Clay and Constellations

The moving truck sighed as it rolled past the carved wooden sign that read Starlit Hollow, and Mira felt the valley breathe around her: a chill that tasted of pine and iron-rich creek water, a wind that combed the needles and clicked them like distant beads. She climbed the steps to her late great-aunt’s pottery studio with a box labeled glazes, the cardboard soft from years of tape and moves. The door stuck, then yielded, and a puff of clay dust rose like a tiny weather front. Inside, sunlight streaked through two high windows and cut the room into bars of gold and shadow. The kick wheel waited with its worn wooden pedal; the thick stone sink held a ghost film of slip; shelves lined with bowls and plates showed fingerprints baked into history.

Her shoulders lowered. Mira set the box on the table and pressed her palm to the wheelhead. It was cool, metallic under the fine grit, and she smiled despite the grit between her teeth. Outside, over the shoulder of the mountain, a pale dome blinked in the winter-blue afternoon. The observatory. Even bleached by distance, even softened by haze, it caught light like a hammered coin. As a kid she’d memorized its silhouette during summer visits, tracing it from the porch with her aunt’s gardening spoon.

A knock startled her. When she opened the door, a woman with curls pinned by a pencil balanced a tray smelling of cinnamon and orange. 'I’m Rina from the bakery,' she said, hip propping the tray. 'Your aunt sold me mugs at wholesale and refused to charge for the chipped ones. I brought tea.'

'You saved me from unpacking hunger,' Mira said, and they laughed in that way strangers do when they want to be friends.

Rina surveyed the studio. 'It’s quieter without her radio. You staying long?'

'Long enough to remember how this wheel talks.' Mira let the humor be a shield for the discomfort under it: the city lease she’d given up, the gallery she’d told goodbye, the silence that followed.

Rina poured tea into a mug with a green drip and lowered her voice. 'You heard about the dome? The council’s dancing with a developer. Hotel plans. He calls it a destination. I call it a monstrosity.'

Mira’s eyes snagged again on the bright lip of the observatory. 'They’d tear it down?'

'Says it’s unsafe. Says we need jobs.' Rina’s mouth tightened. 'We need stars. People forget what it’s like to feel small in a good way.'

The tea burned sweet. Mira thought of a slate-black city sky and how she’d learned to love the glint of windows instead of constellations. She reached for the broom. 'I’ll ask around after I sweep. If the dome’s in trouble, I want to see it before anyone touches a bolt.'

'Good,' Rina said, setting the tray down. 'If you go up the ridge path, watch the ice.' She winked. 'And don’t let the crows steal your lunch. They’ve got an eye for sandwiches.'