Mr. Clayton gave his own relief of an expression, his arms sagging a little bit as Shawn's hand loosened inside of him.

"We are getting better." Mr. Clayton said. "That's for sure. You know? Yucka, Yucka and all. I think we need to work on the second and the third line too. We're good enough to do a performance but only in front of our closest of friends."

"Who are our closest friends? Who won't make fun of us? Especially if we have to move from here and live with Mom, wherever she is."

Shawn considered the question, but it didn’t have a happy answer. “I don’t know...we’ve been so busy practicing lately. The only people who wouldn’t laugh at us are probably Michael and Ralph. But Michael wouldn’t get the jokes, and Ralph is...he’s still trapped in what Bradford did to him. With his new mom and stuff.”

Mr. Clayton shook his head in dissatisfaction, his slatted mouth moving with the head side to side.

"Well...” Mr. Clayton said. "We need to match our physical practice with an idea. And to do that, we need to talk about.” He cleared his Puppet throat, slatted mouth moving and opening for a second as if he was expecting a drum roll on a game show.

"Hierarchy!” He announced in a high pitched showman’s voice.

“Hierarchy?” Shawn didn’t really know the word, but it sounded vaguely familiar to him. He wracked his brains, and vaguely recalled something that Mr. Clayton had once said. “That’s something about that big pyramid, right? I think you said that once.”

Mr. Clayton nodded his head this time.

"That’s right!!!” Mr. Clayton rejoiced. "I don’t care what they say at school, you’re an A+ student in my book. Yucka! Yucka!.”

"Hierarchy shows you what is important. It’s a bunch of different things that come together and are related. And what’s at the top is the most important idea. He announced in a high pitched showman’s voice just like last time.

“Ever see a Christmas tree?”

Shawn glowed a little with the compliment, even if the shot at his school work stung a bit. “Of course I’ve seen a Christmas tree- there’s a star at the top, right?”

Mr. Clayton nodded his head with even more vigor, and Shawn felt the tension in his own wrist as he made the Puppet's head move.

"That’s right!!! And that star, it's kind of a mystery, right? It's not like it has a label. The bottom of the tree is the widest part. And as you go up, up, up the tree, it gets thinner and thinner until you come to a point.”. Mr. Clayton explained. "And at that point, at the top of that tree, you can see everything below.”

"But it's still connected to the bottom of the tree. It's still connected to the fun presents. It's all part of the same thing. But you can't bring everything to the top of the tree. That's why you don't see presents at the top of the tree. You only get the notion that there's some overall idea that shines. A star. A star that casts it's light and it's idea over the whole of the tree. He explained, his voice now thin, reedy but also filled with wonder.

“To get to that pointed star, to get to that sharp idea, you've got to leave the presents. You don't completely leave them behind, because they are still part of everything that's going on.”

"But you let them stay at the bottom. Where they belong."

"You've got to get to Greater Ventriloquism. You've got to leave those presents. The things that you think are more important. Like candy. Like Worrying about where you'll live even."

"It's just Greater Ventriloquism. That's the shining star you have to head towards. That's where everything will come together for you. You can't fully get the idea because it's so far up from where you are right now. But as you get closer and closer to the idea, it will be come clearer." Mr. Clayton explained.

Shawn was tired and sad and a little frustrated, and it felt like Mr. Clayton was criticising him for not focusing on practising hard enough. "If leaving the presents is so important, why don't you do something about that? Feddler was in my head and you got rid of him. Why don't you just find the bit that loves candy too much and drown it in the sink or something?" He didn't really mean it, he was just getting worried that all this effort was for nothing.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:52, Fri 11 Oct 2019.

"I'm just a dummy. Remember? I'm made of wood. I'm a trifle. I am nothing."

Mr. Clayton gave a little shake of his head, as if everything Shawn said was both expected and slightly humorous. The effect wasn't one of making fun of Shawn, but rather, the way a teacher would smile at a student learning the ways of an experienced practitioner.

"This is complicated, mysterious stuff bub. Don't beat yourself up about it. I wouldn't worry too much about leaping up the mountain right now, this instant. If it is important to you, you'll do something about it....one step at a time"

Shawn sighed, but did feel a little bit better. "I just wish there was a sign I was on the right track, something I could learn that worked. Like, when Griffix taught me magic, I learned that card trick that made people like me."

"Paah!" Mr. Clayton dismissed and the motion of dismissal was a bit of a challenge for Shawn's wrist as he had already been practicing for quite some time. Days now.

"A card trick might make people like you. But people are quick to change their minds."

"Just look at what happened to Ralph. He got all mad at you. At least he's back on your side. And don't forget about Eric Trenk. There wasn't a card trick in the world that could bring him around at least not for the long term"

"And what about Mom? Do you think she'd be nicer if you got a good movie role? And how many would it take? You'll always be chasing the latest gig with her. We don't even know what makes Dad happy."

"You know what makes people happy? Laughter. And there's now better way to do that then to put on a show. You can even do the card trick with me if on stage if you like."

Shawn actually brightened a little at that thought; it sounded like something the audience might enjoy a little more than some of the material he’d been workshopping with Mr. Clayton. Though he did have a few concerns about how that might work. “Would it work with that many people on stage if you helped? It only worked one at a time before. Should we add it to the rehearsal? Oh, and we’d need to make sure it doesn’t do what it did to Eddy - do you think he remembers the trick at all?”

"Want to give it a whirl right now?" Mr. Clayton asked Shawn with renewed vigor and interest in this potential activity.

"We can shuffle the cards and practice our opening act! Yucka! Yucka!"

Shawn reached into his pocket and pulled out his deck of cards, then looked inquiringly at Mr. Clayton. "So, um, are you gonna let go of my hand for this, or can you help shuffle the cars somehow?" He did need two hands to do the trick properly, and Mr. Clayton might have a hard time helping with how stiff his limbs were.

"Nope!" Mr. Clayton announced with a sharp, high-pitched bark of his voice.

"You're gonna have to shuffle with one hand and make me speak with the other! Yucka! Yucka!"

His blank eyes looked over the deck. "Oooo--weeee! I can't wait. This is gonna take a lot of practice. But do you think this is a good idea?"

Shawn feels less and less sure by the moment. "I just thought it might be a good idea, is all..." Experimentally, he tries a one-handed shuffle, to see how hard it would be to do with Mr. Clayton on his other arm.

Shawn shuffled the cards clumsily, but managed to do so without spilling them all over the floor.

"Whatever you say bub!" Mr. Clayton said in agreement

"Remember, I'm just a Dummy. I am nothing. The Dummy is a trifle. Yucka! Yucka!"

He waited for Shawn to finish arranging the cards, eyes just as wide and blank as if he had been taken out of his case and was waiting to be animated by Shawn's hand.

"I put on some makeup to paint my face white,
like creatures that only come out in the night.
My fingernails, too, are all pointed and red.
I look like I’m recently back from the dead.."

"What am I talking about Shawn?

Shawn wasn't great at riddles, even if this one was more of a poem. "I don't know, a costume?" Face paint, painted nails, looking like creatures, that made sense, right?

Shawn managed to arrange the cards, even managed a clumsy shuffle, but he could tell it wasn't working. The card trick needed a certain smoothness, a sense of confidence in the movements to work, and that wasn't happening here. Maybe he could pull it off if he practice a whole bunch, but he knew Mr. Clayton wouldn't like him spending so much time on non-ventriloquist things. "I don't think the card trick's gonna work. Are you sure you don't know something like it we could do together? I just want people to like us. That's the point of the show, right?"

"A costume!" Mr. Clayton agreed. "For Halloween." He added, almost as a reminder to Shawn that Halloween was coming.

"Hmmmmmm" Mr. Clayton observed, looking over Shawn's sorry attempt at shuffling. The cards were sloppy, a few poking out of the deck.

"If you don't want to do the card trick, let's do this instead: Why don't you pick out two friends on the block and then we can do a show for them. Maybe that will make the kids happy and we can also practice being a ventriloquist. Practicing ventriloquism is the most important thing. Everything that we want will come from that."

Shawn considered Mr. Clayton’s suggestion. “We could do that- it’ll be like a dress rehearsal or a critic screening. But I’ve been too busy practicing ventriloquism to do stuff with friends, I dunno who we could even invite.” Shawn’s memories had been a little blurry lately, but he tried to think of who might come if he invited them to a show.

"Well, that's because you don't have any friends." Mr. Clayton stated with the bluntness of hammer falling onto an anvil. "But that will change. You just need to dedicate more time to practicing ventriloquism and you'll see the change." He promised.

Shawn tried not to show how much Mr. Clayton's insult hurt. But he seized on the offered light at the end of the tunnel anyway. "I told you I'm gonna keep practicing no matter what - but how do I turn that into friends? I won't really have time to make them."

"You don't do anything. You just need to practice. And then, let Greater Ventriloquism do the rest." Mr. Clayton said.

Shawn found himself again wondering when this Greater Ventriloquism stuff would actually happen and whether it would be worth it...and this time, he stopped himself. It was like Mr. Clayton said, he couldn't focus on the presents under the tree. He just had to keep practicing for its own sake, not for rewards... He took a deep breath. "All right, let's do some more alphabet practice." He just had to stop thinking about it, and trust that it would work.

And with that, they started a long session of practice. It would be a practice that Shawn would get lost in. Like the feeling of slipping into and out of the beginnings of sleep when irrational thoughts begin to seem real.

OOC: Shawn joins thread

Shawn: The First Audience Member?