Charlie

Up high in heaven, the divine Emperor Yu watched over those who earned their path into eternal bliss. Out of loneliness and a smidgen of boredom, Emperor Yu decided to draw up a competition among twelve creature families to select a capable friend and assistant to be by his side. They were each bestowed a human appearance and sent to the earthly realm to best present their merits in any method they deem fit. Rat was a clever little thing; crafting useful tools to help the Emperor in his daily tasks would surely be most advantageous to her prospects. And so she found a quaint little laboratory, where an elderly chemist was working with a dizzying array of bottles and liquids. Amused at the girl's curiosity, he took her in as an apprentice, and Rat's appetite for experiments grew by leaps and bounds. When he passed away, Rat took his name, Charlie, in honor of his life's work and legacy. While sifting through his incomplete notes, she noticed that her mentor wrote of a "perfect invention"—could this be the ultimate pinnacle of science? Charlie rolled up her sleeves and decided to test her theories based on his hypothesis and carefully crafted formulae, but her mind was in constant flux. None of her experiments were seen through to completion, and she continued iterating upon dozens of others, distracted by new avenues of thought. As she sat back overwhelmed and exhausted by her cluttered workbench, the early light of dawn passing through all the glass bottles struck her with sudden inspiration... As one of the twelve creatures sent down from the celestial paradise of heaven to compete for the privilege of becoming the divine Emperor Yu's trusted assistant, Rat set her nose to the grindstone with the literal mountain of notes she had to get through. Taking her mentor's name to honor his legacy, Charlie worked tirelessly in search of the "perfect invention" he often mused about. To attain that lofty goal, Charlie left no idea untested, and over time, a great many inventions and liquids of all kinds littered her workbenches. Some of them seemed to be useful to a certain degree, but almost all of them were unfinished. Perhaps it was a stroke of inspiration or insanity—who can tell of the frustrated scientific mind?—but the early sunlight filtering through glass bottles jolted her from her seat and sent her scrambling to the edge of the table. Sweeping her eyes over their contents, she noticed one clear pattern: they each had a different viscosity to their fluid, highly likely in response to the amount of catalyst added to the mix. Honing in on her new lead, it took Charlie every ounce of self-control to focus on measuring out the exact amount for the type of mix she desired, but her efforts paid off. The result was a fantastically vibrant orange concoction, lazily ectoplasmic in all of its rodent shapes; a reflection and celebration of the clever creature she was and still is. It was then that Charlie realised the conclusion her mentor likely arrived at—it was never the goal of attaining perfection, but the journey. Though she made it a point to record that wisdom, Charlie was confident this piece of advice would stay in her heart.