It was time to see what this pottery barn was all about.
Chapter 2
Hail
The clay wasn’t cooperating, and neither was my mouth.
“So when you’re sh-shaping the rim,” I said, my hands moving slowly around the pottery wheel while eight tourists watched with varying degrees of patience. “You want to k-k-keep steady pressure and…”
The words tangled up in my throat like they always did when people stared at me. A woman in the front row checked her phone, and my belly twitched. When the man beside her shifted his weight from foot to foot and frowned, my belly started knotting. And when a teenage girl whispered something to her friend, and they both rolled their eyes, my heart joined in with my belly, building a big ache I wouldn’t be able to shake loose for hours.
They weren’t laughing at me. Probably. But my face got hot anyway.
I tried again. “You want to keep steady pressure and g-g-gently guide the clay up…”
The bowl I was demonstrating wobbled on the wheel.
I was using too much pressure. The walls collapsed inward, turning what should’ve been a simple cereal bowl into a lopsidedmess. I winced, my tusks catching on my upper lip, a nervous habit I’d never managed to break. The tourists stared at me, all of them at least a foot shorter than my seven-foot frame, probably wondering how hands as large and a body as big as mine could create anything delicate at all. The bowl certainly wasn’t helping my case.
“Well.” I stopped the wheel and stared at the disaster. “That’s…That’s not what you want to do.”
A few people chuckled, not in a mean way, but it still made my chest clench. I’d been doing pottery demonstrations for tourists twice a week for about a month now, and I still felt like I was failing every single time.
Tressa lifted her head from where she’d been napping in the corner of the barn, her white ears pricked forward. She could sense my sadness. She always could. Her amber eyes met mine across the room, and I felt some of the tension ease from my spine.
At least someone understood me without words.
“Let me start over,” I told the group, reaching for another ball of clay. “Sometimes the clay has…has its own ideas about…what it wants to be.”
The older woman in the back smiled kindly. “Take your time, dear. We’re in no hurry.”
Her words helped, but my hands still shook as I centered the new clay on the wheel. This was supposed to be the easy part. I’d been working with clay since I was six years old, first in the orc kingdom underground, then here on the surface where the natural light made everything more beautiful. When I was alone in this barn, clay felt like an extension of my thoughts. Peaceful. Right.
But put eight strangers in front of me and suddenly I couldn’t remember how to speak, let alone teach.
The wheel spun. I pressed my thumbs into the center of the clay, opening it up, the walls rising smooth and even under my touch. Better. This was much better.
“The key is patience.” My words came easier now that I was focused on the clay instead of the people watching me. “Clay responds to g-g-gentle handling. If you force it, it-it fights back.”
Kind of like people, I thought, but didn’t say.
The bowl took shape under my hands, the walls rising in a perfect curve. This was what I was good at. What I was meant for. Not talking to crowds or explaining techniques, but this quiet conversation between my hands and the earth.
“Beautiful work,” the kind woman said. “You make it look so easy.”
I almost smiled. “It’s not at first. It t-takes practice. Lots of practice.”
The demonstration continued, and I managed to get through the basic techniques without completely embarrassing myself. A few people asked questions, and I stammered through the answers, but nobody seemed annoyed. Tourists who came to Lonesome Creek were generally patient with us orcs. They were here for the experience, after all.
When the class was finished and the group left, probably heading to Aunt Inla’s general store to buy souvenirs or the restaurant or saloon for a meal, I slumped against my workbench and rubbed my face with my clay-covered hands.
“That was t-terrible,” I told Tressa.
She padded over and sat beside me, pressing her warm shoulder against my leg, her way of telling me I was being too hard on myself.
“I know, I know. It wasn’t…that bad. But it wasn’t g-g-good either.” I scratched behind her ears, and she leaned into my touch. “How am I supposed to build a bus-bus-business if I can’t even talk to customers without falling apart?”
Tressa didn’t answer, but her being here was enough. I’d found her as a pup, abandoned in the forest at the base of the vast mountain range surrounding this valley my brothers and I purchased when we left the orc kingdom and came to the surface.
