You’re two min­utes early, which means you’re three min­utes late.

He rubs it in, of course, but you ex­pect noth­ing less. It’s what he does: com­plain, com­plain, com­plain, all the time.

You’ll give him some­thing to com­plain about, just as soon as he tells you what you want to hear.

“What is a Phoenix?”

“What am I? Your dic­tio­nary?”

“I don’t care about mythol­ogy.”

You don’t care about some myth­i­cal bird. You don’t care how many times they can re­birth from their ashes. You don’t care about the myth.

You care about the re­al­ity.

“Phoenixes,” he says, “are phoenixes.”

You glare at him.

He chuck­les.

“If you prac­tice, maybe your look could man­age a nose­bleed.”

You don’t let up your glare. In fact, you glare harder. You can just see the blood flow­ing from his nose…

Huh.

It’s not just your imag­i­na­tion.

Now he’s scut­tling around try­ing to staunch the foun­tain of blood al­ready form­ing a pool on the floor.

“Fine, fine! Fine, I said! I can’t tell you any­thing if I’m bled out!”

“Speak quickly, then!”

But you drop your glare any­way, and set­tle for merely look­ing at him threat­en­ingly.

He looks at you se­ri­ously.

“The Thir­teen Phoenixes are The Guardians. All look up to them, of course.”

“Thir­teen?” They like the num­ber thir­teen, who­ever they are.

“They’ve been the guardians of our world since, well, as far back as any­one can re­mem­ber.” He con­tin­ues, “Not that that says very much.”

“I don’t re­mem­ber.” Your deal­ings with such peo­ple–those who use mag­ic–are lim­ited, but you’d think you would have heard of some­thing so im­por­tant.

“You would­n’t,” grum­bles the man. He takes a sip of a drink.

Some goes down the wrong pipe, and he be­gins to choke.

A vanilla milk­shake. Not quite what you’d ex­pect a wise old man to drink.

Then again, he’s not old.

Ac­tu­ally, you’re only just now re­ally notic­ing his age. You’re some­what sur­prised it took you so long, as you were in­deed ex­pect­ing some­one much older, and much more wrinkly.

He can’t be older than twenty–if that!

“Oops,” he mut­ters, and coughs one more time.

You press on: “But what are they?”

“Peo­ple. Thir­teen peo­ple. Weird names–not al­ways the same names, though. Once three of them went by ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ and ‘I don’t know;’ don’t know, they still might–”

“If they’re so im­por­tant, should­n’t you know?”

“Not if they don’t want me to.”

“What do they do?

“Stuff. Not sure. Some­thing im­por­tant.”

Again, you won­der how he could not know what they do, if they’re as im­por­tant as he says.

Then you won­der if per­haps he’s just hav­ing you on.

“If you don’t know very much about them… who does?”

“Oh, about any­one, I’d ex­pect.”

“Not very wise for a wise man, are you?”

“I’m wise enough when it suits me, and dense as con­crete at all other times. But knowl­edge has lit­tle to do with wis­dom.

“Be­sides, you’re un­der the im­pres­sion that I’m both wise and a man.

“I would claim to be nei­ther.”

You look at him wearily. “What are you, then?”

“I am a Phoenix.”

You blink.

“Do you have a name?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been called Ig­no­rance. Some have called me Ap­a­thy. I don’t re­ally care which you use.”

“Logic is an en­emy. Logic is a phoenix. Are you an en­emy?”

“And you think I would know the an­swer? Even I know bet­ter than to ask my­self ques­tions.”

You won­der if this will end up in some sort of fight. Not be­cause he’s an en­emy–just be­cause he ir­ri­tates you so.

For a mo­ment, you pon­der the mer­its of giv­ing him an­other nose­bleed.

He looks at an in­vis­i­ble watch.

“I’d love to stick around and chat some more, but this con­ver­sa­tion does­n’t re­ally in­ter­est me, and there’s a bril­liant book burn­ing in Florida right about now, so if you do not mind…”

He morphs into a gi­ant dark grey bird, and, in a bril­liant flash of white sparks and grey flame, dis­ap­pears.

You should have given him an­other nose­bleed when you had the chance.