About

I’ve always made things. This is another thing I am making.

Rincewind stared at him, “Who ARE you?”

The man took the pencil from behind his ear and looked reflectively at the space around Rincewind.

“I makes things,” he said.

“What sort of things?”

“What sort of things would you like?”

“You’re the Creator?”

The little man looked very embarrassed. “Not ‘the’. Not ‘the’. Just ‘a’. I don’t contract for the big stuff, the stars, the gas giants, the pulsars and so on. I just specialise in what you might call the bespoke trade.” He gave them a look of defiant pride. “I do all my own trees, you know,” he confided, “Craftsmanship. Takes years to learn how to make a tree. Even the conifers.”

“Oh,” said Rincewind.

“I don’t get someone in to finish them off. No sub-contracting, that’s my motto. The buggers always keep you hanging about while they’re installing stars or something for someone else.” The little man sighed, “You know, people think it must all be very easy, creating. They think you just have to move on the face of the waters and wave your hands a bit. It’s not like that at all.”

“It isn’t?” The little man scratched his nose again, “You soon run out of ideas for snowflakes, for example.”

“Oh.”

“You start thinking it’d be a doodle to sneak in a few identical ones.”

“You do?”

“You thinks to yourself, ‘There’s a billion trillion squillion of them, no-one’s going to notice’ – But that’s where professionalism comes in.

Terry Pratchett, Eric