Snow Lily
I unwrapped the tightly sealed clay bag and cut off a suitable amount with the cutting wire.
Even though it was my own hands moving, it was still strange how simply looking at the vase once was enough to gauge exactly how much clay I needed.
...Cassandra had worn a worried face right to the end, but the me of now could perfectly recreate something from nothing more than a product photograph.
With the real piece sitting right in front of me, there was no reason I couldn't make it.
I set the clay on the table and rolled it out evenly with a rolling pin, just as I would for baking, into a slab of the thickness I wanted.
I was glad Cassandra had chosen Snow Lily as the first piece for today.
The ceramics I knew were the usual kind: clay on a wheel, water worked in as you threw, days of drying, then more work on top of that. Of course it took forever to finish anything, because the clay needed time to dry between stages.
But there were plenty of ways to make pottery without a wheel.
And Snow Lily used a technique called slab-building.
You didn't use a wheel at all. You worked the clay like dough, or pressed it into molds of various shapes, then layered the pieces together. It was the perfect method for angular forms that a wheel could never produce.
What mattered most right now, though, was that you didn't need drying time between steps—so you could finish a piece far faster.
Which meant I could wrap the work today and earn Cassandra's confidence.
I laid the clay on the table again and rolled it out in long, even strokes, the way I would dough, into a slab of the thickness I wanted.
Snow Lily was a vase built around the motifs of lilies and snowflakes. Softly curved lily petals layered in a spiral formed the body, with large and small snowflakes settled between the petals.
To make it, Cassandra's mother had used molds she had fashioned herself.
Pressing clay firmly into each mold and lifting it free produced a single petal.
There were fully seven molds for the lily petals.
I began layering the seven petals—each a different size and shape—crossing them in the proper order as I built upward. I dabbed water on with a brush to join and secure them, smoothing the surfaces as I went.
It was not easy.
Every time I set one petal atop another, I had to keep the center of gravity from shifting so the whole thing wouldn't collapse. With another vase, you might have slipped a glass bottle inside to hold the form; Snow Lily's unique shape made that impossible.
So the only way forward seemed to be patience—adding one careful leaf at a time.
"..."
It wasn't that there seemed to be no other way. Cassandra's mother must have made Snow Lily exactly as my hands were moving now.
Because these motions were not coming from my own thinking.
An invisible master guided my hands and passed on her craft, and I watched, felt, and learned. That was the situation I was in.
"..."
Neither fast nor slow. Soft, yet without hesitation.
For Cassandra's mother, pottery must have been a kind of meditation.
When the long, painstaking process of stacking was finally past, the body of the vase was complete.
How hard had I been concentrating that I never even thought to wipe the sweat running down my face?
But I did not check the time or glance away and break the flow of the work.
Next came the snowflakes on the petals.
There were twenty-one snowflake molds in all.
A dizzying number—but thankfully, unlike the petals, I did not have to press out dozens of each. Every snowflake was used only once.
...I was truly grateful I did not have to make the snowflake molds from scratch. That alone would have doubled the working time.
I packed clay into molds no bigger than a fingertip and carefully lifted them free, and beautiful, intricate snowflakes emerged.
The artisan had not placed even the snowflakes carelessly. There was a perfect position visible only to the maker's eye.
Where the more delicate petals lay. Where, among the dozens of petals, the lonelier ones sat.
If the waves of the petals were memories, the twenty-one snowflakes were the heart-aching moments inside those memories.
"...Done."
I gripped the edge of the table with both hands, caught my breath, and wiped the sweat from my brow.
The piece before me was a harmony of lilies and snowflakes I would never have imagined on my own.
"Oh my god..."
Cassandra could not finish the sentence.
I gathered Luca—whom I hadn't held in hours—into my arms and asked,
"What do you think? Does it look all right?"
"It's not just all right, Jun. This is—how did you make it this perfectly..."
Of course the Snow Lily I had made was not finished yet. It still needed three or four days of drying, a first firing, glaze, and a second firing before it would be complete.
But even in this state, Cassandra would be able to see the finished piece clearly enough.
"Oh my god..."
She said the same words again. After staring at the vase for a long time as if she could not believe it, Cassandra turned to me.
"How is this possible? Jun, what did you used to do? Did you really follow the path of a ceramicist and then give it up?"
"Hmm, not exactly... I'm just pretty good with my hands at anything."
"..."
Even I wouldn't have believed that.
But when I clearly deflected, Cassandra seemed to decide there was no point pressing further and closed her mouth.
Only for a moment. She could not hold back the questions bursting out of her.
"But—but...! I really don't understand, Jun. Why aren't you working in the art world with talent like this?"
"...Well, about that."
Because it's an ability that will vanish in three years—no, even less time than that by now.
But I could not say that, so I repeated the same story I had once told Greg.
Just with a touch of dramatic flair.
"Hmm, Cassandra, this might be hard to believe, but... I'm only perfect with technique. As an artist, I have zero originality..."
"What?"
"Like a robot—flawless technique, no creativity, so I can't make work of my own. All I can produce is someone else's copy. I'm not qualified to be an artist."
With that, I put on the most wistful face I could manage.
Things that logic could not explain had to be papered over with emotion and moved past.
"Ah..."
And fortunately, it worked. Cassandra seemed to regard me as some sort of tragic artist.
I squeezed out every last drop of acting skill to bring the moment to a close.
"I'm fine, Cassandra. Don't look at me like that. I accepted it a long time ago. People should do what they're able to do, right? I'm happy enough as I am now."
With those words, I turned my head toward Luca to escape Cassandra's pitying gaze.
"Eeh..."
"Yeah, my Luca."
Daddy's conscience is pricking a little, Luca.
"Anyway, I'm glad I can help even like this. What do you think—with this, maybe we can make what I said yesterday a reality?"
Cassandra slowly nodded. Tears welled in her eyes.
"Jun, I really don't know what to say. For now..."
"Yes."
"For now... thank you so much. I don't know how to express my gratitude. Just yesterday I thought it was completely absurd..."
I only nodded without answering.
I fully understood how she must have felt, sweeping and organizing the warehouse all night over something that had sounded absurd.
Selling her mother's keepsakes—works that held her very soul—for pennies to people who did not know their worth would have been unimaginable pain even to think about.
If, just if, what I had said was possible... that must have been why she cleaned this place without sleep.
Her head unable to believe, her heart desperately praying for something magical to happen.
Charlie clung to the waist of Cassandra, who stood wiping her tears in silence, and soothed her.
"Mom, Mom... Mommy, don't cry."
At her only son's words, Cassandra wiped her tears and smiled.
"Yeah, Mommy's not crying. Mommy's... um, just so happy."
Cassandra cried while she smiled. Charlie smiled in relief, and Luca, knowing nothing of any of it, looked up from my arms and smiled at me.
I quietly kissed the baby's forehead and said something that broke the mood.
"Alright then—shall we try selling this?"
"Oof."
As I sat down at the table for the lunch Cassandra had prepared, my lower back screamed.
"Oof... are you okay? You looked like you worked without resting at all."
"Yes, I'm fine."
"Be careful—you have to protect your back from a young age. My mom used to lose track of time when she was working and then be sick for days."
I answered with a smile. Indeed, that sounded exactly like her mother.
After a simple but warm lunch, Cassandra drove Luca and me home in her car.
"Thank you. Not having a car is this inconvenient, huh."
"Don't mention it! From now on I'll pick you up and drop you off again. That's the least I can do."
"Ah, then I won't refuse?"
Cassandra had recovered the long eyelashes and high, bright tone I had always known. It was good to see her heart that much lighter.
After we arrived home, I said as I got out of the car,
"Then I'll edit the video I shot earlier for now. It's my first time, so I'm not sure how it'll turn out..."
"Ah, Jun, about the video editing... could I try doing it?"
"Huh?"
"When I first started YouTube, I was all enthusiasm and no plan. It was the beginning, and... but in the meantime I've been studying video editing here and there. And more than anything..."
I smiled a little.
"Because it's your mother's work?"
"Yes... that's right. I want to write the script explaining the pieces first, then edit to match it."
"I think that's a great idea. Shall we do it that way?"
It was a proposal with nothing bad in it for me at all.
If I bought an editing program with points through the Manito App, I might gain the corresponding skills...
But subtitles full of sincerity and editing full of affection could win viewers' empathy better than any technique.
And Cassandra was the one person who could write something that best captured her mother's philosophy.
If I were the one writing it, you could not expect a single proper line.
"Then we're a team now. Looking forward to working with you."