The 16th of Spring, 522 A.V.
Nesra was having a heck of a time with her curse. She was breaking things right and left which made it hard for her to throw clay and even harder for her to run the kiln and fire it properly. She was painting just fine, but she'd spill the paints routinely and couldn't keep in the lines when cups and bowls fell right out of her hands.
So she was doing the sensible thing and making clay. It was hard to mess up making clay utilizing the wet method.
Nesra had gathered good riverbank clay from about fifteen feet from the Syka River, and now she was at the stage where she was purifying it. That process wasn't difficult at all. She'd brought a huge bucket load of clay back from the river in one of her most prized possessions... her wheelbarrow. She'd parked the wheelbarrow next to the camp she had set up behind the Communal Kiln that consisted of a tent back in the trees, an open cookfire area, and a wash-up area.
Luckily the Syka Commons had latrines, so Nesra was taken care of there. Those lay behind the Communal Kitchens which she also took advantage of when she wanted to do something a bit more fancy than cook over an open fire.
The potter was living lean and with minimal things. Most of her tent was packed with her glazes and the things she made to go with the pottery she sold. Her entire setup in Syka was for earning money and staying under the radar of those who might be looking for her.
She felt safe here... safe and protected, but Nesra was still constantly worried in the back of her mind that people looking for rher would eventually come here and find her.
So she threw her pots, fired them, and since the curse had descended and that all had become impossible. So she made clay... stockpiling it for a time she could begin to throw ceramics again.
Thus Nesra sat on a stool, mixing soil into the water in five-gallon buckets with stretched-out cotton ready to be suspended from her lines and poured into the fabric. She stirred the water loaded with soil, separating out the sand and debris from the clay... letting the clay suspend in the water... bucket by bucket.
And as she worked, she sang, quietly, songs of her homeland from so very far away. She'd welcome a visitor or even someone to come up and inquire about a job or even an apprenticeship. Now, more than ever, as she sat stirring her heavily ladened water, she wondered if any of the children at the Children's Pavalion would be interested in becoming a potter.
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