Chapter 24: A Pot That Actually Works

Once the guards hauled the clay into the cave, Seraya pointed out a clear spot against the wall, thanked them for their help, and stared at the piled clods for a moment, still kicking herself over her own carelessness.

The meat was right there within arm's reach... All I had to do was bend down, but no, I had to go give a speech and pick a fight over mud first.

Marching back to Vaelira just for dinner felt a bit too brazen even by today's standards, however, so she sighed, saw the women out, and only then realized that Niva hadn't shown up yet.

She glanced toward the path leading from the communal caves, but it was deserted.

Maybe she's helping her mothers or just resting... It's not like she has to come by every night.

The thought sounded sensible enough, even if the empty spot by the fire felt oddly out of place for a second, so before she could dwell on it, she turned back to the clay and got to work.

She kindled the fire, spread some of the material across a pelt, and began picking out roots, pebbles, and larger debris, gradually separating what looked promising from clods that resembled ordinary, packed dirt.

The problem arose with the water.

Seraya walked over to the pond, cupped it in her hands, and carried it back to the cave, but by the time she reached the clay, half had leaked between her fingers and what remained looked like a bad joke.

She stared at the wet puddle, then at her own hands, and slowly closed her eyes.

"I'm going to lose my fucking mind in a second..."

After several such trips, she had damp clothes, aching legs, and dwindling patience, so she eventually fashioned a makeshift basin out of a deep fold in a clean pelt from her cave, pinching the edges so awkwardly that the whole operation still demanded total concentration.

When she finally managed to moisten the prepared batch, she slumped onto the dirt and panted for a moment, resting her hands on her thighs.

To make a pot for hauling water, I first have to haul water without a pot... Truly a masterstroke of design.

The more the lack of basic tools stung, the more fiercely she wanted to actually shape something, so instead of collapsing onto the bed, she bent over the clay and began kneading it with both hands.

Little by little she added water, worked out the lumps, and picked free the remaining debris until the clay began to resemble a dense, workable mass she could actually mold.

The first attempt looked like a flattened roll, the second had a suspiciously thin wall, but as Seraya began building up the sides in small coils, smoothing them with wet fingers, something that could pass for a pot with a little generosity slowly took shape before her.

Lopsided and uneven, but unmistakably hollow - and right now, that was the only feature that truly mattered.

"Warrior... are you in?"

The quiet voice from the entrance made her look up immediately.

"I'm here, come in."

Niva slipped into the cave, glanced over her shoulder, and only then edged closer, clutching something beneath the loose fold of her leather wrap.

Seraya frowned, watching her behavior.

"What's wrong? Why are you sneaking around like that?"

The girl pressed a finger to her lips, even though no one else was inside, then parted her wrap and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in leaves.

"Look."

When she revealed the contents, Seraya snapped her back straight, holding both mud-caked hands out before her.

"Holy shit... Where did you get meat?"

Niva beamed with pride, her rabbit ears perking straight up at once.

"I managed to catch two hares today, so the elder gave me a piece."

Seraya searched her memory of the evening distribution, but couldn't recall seeing anything like that.

Maybe it had happened earlier or after she had left, though a considerably less charitable thought crossed her mind.

So meat can be shared after all, just preferably when I'm not around...

Niva noticed the shift in her expression and wilted at once, clutching the bundle closer to herself.

"Don't you want it?"

Seraya shook herself from her thoughts.

"I want it, of course I want it," she replied quickly. "I was just wondering when you became such a huntress - two hares in one day is a fantastic haul."

The girl blushed, scratched her cheek, and smiled so genuinely that Seraya felt her earlier irritation melt away.

She tipped her chin toward the hearth, carefully lowering her hands back toward the clay.

"We'll roast it, I just have to finish this right here first."

Niva leaned in closer, peeked over her shoulder, and studied the lumpy shape for a moment.

"Are you playing with mud?"

Seraya turned her head slowly.

"I'm making a pot."

The girl crouched beside her, reached out a finger, and poked the soft wall, leaving a little dimple behind.

"It's so weird..."

"Don't go jamming your fingers in there!" Seraya shielded the vessel with a hand at once. "It's still soft."

Niva pulled her hand back and pouted, eyeing her with mock offense.

"I know how to sculpt too."

"Oh yeah?"

Instead of answering, the girl reached for a small lump and began rolling it between her fingers, kneading with such fierce concentration that Seraya paused her work for a second, curious to see the result.

A moment later, Niva held out a creation composed of a larger blob, a smaller blob, and several suspicious nubs.

Seraya inspected it closely.

Then she tilted her head.

And then decided that without help, she'd never arrive at the right answer.

"What is that?"

"You," Niva announced cheerfully. "Looks just like you, right?"

Seraya looked at the figurine, whose one arm looked like an extra leg, and gave a slow nod.

"Very... Recognized myself right away."

If that's what I really look like, maybe it's a blessing I don't have a mirror.

Pleased with herself, Niva set her masterpiece down beside the clay, while Seraya pointed toward the bundle of meat before the artist could decide to produce further likenesses.

"Dinner now, all right? Just wash your hands first."

The girl inspected her fingers, sighed with the look of someone whose fun had just been ruthlessly ruined, and headed for the pond.

Soon the cave smelled of roasting meat, and Seraya had a small pot and a few shallow bowls sitting before her, their rims varying in height far more noticeably than she cared to admit.

She stopped trying to fix them endlessly, since smoothing down one spot ruined another every single time, finally deciding it would do for a first attempt.

She set the vessels well away from the open flame in a breezy spot where they could gradually dry, then set about preparing a sheltered hearth outside the cave.

She had no intention of thrusting wet clay straight into the coals, even if the prospect of waiting grated on her nerves.

Niva watched her haul stones, adjust the windbreak, and shift the vessels around, constantly testing their surfaces, until she finally pointed to the black chunks piled nearby.

"Is that wood too?"

"Charcoal," Seraya answered, dusting off her hands. "I made it today."

"And why did you bring it here?"

"To fire the pots later."

Niva looked at her, then at the lined-up vessels, her ears tilting slightly.

"You want to put them in the fire?"

"More or less."

The girl processed the information for a moment, then held out a skewer of cooked meat.

Hands still caked in clay, Seraya leaned in and took a bite, completely missing how Niva stiffened slightly, a blush creeping across her cheeks.

"Tell me, don't you ever get sick of roasted meat?" she asked after swallowing.

Niva looked at her with as much bewilderment as if she had just been asked whether she was tired of breathing.

"No."

"I mean having it the exact same way every day, on a stick..."

"I don't eat it every day, though."

Seraya closed her mouth.

For a moment she stared at the skewer in the girl's hands, realizing that once again she had started a conversation from a premise that simply didn't exist for Niva.

"All right, let me put it differently," she said, shifting closer. "If you could eat meat every day, wouldn't you want to try having it another way?"

"What way?"

"Boiled in water, with other things tossed in, so you could eat the meat and drink what it cooked in."

Niva frowned.

"And you need that pot for that?"

"Exactly for that."

The girl looked at the clay pot with plain skepticism, but nodded after a moment, apparently deciding that if Seraya could improve roasted meat with a strange root, maybe she knew what she was doing this time too.

For a while they sat in quiet companionability, Niva offering more bites while Seraya tended to her prep, turning her head to take the offered meat before the girl could even speak.

Once, her lips brushed Niva's fingers when a piece slipped off the stick, prompting an immediate muttered apology from Seraya, but Niva merely shook her head, staring into the flames with exaggerated interest.

Seraya noticed nothing.

She was far too busy wondering whether her lopsided pot would survive even the first test.

After Niva returned to her cave, Seraya paced between the vessels and the hearth for a long time, shifting them carefully and testing whether the clay was still damp.

In the end, she had to admit that staring at them wouldn't speed up drying, so she turned in for a few hours, only to get right back to work almost the second she woke up the next morning.

The waiting dragged on far longer than she would have liked.

She reinforced the hearth's windbreak, prepped wood for preheating, and checked the pots yet again, forcing herself not to poke them every few breaths until she finally decided she could make the first attempt.

She heated them gradually, keeping them away from the hotter coals at first, then tending the fire with growing vigilance as she fed in the charcoal she had prepared.

Not everything went smoothly.

One of the small bowls cracked with a soft pop that made Seraya suck air through her teeth, freezing in place for a good while to see if the rest would follow suit.

No, no, no... One is enough, the rest of you hold together.

Time slipped by, the fuel dwindled, and instead of thinking about rest, she stared into the glowing heart of the hearth with bloodshot eyes, as if sheer force of will could keep the vessels in one piece.

When she finally let the fire die down, she still couldn't grab the fruits of her labor right away.

She waited for everything to cool, which proved nearly as maddening as the drying phase, but after so many hours of effort, she refused to ruin the final step through her own impatience.

Only later did she carefully lift the pot out and turn it over in her hands.

It was crooked, rough, and discolored in patches, its rim looking like someone had shaken it while shaping, but it hadn't shattered when she picked it up.

Seraya smiled slowly.

"There... Fucking finally."

She ran a finger along the side, and then noticed several hairline cracks that made her joy instantly curdle into tension.

She inspected them more closely, peering inside, but couldn't tell from looks alone whether they were purely cosmetic or a fatal flaw.

All right, easy... I'll test it with water first.

Two bowls had survived as well; the third was fit only as a reminder that she'd better pack more patience next time.

She set everything inside the cave, swept the shards aside, and glanced at her nearly depleted charcoal stash, arriving at another thoroughly exhausting conclusion.

"Gotta make more."

A single pot didn't solve all her problems, after all.

If she wanted to haul water, cook, and store food all at once, she needed more, and since the first attempt yielded at least partial success, her appetite for more grew immediately.

One for cooking, one for water, a few bowls... And maybe something that doesn't look like I molded it with my feet.

When Seraya set out for more timber, she chose the slope above the valley, having already burned through the thin saplings near her cave, and wrestling thicker trees with a stone flake struck her as a remarkably stupid way to spend another day.

It was far smarter to scavenge dry limbs and smaller pieces she could carry or snap without waging a duel against an entire trunk.

So she bent, stacked her finds in one pile, and straightened with a quiet groan every so often, hitching up the top that kept slipping off her shoulder as she worked.

Besides wood, she also scouted for ingredients for her first soup, and when she spotted mushrooms sprouting along damp deadwood, she squatted down at once.

They looked familiar, but this time she had no intention of banking dinner on a mere hunch.

Too many warnings about lookalike species lingered in her mind to take a lack of bright colors as proof that something was edible.

She gathered a small sample of the ones she recognized from the foragers' hauls, deciding to show them to someone who knew these woods better before cooking.

The pot already tried driving me to despair; I don't need a soup that actually finishes me off.

Hauling the gathered wood took several trips, so by the time she finished, her arms were dead tired and she had a respectable stockpile for her next charcoal run.

On the way, she managed to show the mushrooms to one of the returning gatherers, who confirmed some as tribal staples and discarded the ones she wasn't sure about.

Seraya didn't argue, figuring a leaner dinner was infinitely preferable to a lethal mistake.

By the pond, she rinsed the approved mushrooms, and then scooped water into her handmade pot for the very first time.

For a moment, she watched it without blinking.

The water stayed inside.

No wet trickle seeped through the outer wall, the bottom didn't drop out, and the whole thing continued behaving like a vessel - which, after so many hours of toil, felt like nothing short of a miracle.

There... now please, sweetheart, don't go changing your mind.

She filled it about halfway and carried it to the hearth prepped outside her cave, setting it securely over a low flame, aiming to heat it gradually and watch whether the hairline cracks would widen.

For several minutes she sat beside it in tense silence, listening to every pop of firewood so suspiciously that you'd think the pot was trying to give its final warning.

But when nothing went wrong and a faint wisp of steam began rising from the water, Seraya reached for the prepped mushrooms and grinned wide.

For the first time since landing in this cursed world, she was finally going to cook herself some soup.