Trades In The Tales of Candy

Melting Malt Balls

The art of candy making is a skill you must practice over and over again until you either: A) find perfection or B) discover what's best for you. The craft itself is not as simple as some would think. You weren't just throwing together favours and hoping for the best. It came down to precision and balancing the combination you chose to combine. It also came down to what the people prefer; what did their taste buds agree and disagree on. But, that isn't to say there wouldn't be any remarkable failures that aren't recorded and studied. Failures are what build pure perfections and define them at their core. No one wants to taste the powerful overbearing nature of an orange with the after taste of black liquorice shaving cream that somehow made its way into the bowl. That's silly; along with the taste of strawberries and gravy, which was apart of the dinner gum idea. Yuck. The sweet success of finding the correct combinations always made the painstaking processes worth wild in the end.

Taylor would say otherwise when she sat at the invention desk recording her bosses thoughts. Every second he said something out loud Taylor was instructed to write it down even when it didn't make sense. At times her hand would start to cramp, and she would have to wrap it after a long mixing section. Taylor hated it most when Wonka could ramble through one hundred sheets of paper-front and back-in one sitting and she would have labelled the spine of the book and file it. She would then have to get another new notebook and hurry back before he realised she wasn't there and what he was saying wasn't noted. Long hours that ran over into the next day would leave Taylor grumpy as she had to rise in early hours to make sure the factory started productions. While Wonka had the freedom to sleep in and "rejuvenate" himself.

'It's just makeup anyway' she would grumble fixing two cups of hot chocolate and carrying them to his room. After certain events, she could come and go from his room as long as he was there. He didn't need a repeat of her trying to go through his stuff because her curiosity got the best of her.

~~~

Earlier that day he was stuck with inspiration as watched the news and overheard the host talk about the blossoming of flowers. Popping on his top hat out of habit, he shuffled out of the TV room and to the glass elevator. Once inside he pulled out his pocket watch and clicked the button on the side to flip the clock bed over to reveal a communicator. He quickly tapped the screen, and it rang calling his assistant. As always she answered but said nothing.

"Meet me in the inventing room, pronto!" He chirp.

"New idea?"

"New idea!" He hung up and pushed the button to the inventing room hallway. As the elevator shot to the sky so did the many different variations of his one idea.

Tonight was another long night for them both of them as Wonka worked on a new variety of candies for the springtime. The first idea was to make flower gumdrops that would turn into flowers in your mouth; you could spit them out and show people.

"Maybe you should stop reading those weird Japanese books," Wonka said deadpan as Taylor spun around in her chair.

"Mangas are classic forms of literature." Taylor rebutted.

The next idea was snack size flying chocolate chicks; when you popped them into your mouth, they looked like their wings were flapping. It was a good start, but they both agree that it was too simple to start the spring. So they sat in silence as they tried to come up with the right start. Finally, Wonka snapped his fingers and pointed to the bookcase near the back of the room.

"Grab number 1999, I had a recipe I never finished, and I think it might be what we are looking for." Taylor nodded and hopped from her chair and went to grab the book. When she made it to the bookcase, she ghosts over the labels quickly, admiring the difference in her handwriting in the more recent notebooks and his. His writing now was smaller and wavy compared to how large and bubbly it used to be when he was younger. She grabbed the right book and turned quickly to walk back, but another book landed on her foot. A quick curse and she bent down to grab her small attacker. She looked over the cover and noticed the large bubbly writing on the front. It wasn't hers so it must be his when he was younger. It was dated '1993' and looked liked it suffered a lot of damage from handling, the spine felt loose and the cover the sunbathed brown. Taylor shrugged and fought her curiosity and put it back. Against her best wishes to ignore the notebook two pages fell out. She closed her eyes in annoyance, was this some movie that made it evident that she had to look at something? She looked up and back over to her boss to make sure he wasn't paying her any mind. He was too absorbed into what was on the table to notice the trouble Taylor was about to dive herself into.