2. Hail
Hail
T he 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 lopsided mess.
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.
Pure white wolves were unusual, the vet said, which probably explained why her pack had left her behind. But her fur color didn’t matter to me. She was beautiful and loyal, and she understood me better than most people ever would.
She was family.
I looked around the pottery barn, taking in the shelves lined with my work.
Bowls and mugs and vases in various stages of completion.
Little animals I created for the children.
Some of the items were good. A few were even beautiful.
But nobody was going to see them if I couldn’t figure out how to talk about them without stammering like a nervous youngling.
My brothers all seemed to have found their places in Lonesome Creek. Sel ran the bakery and had found his fated mate in Holly. Greel now managed the saloon with his mate Jessi, who supervised the kitchen there, though an orc chef was coming to the surface soon to take over from Jessi.
Ostor, Ruugar, and Tark had all paired off too, their businesses thriving along with their relationships.
Even Dungar, who didn’t have a mate yet, appeared happy running the jail and keeping order around town.
He looked good in his sheriff’s outfit with his sparkling star badge, and who wouldn’t take confidence in that?
And then there was me. The shy brother who made pretty things in the barn and could barely string together a sentence when anyone was watching.
Aunt Inla had suggested I help Becken, who was also coming to the surface soon, set up our rodeo operation.
I wasn’t sure about that. Someone should do it, but maybe I wasn’t the right person for that task either.
Doing pottery could be enough. I didn’t need anything more than Tressa and the quiet satisfaction of creating something from shapeless earth. It was more than I’d expected when we first came here.
But lately, especially watching my brothers with their mates, I’d started feeling the loneliness more sharply. Like there was a hollow space inside me that pottery and Tressa couldn’t quite fill.
I shook my head and reached for another ball of clay. Self-pity wasn’t going to make me a better potter or a better teacher. Practice might, though.
The wheel spun up to speed at my command, and I pressed my hands into the clay, feeling it yield under my touch. This was my language, the only one I’d ever been fluent in.
I was just starting to pull up the walls when I heard footsteps at the barn entrance. Probably another tourist stopping in to see what this part of town offered.
“We’re closed now,” I called without looking up, my attention focused on keeping the clay centered. “But there’s a-a-a class tomorrow at t-t-two o’clock.”
The footsteps stopped, but whoever it was didn’t leave. Great. Now I’d have to actually look up and probably stammer through an explanation about business hours and where to find the schedule of events.
I glanced toward the door and my hands stilled on the clay.
A woman stood inside the barn entrance wearing jeans and a simple blue top, clutching a small purse against her chest. She had medium-brown hair that caught the late afternoon light and worried brown eyes that darted around the space as if she was cataloging exits.
Tiny, even for a human, she’d barely come up to my chest if we stood face to face. Her slender frame made me conscious of the space I took up, of how my broad shoulders and muscular build seemed to shrink the room whenever I moved through it.
But it wasn’t her appearance that made me stare.
It was the way she was looking at my pottery displays.
Not with the casual interest of a tourist browsing for souvenirs, but with something deeper.
I sensed she was seeing the art instead of just the objects, though I wasn’t sure why that thought occurred to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I thought someone was running a demonstration here.”
“I-It’s-It’s alright,” I said, my hands still frozen on the clay. The wheel kept spinning, but I’d completely lost focus. “I was. It’s o-o-over.”
The sound of claws scrambling across wood was followed by Tressa bounding from her corner bed where she usually remained all day, her white fur practically glowing in the afternoon light. She never moved that fast for anyone except me and my brothers.
“Tressa, no.” I rushed after her, but I was too late. She skidded to a stop in front of the woman, her tail wagging so hard her whole body wiggled. “I’m sorry, she doesn’t usually… Tressa, back.”
“It’s okay,” the woman said, not stepping away even though Tressa was big enough to knock most people over. “She’s fine. I don’t mind.”
I grabbed Tressa’s ruff, pulling her back to a more respectful distance, my dark hair falling forward as I bent down.
I tucked it behind one ear, wishing I’d tied it back this morning instead of letting it hang loose to my shoulders.
“She’s not usually this-this forward with strangers.
I do-don’t know what’s gotten into her.”