She isn't waiting for me to take them. She's already walking.
I take them.
She doesn't notice.
Turns at the threshold. Angles through a door that isn't there anymore—the motion automatic. Walks the footprint of the cottage. The workbench where she mixed paste—charred stump of a leg, everything else gone. The shelf where her jars sat.
I follow. Keeping distance.
She crouches in the rubble, fingers sifting through ash and char, and pulls something out.
Pottery shard. Blue glaze, bright against the black. Part of a bowl—the curve of the rim. Handmade.
Her hands shake holding it.
"Ten years."
Voice thin. Cracking.
"I built all of this. By myself. T—ten years." Turns the shard over. Runs her thumb across the glaze. "The walls first. Took me months because I didn't know what I was doing and the first set fell down twice. Then the roof. Then the floor, which I ripped up and redid two times because it just didn’t feel right."
"Two times?"
"I'm stubborn."
She holds the shard up. Blue glaze catching pale light. "This bowl. I fired it myself in a pit kiln I dug behind the garden. Cracked the first three times. This one held."
She holds it in both hands.
"And now it's a piece."
She turns the shard over again. Thumb tracing the rim. Doesn't say anything for a while. Just holding it.
"You'll build again."
"Where?"
With me.
"Somewhere." Useless word.
"Somewhere." She lets out a breath. "Inspiring."
"I'm not good at—"
"Comfort? No." She stands. Turns. I'm closer than she expected—breath catches, eyes going wide. Close enough to see ash smudged across her jaw. "You're really not."
Tears on her face now. Silent. Streaming. She's not wiping them away.
"Why did you bring me here?"
"You asked."
"Why did you say yes?" Tight and raw. "Why do you care what I need?"
"I don't know."
Can't lie to her.
