ELARA'S POV
The bowl came out of the kiln on a Tuesday three weeks before Christmas.
Jun called me over when she opened it. Set it on the worktable without ceremony and stepped back.
I looked at it.
The shape was what I'd been working toward. Low and wide with an irregular rim that wasn't a mistake, was in fact the point, the place where the hand had been present in the making. The glaze had done something in the firing that I hadn't fully predicted, a depth in the blue-grey that shifted when the light changed.
Like the Croatian ceramic. Like the painting Damien had found in the Vancouver archives.
The right blue.
Jun said nothing.
I looked at her.
"Yes," she said. Just that.
I brought it home wrapped in my jacket the same way I'd brought the Korčula watercolor home, the same way
