror trying to fight off the intruder. Tinkerelias calmed her down by explaining how it worked. He even took the mirror off the wall so Tinkerbell could see that there was nothing behind it and no way that a fairy was inside of it.

 Tinkerbell chuckled as she remembered the incident. Then she ran her hands over her green dress to get out any of the wrinkles that came from sleeping in her favorite piece of clothing. Finally, she put on her green slippers to complete her look. Suddenly, she remembered. Green wasn't the color of the home tinkers. Before she went to work, she would have to change into one of the brown sack dresses in her closet. Her stomach churned at the thought of wearing it, but she did it anyway.

After leaving the closet, she  looked up at the ticking apparatus on the wall, which Tinkerelias told her was a clock used by the humans to tell time.

Tinkerelias he had told her lots of things about the humans so that she could better understand the furniture in her house. When he showed her the closet, she was slightly saddened that all it would ever be filled with was brown dresses. The clock face read 5:20. It was ten minutes until breakfast started and Tinkerbell wondered if she should wake up Tinkerelias. Suddenly, Tinkerelias sat up straight in his bed and slapped himself in the face a couple of times. He stood up and walked toward the door.

"Time for breakfast!" He said to Tinkerbell excitedly. She was shocked at how he awoke so suddenly at the perfect time. It must have been something he had learned during the six months that everyone was waiting for her to bloom. She got up and followed him out of the door, determined to have a productive day.

Breakfast wasn't much different from the previous night's dinner, except for the fact that the three fairies weren't anywhere to be found. 

"They're avoiding me." Tinkerbell said with a sullen expression on her face.

"Who?" Tinkerelias asked with his mouth full of fresh berries. 

"Watcherlyn, Growerkel, and Changerpenny." Replied Tinkerbell, slightly annoyed that Tinkerelias seemed to have forgotten about the events of last night.

"They're probably just sitting somewhere else."  Tinkerelias replied as he licked berry juice from his plate.

"I looked for them. They're nowhere to be found around the table." Tinkerbell was so upset that she pushed her breakfast away.

"Maybe they're not hungry." Tinkerelias stated as he took berries off of Tinkerbell's discarded plate. 

"It would be irresponsible for a fairy to skip breakfast before a hard days work!" She exclaimed. Tinkerelias had her plate upturned so that the berries slid into his mouth. Once he was done eating her breakfast, he looked at her with a 'you're one to talk' expression on his face.

"Their jobs aren't like ours." Tinkerelias stood from his seat as he spoke.

"Why? How so?" Tinkerbell asked quickly. She wouldn't budge from her seat until he answered. She just stared up at him inquisitively. 

"Our job is harder, better get to it." Tinkerelias said with a smirk. He wiped his mouth of berry juice and ran off toward a large building. He didn't answer her question fully and Tinkerbell was so curious she couldn't stand it.

Following him, Tinkerbell arrived at the work area, a large warehouse with rows of tables used by the tinkers as workstations. There, she was pulled aside by Tinkerslay who handed her a tool belt. She was disappointed, to say the least. She had already changed from her green dress into the drab, brown garb this morning.  Now she had to put on the tool belt as well. However, she didn't want to seem like a weakling or a complainer so she took the belt without a word. She slipped on the tool belt and immediately fell to the floor. The belt was so heavy that she had to use all her strength just to stand up. Disregarding the heaviness of the tool belt, there was something else off about the outfit. For some reason, her body felt uneven and she didn't like it. There was no time to figure out the problem so Tinkerbell let it go. By the time she made it back to the warehouse all of the other tinkers except Tinkerslay were hard at work. 

"Questions?" Tinkerslay asked Tinkerbell in his soothing baritone voice. There were so many tools in the belt that Tinkerbell couldn't help but have questions. 

"What's this?" Tinkerbell asked, grabbing the first tool in the belt. 

"Those are twig tweezers, my dear. Made from the finest of twigs that fall from the tree of life." Tinkerslay stated.

"What are they for?" Tinkerbell looked the long slender item up and down, pinching it between her fingers to open and close it. 

"For picking up the small things." Tinkerslay replied as if it were the most obvious answer and required no more explanation. It wasn't that clear at all to Tinkerbell but it didn't seem like continuing the line of questioning would get her anywhere. 

".....And what's this?" Tinkerbell asked about the next tool. It was much bigger and sharp. 

"Granite axe." Tinkerslay replied. He was smiling at Tinkerbell as he spoke, but his tone sounded rushed. He also kept looking around the room as if he had somewhere else to be. It seemed his "questions" inquiry was just a courtesy and not an actually invitation to ask questions. Tinkerbell got the drift and sealed her lips even though she had no idea what she was supposed to do.

"Time to get to work!" Tinkerslay exclaimed as he roughly slapped Tinkerbell on the back and flew off to his work station. The slap was so strong that she almost fell to the floor again.

Stabilizing herself once more, she looked around the room in the same manner that Tinkerslay had done. As she looked, she saw that all the work stations were occupied.

"There's nowhere for me to work." Said Tinkerbell to the fairy working at the station closest to her. The fairy was Tinkerben, he had bloomed in the birth cycle right before hers.

"Of course there is no station for you. As a tinker, everything you need you must build!" He said as he gestured to a pile of wood in the corner of the warehouse. She walked over to the pile and looked at the wood. There were no instructions on how to build a table nor instructors to direct her. Everyone else was actively tinkering away at their own stations, paying no heed to Tinkerbell and her plight. Was this knowledge something she should have been born with? Or, perhaps, was it something she had to struggle through until she figured it out? Either way, she didnt know what to do.

Tinkerbell had lollygagged for long enough. Out of fear of looking weak or lazy she quickly picked out four long, thin boards for the tabletop and for rectangular blocks for the legs. There was an empty space next to Tinkerelias so she claimed the spot as her own and started building her table. Very carefully, she started tinkering with the wood. She tried gluing a couple of the thin boards together but they quickly fell apart while the glue was still wet.

"You need to use a clamp to hold the boards together while the glue dries." Said Tinkerelias. Tinkerbell nodded and looked at the many tools in her belt, wondering which was the clamp. Tinkerelias swiftly pulled a C-shaped structure out of the back of her toolbelt and handed it to her.

 With this tip from Tinkerelias, she was able to assemble the top of her table. Then she proceeded to glue the four legs to the tabletop. It took the better part of the day but she finally had her table constructed. She sat her tool belt on the table with a sigh, glad that she was finally finished. The tool belt landed on the ground with a thud as the table crumbled under its weight. For the second time in her short life, Tinkerbell was forced to hold back mounting tears.

"The legs need to be sturdy. It's better to connect them with nails than with glue." Whispered Tinkerelias as he knelt down next to her. Again she nodded and again she began reconstructing her table. She worked hard until the sun set signifying the end of the work day. There, in front of her, was her third attempt at a table. It was crooked due to two of the legs being shorter than the other two and she didn't have the heart to test its sturdiness with her tool belt. She dragged herself away from the disaster that would be her work station and followed the rest of the tinkers out of the warehouse.

"Gather 'round young ones. I have an announcement." Said Tinkerslay. "Tonight, to commemorate the first official day of work for the new cycle of fairies, there will be a great feast at the tree of life. All are invited!" A loud roar erupted from the mostly male group of tinkers. Everyone was excited at the chance to visit the tree of life.