Anahita is her name. Anahita was her name. A presumptuous name, too pretty for a peasant girl. But I always rather liked it.
She and I both knew she was ill a while ago. I think she was the first to know though. Consumption I think it is called. She coughed a lot.
Anahita was not the first female assistant I have had, and at seventeen years she was not the youngest either. I am an Alchemist, but I seek to be more useful than discover the true method of creating gold. I believe that was lost long ago, and no one will ever retrieve it. Gold never brought anyone anything helpful.
I have always had a human to assist me, although many of my fellows use homunculi now. I do not know which I really prefer, I just never seemed to have the time to make a homunculus. Always found it much better to pick a ne’er-do-well off the street.
Anahita was one of these. She was intelligent, which made a nice change from that useless boy I had last time, but not irritatingly so. Quiet too.
I look at the dead girl’s face. She had always been very plain looking, which I liked. No dashing young boys chasing after her and distracting her from her work for me. She slept in the lab, and in a small bed I built no less. Well-fed, so long as she worked hard and didn’t complain.
She looks prettier dead than she did alive.
I sigh dismally. The girl was good company. I leave her small body on the cold floor and go in search of a blanket to throw on her.

After giving the girl a small burial, I returned to my lab and my work desk. We had discussed for a long time what I should do when her lungs eventually gave out, and made the necessary preparations. I took the bowl down, and the vial, which had half a pint of Anahita’s blood we had collected in her coughing fits. I poured that into the bowl first.
It was a very dark red and splashed against the bottom of the bowl. I waited until it settled and smiled quietly to myself.
Clay and ash and mandrake root, I added them all, the root chopped into tiny flakes. Then I filled a small bottle with a pint of water that I had asked Anahita to collect from a spring almost a month ago, and put it beside the fire.
I think Amaton came to visit that day. Or maybe the day after. I remember that, whichever day he came, he saw my ingredients laid out and ready. I seem to recall that he approved of the idea that I was building a homunculus; that is the opinion he would have had anyway, whether I remember correctly or not. I did not tell him that the blood I was using belonged to Anahita.
By the time he came to visit again, I had added half a pint of my own blood. If Amaton was not so concerned with what is and is not proper, I would have asked him if it was even possible to make a homunculus using the blood of someone other than the creator. Especially if that someone was dead. That was why I added my own blood too. But Amaton would have disapproved. He is an idiot, but I did not want a bad name to be spread by him.
On this visit I had already started my construction. He told me that it was too tall. A homunculus should reach to a human's knees, or halfway up their waist at the most. Mine was the height of a short adult.

“And the wings.” Amaton said distastefully. “Where are the wings?”
I looked at him over my brass glasses and continued to shape the clay. “They are unnecessary.” I answered.
“No.” Amaton disagreed. “A homunculus always has wings.”
“Homunculi cannot fly.”
“That is not the point. A homunculus always has wings.” He said stubbornly. I ignored him. “At this rate it will look too…too human.”
I did not tell him that that was the point.
It was a month until Amaton returned. He came in search of my ale, and had brought our mutual friend Thay. I liked Thay, even though he was as blunt as Amaton, because he was much more intelligent. Intelligent enough not to show it. By this time, the homunculus was nearly complete.
“A girl homunculus! What do you want a girl homunculus for?” Amaton asked in disgust, before delving into my liquor cupboard. Thay and I looked at each other despairingly.
Thay walked over to make closer inspection. “She looks like…well.” He tried to remember. “She looks a lot like that girl who used to live here.”
I nodded to him, sat in my chair in the warmest corner of the room. The homunculus was stood beside the desk, a still statue made of grey clay and mixed blood.
“She looks exactly like the girl who used to live here.” Thay continued in wonder that I had remembered the features so well.
“Anahita.” I corrected him quietly. I do not think either man heard.
“Don’t say ‘she’.” Amaton reprimanded Thay. He was allowed to do that, because Thay was very much younger than us both, and so it was our duty to correct him all the time. “Homunculi are ‘its’, remember that. No matter how well re-created.” He sent me a stern look with that last comment. “No gender and no personality. Remember that.”
“But, you were just talking about why anyone would want a girl homunculus.” Thay answered, very confused. I pity the boy; he spends far more time with Amaton than I could.  “Do you have a name for her…it?” He asked me pleasantly.
I leant back in my chair. “I was thinking Caelian.” I direct the comment back at him and him only, because no matter what I say Amaton will scoff. “Yes, Caelian.”
Thay smiled and was probably about to say that he liked the name, when Amaton reappeared, pulling his head from my cupboard and holding a bottle of ale that I had failed to hide properly.
“Too posh.” He said, as I knew he would. “Sounds upper-class. You can’t give it such a pretentious name, especially when you’ve modelled it on a plain girl.”
“Well I rather like it.” Thay said in my defence. He’s a good lad.
“You would.” Amaton grunted. “Don’t see the point in naming them myself.”
“It is nice to address them properly.”
“But. They. Can. Not. Talk.” Amaton said slowly and clearly, much to our irritation. “Therefore, pointless.” He turned to me and poured some ale into a clean glass he had found on my work surface. I hoped it was a glass I had previously held frog’s eyes in, as I prepared myself for his next criticism. “Don’t you think it will be odd to have a clone of that girl wandering around here?” He asked, sounding less rude than I had expected.
“It will be like nothing changed.”
“Except it will not talk.”
“It will talk to me.” I reminded him. As the blood donor, my homunculus and I will be able to contact each other mentally, a useful skill. “And Anahita did not talk very much anyway.”
Amaton looked disgruntled, but did not seem able to come up with another reason that would sway me, so he sat down and continued drinking.

I stand before the clay person. The girl. Today is the day that I shall breathe life into her. Into Caelian.
Perhaps the name is too much. But then, I do not have to use it if I do not want to. But she does look so very much like a girl I once knew.
Amaton is right. It is too strange to have Anahita before me when I saw her die. I hate it when Amaton is right.
I make her hair much darker and longer, and tweak her nose so it is shorter, then alter her cheekbones so that they could be sisters and not twins. On second thought, I make her chest smaller, even though it was very little to begin with.
Now she looks better. Different, but she still looks like a peasant. Like a worker. Even Amaton would not have much to complain about. I am glad I did not add wings; they would have gotten in the way.
I clear my throat and step forward. Her nose comes to my chin. I step back a little. Then take a deep breath and very gently blow the air back out onto her face.
And the grey tone melts away as her skin becomes pale and her hair thick. Deep green emerges in her eyes. This is not an ‘it’, but a ‘she’. A person. Mute, but a person all the same.
The girl’s face does not change, but I feel her join me in my mind. And her name is Caelian.
And I think she is happy to see me.