the weight behind my eyes after hours at the wheel, not tired, just…full. like the clay knows something i don't, like it's holding a secret about where it's going, what it's meant to be and i'm just the hands it's borrowing, the way that student yesterday almost destroyed it all, then didn't, then found it, that shape, that terrible beautiful thing i didn't even see coming, didn't even think they had it in them, and i almost missed it, almost corrected it, but yuki's voice, feel it, not think it, like a warning, like a promise, the point isn't the pot, it's the…everything else, it's the quiet transformation in the kiln of their chest, the way it cracks open just a little and light gets in and suddenly they're not just making a thing, they're being made.