The Main Harbour at Valtura, painted by Feterino

A Stranger in Valtura

Marek

In the fishing village of Valtura, on the coast half a day’s journey from Estasea, the sea dictated life’s rhythms - fishing in the early morning, mending nets in the afternoon, and huddling around the fireplace when a gale of wind swept in. It was a simple life, with a strong sense of community. The fishermen knew every tide, wave, and current, and they were used to extending kindness to strangers who arrived by land or sea.

Such a stranger arrived one evening. His name was Marek, a tall man in his late fifties with the look of someone who had spent years at sea. Marek came from Estasea with a trader’s satchel brimming with rare goods—exotic spices, amber nuggets and a pearl the size of a small egg. The villagers were impressed with his charm and his knowledge of the wider world, but he said very little about himself. He took a room at the Sailing Gull, the village’s only inn with rooms to rent, whose owner, Ina, took to the stranger with the generous nature.

 

One evening, as the tide pulled out and everything was wrapped in a salty night fog, Marek told the villagers at the inn a story. He told of a hidden cove not far from Valtura where, he said, ancient sailors had buried a king’s ransom in silver. He described the cove’s high cliffs and treacherous  rocks and waves, a place where few dared to sail. The story stirred something in the younger men of Valtura - for generations, they had lived by fishing and just about surviving.

None of them was more taken than Rurik, Ina’s son, a strong lad who was known to be calm and brave on the rough seas. His mind filled with dreams of finding the hidden treasure and changing the future for his mother and himself. After hearing Marek’s story, Rurik started preparing his small fishing boat, The Wild Wind, and convincing two of his friends to join him in the search.

 

They set off at dawn the next morning, the wind whipping against their faces as they sailed out to the cove Marek had described. As they rounded the point, the seas began to get even rougher, the boat pitched and swayed, and a thick fog rolled in, concealing the rocky coast. Rurik could see that these were treacherous waters, yet he pushed onward, convinced by Marek’s vivid description.

Back in Valtura, Ina grew worried as days passed without any sign of her son. She looked for Marek, but he had slipped away quietly, leaving his room at the Sailing Gull empty except for some money to cover his bill. In the village, some people said that he used his charisma to trick honest men into disaster, and that he had sent Rurik into the unknown with dark intentions.

High Summer in Valtura by Feterino

The Artist and the Vintner at Valtura by Feterino

 

Rurik and his friends finally emerged from the fog, having discovered no treasure, only the harshness of the sea and the very limit of their endurance. As they rowed back to shore, exhausted and empty-handed, Rurik thought about his place in the world and in the village that had always been home.

Ina welcomed him back and the villagers gathered at the inn, glad to see him safely home. The village elders said that nothing good could have come from the search - Rurik listened, but he saw it differently. His adventure had taught him something about himself and a life he had taken for granted.

And Marek? He was never seen in Valtura again, though some claimed he’d been spotted in other coastal towns.

 

Years later, a visitor was sitting in the Sailing Gull having a quiet glass of wine. The only other customer that afternoon was a very old man, who had lived in Valtura all his life. They got talking, and the old man told the visitor the story of Rurik and his fruitless quest.

"I'm a bit confused", the visitor said, "what was Marek's dark intention then? What on earth did he have to gain by sending Rurik to the cove?"

"Nothin'," said the old man, "'e didn't 'ave no 'dark motivation' - 'e were a nice feller, and 'e just told a tall tale to pass away a cold winter evening and 'e was 'orrified when 'e 'eard that Rurik and his friends 'ad actually taken 'im at his word.

That's why 'e left Valtura in a 'urry - 'e were just embarassed, thas all."

Lighthouse at Valtura by Feterino

Milk and Clay

 

 The sky was still pale pink when Maris set out her pottery dishes and bowls, their smooth glazed form catching what early light there was. She had been working late into the night, and her fingers bore the trace of it — stained at the cuticles, roughened at the edges.

Across from her, a stall creaked open. Linen cloths were pulled back to reveal baskets of round, wrapped cheeses, jars of cream, and earthen crocks packed with golden butter. An older woman with strong shoulders and wind-reddened cheeks began to arrange them. She moved with quiet purpose, and her hands were steady as she tucked a folded cloth beneath each jar. Their eyes met.

"You're new," the woman said. Her voice was low and rich. “I don’t know your pots.”

"And I don’t know your milk," Maris replied, brushing a lock of hair from her cheek. “So perhaps we’re even.”

A small smile. “I’m Lenna. From the eastern fold of the river.”

“Maris,” she said. “My clay and I come from the southern hills.”

They both stood in that moment of silence that sometimes settles between people who have just recognized something — a rhythm, perhaps, or a kindred solitude. From somewhere behind the stalls, a child began to sing a street rhyme and a busy market day began.

The next morning came and was a little colder, though the sun was out and gilding the rooftops of Danfelgor with a false warmth. Maris arrived before dawn again, her cart creaking as she pulled it over the cobbles. She had brought fewer pots this time, but finer ones — small drinking bowls glazed in warm tones, and a single tall vase with a thumbprint pressed at its base.

Lenna was already there. She nodded in greeting as she laid out her goods — thick yoghurt sealed with wax, a wheel of soft cheese wrapped in herbs, a jug of milk that looked like ivory in the light.

“Not so many today,” Lenna said as she came over, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes lingered on the vase.

“Some were a bit rushed,” Maris replied. “I’d rather bring three good ones than ten careless ones.”

Lenna grunted her approval. She lifted the vase, turned it in her hand. “Feels good. Solid but not stiff - like something natural that grew.”

Maris blinked. “Most people don’t notice that.”

“I churn my own butter and handform my own cheese. You get to know what your hands mean.”

They stood and chatted like that for a little while — the vase between them, the city starting to stir around them and then a customer came and called Lenna away. That evening, as stalls were folded and carts were loaded, Maris lingered longer than usual. She was winding twine around her pots when Lenna appeared at her elbow.

“You walk home?”

“I do.”

“Let’s walk together then - I always go home along the river.”

They strolled in companionable silence, boots scuffing the edge of the path where the market turned to reed and the dusk settled in.

“You said you came from the hills,” Lenna said after a while.

“Yes, but there’s not much there now though - the clay’s still good, but the kilns need fuel, and there’s not much left up there to burn. Last year’s wildfires took nearly all of it”

“I came here when my uncle’s dairy farm got broken up after he died,” Lenna replied. “My mother used to say milk tastes lonelier in the city.”

“That’s a strange thing to say.”

“She was a strange woman, but she’s dead now, bless her.”

They both laughed, softly, as two gulls spiraled overhead, circling down toward the marsh.

It was a damp morning when the inspector came — not the usual clerk with a loose seal and looser tongue, but a new man. Tall, pressed like a newly ironed shirt, with a ribboned badge pinned to his chest and boots too finely oiled for muddy fields.

He moved down the line of stalls with a little notebook. Everyone stiffened as he passed — even old Gunter, who sold eggs and never cared for authority. Maris was adjusting the cloth beneath her wares when she heard the voice:

“You’ve no license for glazed goods in Zone Two.”

She looked up. The inspector was frowning at her pots.

“I was told potters could sell anywhere in this stretch,” she said, careful with her tone.

“Unglazed pots, yes. Glazed ceramics fall under guild inspection. Zone Two is for approved merchants only.”

“I’m not in the guild,” she admitted.

“Precisely. This will be noted.”

He scribbled something. Lenna stepped forward from her stall.

“She’s not doing harm,” she said. “Just selling what people like.”

“It’s not about harm. It’s about order, and following the regulations. The Merchants’ Guild, who I would remind you, control this market and issue the necessary permits, are very strict about their regulations being followed. To the letter.”

He moved on, but the tension lingered. Maris felt heat rising in her chest. Lenna put a hand lightly on her arm.

“Don’t let him push you out,” she said. “He wants people to be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened. Just tired of being made to feel small.”

Lenna nodded. “Then let’s not be small. Not today.”

The Dragon tavern sat just off the western arch of the market square, with a narrow doorway and mullioned windows glowing amber in the dusk. It was where craftsmen and market stallholders went after the market closed when their feet ached and the rain started. Not rowdy, not too refined — just warm and welcoming.

Lenna pulled the door open, and Maris stepped in. The place buzzed with quiet conversation, the scrape of chairs on flagstones, and the hum of fiddle music from the hearthside. Inside, the tavern smelled of woodsmoke, cooking, and ale. The two women found a corner table and ordered two mugs of warm spiced wine.

“That man today,” Lenna said, “he made everything feel... brittle.”

Maris nodded, blowing steam from her mug. “He made me feel like I didn’t belong. Like it was borrowed space I had no right to.”

Lenna’s eyes were soft. “You do belong - as much, or more than most. Those pots matter to people and they carry stories, even if the inspector doesn’t see it.”

Maris smiled faintly. “You’re good with words.”

Lenna shrugged. “I read a lot. Old songs and poems - as a child, I got teased for it.”

“Do you write any of your own?”

A shy smile. “Not much…  Well, sometimes I write when I can’t sleep.”

They sat quietly for a moment. Someone was tuning a dulver at the back, and a trader’s son was boasting too loudly at the next table.

Maris leaned in, her voice low. “Do you think we could... make a kind of corner in the market that’s our own?”

Lenna looked at her — not just at her face but at the thoughts behind it.

“I think we could try - but I don’t think they’ll like it very much if we do.”

“Let them not like it,” Maris said, smiling for the first time that day. They clinked mugs, so it was agreed.

By midweek, a quiet ripple moved through the central market. The potter and the dairy-seller were doing something - their stalls were now side by side, though they'd kept their permits separate. The colours of the stalls echoed each other: pale cream cloth above Lenna’s cold jars of butter and buttermilk, earthen red and slate grey at Maris’s table, where her cups and bowls now rested in simple wooden racks carved with cows, vines, and curling smoke.

They’d started to package small bundles: a shallow clay dish with a round of white cheese or a pitcher with a scrap of linen wrapped around it, knotted and painted with milk runes. Maris’s kiln-marks — once abstract — now curved like horns or stalks of barley. A butcher from the south arcade paused one morning and muttered to his boy, “What are they playing at?”

“They’re selling, or trying to, I reckon” the boy said, voice cracking, trying not to giggle.

But others saw something else. Old Fraska of the pickle stall grinned every time they set up. “They're weaving,” she told a baker’s apprentice. “That’s what it is. Clay and cream — weaving stories into goods. Folk want stories again these days.”

Not everyone approved. A rather pompous dried-fruit seller near the Merchants’ Guild House sniffed and said it was “performative rusticity.” The spice vendor behind her muttered, “It’s clever. That pottery makes the milk look like something really special.”

Guild scribes took notes. A young merchant approached Maris with an offer to scale up the operation — she declined, laughing. “We’re still deciding what we are.”

Lenna overheard someone say, “They’re getting ideas above their place in this market.”

She said nothing and just rearranged a set of cups to catch the morning light in a new way — and smiled when she saw Maris watching. The Festival of the Danfel  came with the first blossom on the river almonds — a time of thaw and return, of things hidden in the earth rising again. The central market was transformed. Stalls were draped in white and gold, musicians played dulvers and pipes, and the Merchants’ Guild Hall unfurled banners from its stone balconies.

For the first time, Lenna and Maris prepared something together for the celebration. Maris made a set of wide, pale dishes etched with the image of the rising sun and filled them with coarse salt, almond petals, and tiny folded scrolls with short blessings written in clay ink. Lenna brought sweet cream and elderflower cheese wrapped in soft waxed paper, stamped with a sunburst. They stood side by side, quiet but pleased before the crowd arrived.

But the market was changing. A new deputy from the Merchants’ Guild — a young man with pale gloves and a hard voice — walked the stalls flanked by two silent aides. “Consolidated licensing,” he told the Market Traders Guild representative. “Unregulated partnerships cause confusion, so all goods must be marketed under a single permit. We cannot allow larger concerns to take over stalls in this market - this market’s charter from the Merchants’ Hall allows for sole traders and sole traders only.”

He stopped at Lenna and Maris’s table.

“This is new,” he said, not kindly. “You're operating as one?”

Lenna said, “We sell together. But our work is our own.”

Maris added, “We’re not in the Guild. We're not even a shop.”

The deputy gave a thin smile. “Then you’ll need to separate your goods — and your earnings. Or submit a joint petition, with fees.”

The joy of the day had soured, and at the end of the day, they packed their things in silence

They did not speak of it for two days. The market quietened down again after the Festival — the petals swept up, the pipers gone, the banners furled again against the spring winds. Maris returned to her workshop behind the stone terrace of the square. Lenna went back to her early-morning routine, her head bowed and the cream sloshing in the churn as she walked. But the warmth between them hadn't faded. If anything, it had grown into something new - a fragile feeling like a thread  being stretched. On the third morning, Maris appeared beside Lenna’s stall just after sunrise, cheeks flushed from the kiln.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said without preamble. “We don’t need to break any regulations. We just need to present things differently.”

Maris raised an eyebrow.

“You register the stall,” Maris continued. “Officially, it’s yours. But I supply you — wholesale. No law against milk served in clay, is there?”

Lenna blinked. Then her mouth lifted into the beginning of a grin. “You’d sell it to me?”

“You’d pay me as a supplier,” Maris said. “And if they check the books, everything adds up.”

Lenna folded her arms. “I don’t like lying.”

“It’s not lying,” Maris said. “It’s adapting. Clay is flexible, you know. You have to fire it to make it last — but before that, it yields.”

They went ahead with the plan, and fortunately the paperwork passed without any trouble. The Merchants’ Guild man barely glanced at it — milk was milk, pottery was pottery, dairy products were being sold in pottery containers, and none of it seemed threatening.  But in the market, people noticed that the dishes were now labeled Maris & Clay, a brand that caught on faster than either expected. The two were seen often sitting together now — before the rush when the market opened, after the close, sometimes during quiet times in the working day. When asked, they gave no explanations - only nods and smiles that showed the quiet kind of confidence that needed no defending.

One morning, a letter came, hand-delivered, bearing the crimson seal of the Guild Of Merchants.

“A routine audit of newly registered market stallholderships will be conducted at month’s end. All documentation and records must be presented. Failure to comply or inconsistencies found will result in revocation of stall rights and possible fines.”

Lenna read it twice, then folded it slowly. “They’re not just looking for numbers in a ledger,” she said. “They’re looking for a reason, and a way to exert their authority over the market.”

Maris’s hands were clenched so tightly the parchment of the letter crinkled. 

“We’re not breaking the rules, exactly,” Lenna said, too quickly. “I’m listed as a dairy-seller. You’re listed as a supplier, but what if they come and see and someone says it’s not about milk or pots, it’s about... us. And that we are really working and trading as a partnership…”

Neither of them spoke.

 

They stayed late in the workshop, Lenna collecting together old receipts, Maris checking glazes that hadn’t fully cooled.

Maris said quietly, “If this goes wrong, I’ll lose everything. I’ve no family to fall back on.”

Lenna looked up. “Do you think I do?”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I thought we were careful,” Maris said.

“We were,” Lenna answered. “But careful’s not the same as safe.”

 

The inspectors arrived on a grey morning. Not one, but three — two young clerks with ink-stained cuffs, and a woman in a cloak of red wool whose gaze took in everything. They asked questions, measured shelves and took notes. Lots of notes.

“Who made this?” one clerk asked, lifting a curved serving jug.

“I did,” Maris answered.

“And who sold it?”

“I did,” Maris said. “Wholesale to Lenna. Clay vessels for milk, labeled and priced according to the market code.”

“And the business is separate?” the woman in red asked. “There is no co-ownership?”

“No,” they said, together.

A pause. Then the woman laid the jug down gently.

“And yet you’re always seen together. Working. Eating. Drinking.”

Lenna’s heart thudded. “Is that in breach of market law?”

The red-cloaked woman looked at her for a long moment. “No,” she said at last. “Not so far as I can see.” And then she turned and left.

The tension lingered long after the inspectors left, but the next day, Maris and Lenna noticed something. The next morning, there were more smiles in the market, more nods of greeting. The vendors, the fishmonger, the baker, even the spice seller whose cart always seemed to smell of mystery and heat — they all greeted them with an almost conspiratorial air. One afternoon, Lenna overheard a conversation between two women near her stall.

“I heard they’re giving trouble to the potter and the dairy-seller,” one woman said, her voice low but carrying. The other woman looked over, then leaned closer. 

“Trouble or not, I’ll buy my cheese where it’s good and pots where they’re fired with care.”

Lenna’s breath caught. Then, with a glance, the second woman came over to her and slipped something small into her palm — a metal disc with an unfamiliar engraving.

“You don’t need to ask. It's from all of us - we all remember how you helped when the floodwater rose, and how you helped to make sure the storehouses were all sandbagged. Let them do what they can - we will stand with you.” 

Lenna nodded slowly. There were no words, but her heart was lighter for  the other woman’s gesture.

The next day, as the inspection deadline loomed, an unexpected visitor arrived. It was a man dressed in a dark green cloak, the kind worn by those who frequented the guilds and city halls. He approached their stall with purpose, his boots clicking on the cobblestones. Lenna and Maris exchanged a look before Lenna straightened and greeted him. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m not here to buy - in fact I have something for you both,” the man said, his voice low and steady as he held out a sheet of parchment. Maris frowned, taking the parchment carefully. The seal on it was unfamiliar, but the words inside were unmistakable.

“This business is not to be considered a threat to any other trader or craftsman. Consider this notice a formal declaration of Guild support. At the time of the inspection, please present this to the market authorities.”

“Who sent this?” Lenna asked, her mind racing.

“The Guild of Craftsmen. And a few others who prefer to remain unnamed,” he said with a sly smile. “You’ve made something of real value here, both of you with your partnership - not that we must call it that, of course - and we intend to ensure that the city knows it. The Merchants are always trying to show how powerful and in control they are, but we have to resist them when we can. They are not going to make an example of you two if the Crafts Guild can help it. ”

Lenna took the paper, feeling the weight of it in her hand. “What do you want in return?”

“Nothing,” the man said. “Sometimes the city needs a little nudge in the right direction. Sometimes people like you need someone on the inside.”

Before they could respond, the man turned and disappeared into the bustling marketplace, leaving them with more questions than answers, but also quite relieved.

The day of the final market audit came, but when the inspectors arrived, something was different. They were met by a crowd of curious onlookers, all wearing the same quiet defiance that Lenna and Maris had felt the day before. The fishmonger, the baker, the spice seller, and others from the market all stood nearby as the inspectors began their rounds. The woman in red, who had led the first inspection, raised an eyebrow when she saw the gathered crowd.

“We’re just here for routine paperwork,” one of the clerks muttered, clearly unsettled by the presence of so many people. The woman in red studied the scene, then turned her attention back to Lenna and Maris. “You’ve ensured all proper records are to hand and available to us, I hope?”

Lenna nodded, silently offering the letter they had been given. The inspector’s eyes flickered over it, then slowly back to the crowd. For a long moment, the market was silent, save for the background soft murmur of voices. The woman’s expression changed very slightly.

“This will be reviewed,” she said quietly, her tone not as sharp as before. “But you have not violated any regulations so far as I can see. The matter is therefore... suspended.”

And with that, the woman turned and walked away, her footsteps clearly audible in the quiet.

 

In the days that followed, Lenna and Maris found their market stall more crowded than ever. The crowd wasn’t just there to buy - they were also there to show solidarity.

“I heard you two were going to be shut down,” a young man from the bakery said as he handed over a small basket of warm bread rolls. “So, I thought I’d stop by and show my support. Have these for your lunch with my compliments. And anyway, your milk makes my pastries taste better.”

The crowd around them nodded in agreement, some raising cups of cider in silent toast.

“It’s the way the market should work,” said the fishmonger. “We all need to help each other out. What you’ve done here is really good - just the kind of fresh idea the market needs to keep people coming back”

Lenna’s eyes met Maris’s, and they shared a brief, quiet moment of pride. 

It had been a long winter — not as bitter as some, but long enough to make folk grateful when spring returned and the city’s rooftops were no longer covered with frost or snow each morning. By the time the crocuses flowered in the cracks of the cobbles, Maris and Lenna had secured something they had never thought possible - a contract with The Three Crowned Stars and Three Eagles, one of the city’s oldest and most famous taverns.

The innkeeper, a fastidious woman named Mistress Denra, had come to the market herself one morning late in autumn. She’d said nothing for a long time, just tasted the almond milk Lenna had flavoured with honey and cinnamon , and looked at a handled cup of Lenna’s—glazed in ocean green, the glaze pooling like river silt at its base.

“These are very good,” she said at last. “Not showy, but honest - I’ll need a hundred sets for our banquet chamber and twenty of these large vases. And we will be ordering this flavoured milk regularly from now on. I’ll talk to our chef and let you know quantities tomorrow.”

That commission changed everything - with the earnings, and some subtle encouragement from their friends in the Crafts Guild, Maris and Lenna leased a corner shop on the northern edge of the central market. It was a wedge-shaped space with green shutters and a large side window where the morning light struck the glazed pots perfectly.

The front room opened onto the street, and was filled with clean lines of shelves for clay wares and a cool, shaded corner for milk urns sunk in stone counters to keep them fresh. Behind a counter carved with curling vine-work, Lenna would stand in the morning hours, humming softly, while Maris shaped the clay in the back room, where a high window let in as much light as she needed.

In late spring, on a quiet afternoon scented with lilac and lavender, a letter arrived — folded with care, sealed in gold wax, and delivered by a boy in the red-and-blue livery of the Crafts Guild Hall.

It read:

“To Mistress Lenna of the Potters’ Circle and Mistress Maris of the Dairy Makers' Fellowship —
By unanimous vote, and in recognition of your excellence, innovation, and service to the community of Danfelgor, the Guild of Craftsmen offers you full membership.
You are invited to the midsummer gathering to take your places among the circle of makers.”

They stood together reading it in the fading light, Maris’s hand resting against Lenna’s arm, neither quite ready to speak.

“You’re crying,” Maris murmured.

“Only a bit,” Lenna admitted, eyes shining. “We built this. And now we’re... part of the Guild - something bigger and older than just us. That’s all.”

“That's not all,” said Maris softly. “We made something that lasts.”

he Crafts Guild Hall was not ostentatious — but it was in reality far more elegant than the overdone opulence of the Merchants’ Hall. Its walls were of grey stone flecked with green, and was roofed in copper that had turned the colour of old coins. Inside, candles glowed in iron sconces, and long oak tables lined the chamber known as the Circle Room, where new members were welcomed.

Maris wore a soft linen robe the colour of ripened wheat, whilst Lenna’s was slate grey with clay-red cuffs, a potters’ costume. When their names were called, the Guild folk clapped, and when the Guildmaster of the Craftsmen’s Circle — a stooped man named Helric Daan — pressed the iron seal of the guild into their hands, they bowed and were formally welcomed.

“Let your quiet work speak,” was all Helric said. “And let your hands do honour to the city and to our Guild. Welcome.”

As autumn mellowed the trees of Danfelgor down into golds and russets, Maris and Lenna’s shop became more than just a storefront — it became a meeting point. Young apprentices from the potters’ quarters came asking questions, and young cheese makers brought their curdled failures to ask Lenna for advice. Even a city scribe came, asking Maris to shape a new style of ink-jar designed to ease steady-handed work.

Their voices, once quiet and careful, were now sought out in Guild meetings. Maris was asked to join a standards committee — a body that oversaw the quality and fairness of guild production. Lenna was invited to speak to a gathering of city healers, after her orange-infused whey began to be used to treat scurvy in the lower districts. Before, neither woman had sought influence, but now, they attained a steady voice — not loud or political, but clear.

At the close of the year came the Festival of Stalls — a market tradition older than even the Guild itself, when stalls were draped in fancy cloth and displayed lanterns and all trades celebrated their wares with pageantry and small gifts to the people. Maris created a line of clay lanterns etched with wildflowers and constellations. Lenna made a drink of full cream milk, honey, and cardamom, offered in little glazed cups meant to be taken away and kept.

Their stall stood on the west side of the market — not the grandest, not the largest, but the one of those most visited by families, fellow craftsmen, and by those who remembered them from before. Children tugged at their mothers’ hands to go see the “milk-and-clay ladies.” An old baker gave them a coin he said had belonged to his grandfather and Mistress Denra from the Three Crowned Stars came by to simply nod, place more orders and say: “Well done.”

When it came it was not an easy decision. The cows had been part of Maris’ life for as long as she could remember — their patient eyes, the steady rhythm of milking, and the animal warmth in the winter dawn. But the routine of the shop was different now, and the market's needs had shifted. The final calf had been weaned and the barn was quiet. Maris found her one morning sitting on a stool beside the empty pen, a pail of feed untouched at her feet. Lenna looked up and simply said, “It’s time.” They sold the herd to a cousin of her’s from the northern pastures where the cows would be well looked after. Part of the space they freed up became a garden for herbs and hives.

The first wax pots were an experiment — jars shaped like folded flower buds and inside, the beeswax burned slowly and clean, infused with crushed petals from the herb garden and a thin thread of cinnamon.They sold out before noon, so Maris crafted new moulds, her glaze subtly altered to take on the warm shimmering honey colour. Lenna tended the bees and began writing tiny verses on folded parchment to place inside each candle pot: “For the dark corner — a little light.” or “Patience as the hive teaches.”

It was the Three Crowned Stars and Three Eagles that commissioned the first exclusive batch - larger pots with a burnished glaze inlaid with silver flecks and bearing their crest beneath the glaze. They had asked for deeper-toned wax, scented with pine resin and the pots were delivered custom-wrapped in linen -  favoured patrons were able to take them home as keepsakes.

Years passed, and the small shop that had once sold milk and curds now glowed golden even in midwinter, warm with beeswax light. People came not just to buy, but to pause and browse the shelves that were lined with candle-jars, carved bees, little ceramic amulets with lines of poetry tucked inside. Their work was no longer just goods, but offerings — a little gentleness sold among the clamour. Lenna still shaped clay each morning and Maris still smelled of thyme and wax - they no longer called themselves milk-seller or potter, but simply makers.

And when the Guild convened for the spring meeting, it was Maris and Lenna who lit the ceremonial lanterns. No speech was made — only light, and the scent of honey, and the long silence of a room that understood.

 

 

 

The first week in Valtura passed in a wash of salt wind and gulls screeching, the cries of the city and the market long behind them. The former harbour pilot’s house stood squat and whitewashed behind the sea dyke, its roof mended and its shutters painted pale blue by Lenna’s steady hand. Maris had built a low stone wall around the courtyard and set the beehives there, where they caught the morning sun.

They were strangers in the village, though not unwelcome. The old fishers nodded to them, and the new visitors—dandies from Estasea, landscape sketchers, minor merchants in country linen—regarded them with curious neutrality. It was clear to all that the two women were not holiday-makers, nor idle dreamers. Everyone could see that they worked hard. By day, Lenna shaped pots with a new look — gentler, more fluid. Maris poured beeswax into them late in the afternoon, her hands golden. The honey they sold to the innkeeper of the Whale’s Watch down by the quay, and the candles — scented with lavender, pine, and salt — began to draw notice in the apothecary’s window.

One morning, early, with sea mist still touching the tiled roofs, a man in a broad hat and paint-smeared coat paused before the little display outside their door. He lifted one of Lenna’s pots, glazed in sea-green and ink-black swirls, touched the rim with one paint-stained finger, and set it down again with something like reverence.

“You don’t sign them,” he said.

Lenna, who had come to sweep the stoop, looked up. “No. They’re only meant to burn candlewax.”

He turned to her. “Burn beautifully,” he said. “May I buy one?”

“You may have it,” she said, not unkindly, but not coy either.

He took off his hat and bowed low. “Feterino.”

“I know,” said Lenna. “You paint the sea as if it were a sorrowing god.”

He laughed softly. “And you trap light in clay.”

That was the beginning. He returned later that week with brushes and a suggestion. “Let me try one. Just one. You glaze it, I’ll paint it. We’ll see.”

It was a strange collaboration at first. Lenna liked symmetry, earth tones, and quietness. Feterino brought bold lines, floral forms, and stories without words. But something happened on the surface of the clay — a conversation between them that needed no speaking. When the first painted vase sat in the window at the Three Crowns and Three Eagles, a minor noble from Estasea bought it before it could cool from the sun. Within a fortnight, there were five more. The inn commissioned a dozen.

In the third year of their life in Valtura, the winds changed. The sea stayed the same — blue-grey and patient — but the village’s rhythms were different. New shutters gleamed on old cottages, and window boxes bloomed in unnatural profusion. Cafés sprang up in former net stores, selling rose-petal cordials and fancy pastries. A theatre company from Estasea took the old sail loft and turned it into a playhouse, with oil lamps and velvet chairs, whilst the fishmonger started selling  smoked scallops in jars labelled heritage.

Lenna and Maris, who had come with tools and bees and love, watched quietly as their quiet harbour grew louder. It wasn’t what they had meant for it. But their painted pots had become tokens of taste, their courtyard became a stop on walking tours, and the Three Crowns and Three Eagles displayed their work in glass cabinets, priced high and proudly. Feterino’s name drew patrons from across the bay.

But other names began to disappear. Old Marta, who had kept chickens and baked barley loaves, sold her house and wept quietly into the hearth before leaving. Her son could no longer afford the rent on the old fishing boat. The tavern down by the dyke doubled its prices and stopped serving salt cod stew — it wasn’t “refined enough,” said the new owner, a man with scented hair.

Local hildren vanished from the quay. No one played skimming stones anymore. Maris noticed it first. She went to buy lamp oil from the chandler and found it had been replaced with scented candles from Estasea — her own competitors. “Imported wax,” said the boy behind the counter. “No mess.”

Lenna’s hands gradually grew slower at the wheel.

“It’s not our fault,” she said one evening, low-voiced, brushing clay dust from her apron.

“No,” said Maris. “But we helped it happen.”

The Main Harbour at Valtura by Feterino

 

They began to ask: who is this village for now? The irony wasn’t lost on them — two women once outsiders, now fixtures in a place that no longer felt quite theirs either. They started speaking more with the fishermen, the old glassblower’s widow, the man who played fiddle by the boats and listened to what was being lost. They invited the local children to paint pots with them on Sundays, using the leftover glaze. Feterino, too, had begun to retreat. “They want beauty without memory,” he muttered, and began drawing in charcoal again, sketching the edges of things. But the pots told a different story now - Lenna began etching village scenes into the clay — a hand hauling in a net, a black cat on a warm roof, Marta’s chickens. Maris added candle scents that only locals recognised: smoke from sea-driftwood, the warm scent of tar and old ropes.

The days grew slower, and the pots fewer. Lenna’s hands ached in the mornings. Maris rose later than she used to. The bees still hummed behind the old pilot’s house, but someone else cared for them now — a local girl named Jorra, steady-handed and keen-eyed, who had learned under Maris’s care. They had given up the Danfelgor shop a year before, passing it to a young couple who made pottery of their own — rougher work, perhaps, but honest. The Guild had placed their names on the Wall of Steady Makers: not the highest honour, but one that meant endurance, trust, craft well given.

And now, in late summer, they sat beneath the lean fig tree in their courtyard, a breeze rising from the sea. The tide was out. The boats lay long and bare on the wet sand. Feterino had come with a couple of bottles of old wine from Prodelkrebu and three cups made long ago in Lenna's Danfelgor kiln.

None of them spoke for a while.

Then Maris said, “It’s not the place we came to, is it?”

“No,” Lenna said, “but it’s still the place where we made something good.”

Feterino poured the wine. “Everything beautiful is dangerous. Even art - or beeswax and barley bread. You don’t mean to change the world, but the world changes to meet you - and not always for the better.”

They drank, and the wind played with the fig leaves. Across the lane, one of Lenna’s early pots sat in a window — the one with three swallows sweeping low over a field of barley. A little cracked now, but lit from within. Children’s voices echoed faintly from the quay and someone was playing a fiddle in a way that no visitor knew, but the old Valtura folk still remembered. Maris leaned against Lenna’s shoulder. “We did well, didn’t we?”

“You did,” said Feterino softly. “You both did. Even in a town that now seems to have forgotten itself a little bit.”

The sun fell lower. The bees quieted. And in the quiet, the three old friends raised their cups again — to milk and to clay, to wax and to paint, to the lives they made, and the things they could not hold onto.

 

Copyright © Rod Jones 2024. All Rights Reserved.