Teucer and Tetia's Hut, Atmanta Sunrise over the Adriatic. A sky of strawberry and vanilla reflects in the rolling mirrored ocean. A soft breeze catches Tetia and blows back her long black hair.
The piece is fired and finished.
Tetia reflects on the work and the duplicity involved in completing it. Last night Teucer had been moved back to their hut to finish his recovery. She'd dutifully tended him until he'd fallen asleep. Then she'd returned to the clay, carefully baking it in a new kiln pit she'd dug in the earth, filled with dried manure, chopped wood, sea salt and dried leaves. As the blaze had grown stronger she'd covered it with logs and clay offcuts to trap the intense heat, timing everything so she would remove the ceramic at the first glimpse of dawn.
It was a relief to find it hadn't cracked. Though, when she looked closely, she could see hundreds of fissures, like the snakes she'd etched, crawling conspiratorially across the surface. The clay had not been pure. Poisonous deposits and odd minerals had seeped into it. At one point she'd been convinced the poisons would break the clay during the firing. But they hadn't. And, looking at it now, it is indeed everything Magistrate Pesna said it would be.
Magnificent.
The greatest of all her works.
And she is loath to give it away.
Tetia takes time to gently clean it. She stores it at the back of the hut and feels a strange sensation in her stomach.
A bubbling.
Like hunger. Only different.
She puts her hands across the bulge. Unless she's mistaken, even her child seems pleased that she's finished.
She covers the tablet with cloth and starts to chop fruit for breakfast. It makes her remember how usually when someone is ill neighbours bring small gifts as gestures of goodwill to speed a full and fast recovery. Fruits, cheeses, juices, or even talismans. But none have been brought for Teucer. No one has even visited.
Sharp shafts of sunlight begin to flood the hut and come to rest on Teucer's face.
Eventually the warmth wakes him.
He drags himself upright and instantly reaches out for his wife. 'Tetia!' There's a hint of panic in his voice.
'I'm here.' She goes to him and strokes his matted hair. 'Are you feeling better? You have slept long and deeply. Had you not been making the grunts of a bear, then I may have taken you for dead.'
He smiles and puts his hands to his head, close to where she's been touching him. 'I do feel a little stronger.' The bandages are all loose and the poultice has fallen off. 'Though my eyes feel as though they are full of sand.'
Tetia can see that his dressing has slipped, his pupils are uncovered. He's looking straight at her.
But he can't see anything!
She steps closer. Looks for a flicker of recognition.
Nothing.
Teucer senses something. Perhaps it is her silence. Perhaps he somehow picks up her thoughts. 'What are you doing?'
She swallows hard. 'Nothing, my love. I had mislaid your things. Lie back down and I will change those dressings for you.'
Teucer lowers his elbows and lies back.
Tetia pours water into a bowl and uses ram's wool to gently wipe away crusts from his eye lashes and sockets. She sits astride his thighs, and for a moment both of them think back to when they last made love like this. He smiles up at her and she feels him harden beneath her. He reaches out so his fingers touch the falling curtains of her hair. 'Thank you, my sweetness. Thank you for being here with me and for not deserting me. I thought the other day that you had decided that if the gods had abandoned me, then so should you.'
'Shush!' She puts a finger to his lips. 'Don't say such things.'
Teucer falls silent, his fingers frozen like icicles in the soft waterfall of hair.
She bends her face low to kiss his dry lips. She moistens them with her tongue and feels a soft moan stirring within him.
Gently she removes her clothes and kisses his chest and penis. She'll make love to him. Slowly. Caringly. Then she'll tell him. Tell him she has to go to Pesna.