The Riders of Florin, twelve in all, found themselves stalled at the Twin Peaks of Greenvale, winter having closed the pass two weeks ahead of schedule. The closest town of Taldora was small but well known to travellers stalled by untimely seasons, so it was to no one's surprise when the Riders came to call in the afternoon. The villages had watched the Rider's slow progression up to the pass, having learnt over the years that travellers weren't easily persuaded from their course until they saw the ice with their own eyes.

Tau didn't like travellers, but he couldn't muster the same resentment for their coin. Travellers were a blight upon the land, consuming wantonly without thought given to the sustainability of the lands they passed. Who was to pick up the rubbish that littered the road to the pass? Yet, this close to mountain top, the realities of surviving the winter meant that Tau would welcome the coin of strangers, the same as any other villager with an extra room.

Unlike the others, however, Tau would not put signs in the street or stand outside and beckon to the travellers, offering meals and laundry to entice them to stay. If one happened to knock on his door, then they would negotiate service and price, but Tau wouldn't beg. He had more important things to do.

Even now he was sitting at his potter's wheel, throwing the scrap bits of clay into small cups and dishes. Tau was known to mould a sculpture or two with the scraps at the muse's descent, but today he couldn't see any interesting shapes in the clay. The cups and dishes would fill up the gaps in the kiln between the pots and jars. The fillings he made the other day would go between those. Nothing was wasted here.

By the time the sun was setting over the mountain, Tau had packed the last of his day's work into the kiln outside the front of his house. He fired it up and poked at the charcoal with the end of an old, broken sword to make sure it was spread evenly before sealing the door. Not all the creations would survive, some would crack in the fire.

The commotion in the town meant that the Riders had arrived and were settling around the town. Tau saw signs of occupation in his neighbour's house. An extra horse in the shed. Snow boots hung up to dry. The children were out in the street, laughing and chasing each other with handfuls of slushy snow.

One gave a shout when she saw Tau and ran back indoors. A moment later, she emerged again with her mother and they approached the potter together.

"Tau, a favour please?" Ellie was a small, stocky woman who married a tall, pale man. As such, even her daughter was almost her height.

Tau set the broken sword down beside the kiln and nodded.

"We've got a pair of Riders with us insisting on separate rooms, which means that Bowman and I will stay with the kids, but…" she cast a glance back at her children, the ones on the street, and looked at Tau with a helpless shrug. "We're full to bursting. Say, would you mind taking my two girls? The Riders are men, see, and they have a strangeness about them…" she trailed off.

Tau looked down at the girl who stood as tall as her mother's shoulders. Laia, was it? And what was her sister's name? The one born only a few winters ago? Leith?

He had no children of his own and he didn't know how to look after them, especially not girls. It was a strange request, given that some of the town thought that he was one with a strangeness. Ellie must be desperate.

"A bed's all they need," Ellie was quick to say. "I'll bring over the meals, enough for all three of you, and Laia can do the cleaning. They're good girls. They won't get in your way."

Tau gave a weak smile. The woman had thought of everything. He nodded again and watched Ellie thaw with relief.

"Thank you," she called back over her shoulder, already hurrying back to the house.

Before Tau knew it, there were two girls and a hot meat pie arrayed around his modest hearth. Some of the houses had tables and chairs and a fireplace for cooking, but Tau preferred the traditional ways: a tiled platform around an open fire. The tiles warmed by the fire made good for sleeping at night.

He lit a small fire to see by and set some ice to melt. After pouring them water in the cups that had not managed to sell at market, Tau sat opposite the girls and watched them eat. They stared right back, eyes as wide as the moon. He wasn't sure who felt more lost in the situation. The girls devoured the whole pie and looked like they could have had more, so Tau hastily made some gruel flavoured with nuts and dried mushrooms. He managed to snatch a few mouthfuls before the girls ate that too.

He left the girls to their own devices as he cleared the spare room to make space for their bedding. It put a smile on his face to hear some hushed chatter followed by giggling. The sound was a relief after the terse silence at dinner. Once the room was ready, he beckoned the girls through and watched long enough to see that Laia knew how to set things up before retreating to his own room. There were no doors inside his house, and it hadn't mattered before, but Tau wondered if he should set up some screens to section off the space.

Tau fell asleep to the pleasant sound of the girl's hushed voices.

The first thing Tau did upon waking was check in on the girls. Leith had abandoned her bedding and crawled in to sleep beside Laia. It reminded Tau of his younger sister Rava, who used to do the same. He was careful not to disturb them as he moved around the house preparing for the day's work. However, after finding himself unable to move something without banging or scraping it, he picked up the crates and headed outside.

It had snowed lightly overnight and yesterday's footsteps were covered in a fine layer of white. Tau picked up the broken sword where it lay beneath a sprinkle of snow, pulling down his sleeve so that he could grip the metal without touching it. Skillfully, he pried the kiln door open.

A little forest of clay creations greeted him. The glaze he used was a trade secret. When applied, it was a runny brown no different from the clay, but the fire turned it a deep, soothing green. The earthenware was still warm to the touch.

He took his time packing the items into the crate with a bit of straw between for cushioning. Partway through his tasks, he heard the crush of heavy footsteps towards him. He looked up to see a stranger, one of the Riders.

The Rider towered over Tau, who was by no means a short man by the village's standards. He was dressed handsomely in furs and leather, with long pale hair swept back into a loose bun. His eyes were the colour of winter skies. But it was the Rider's ears that Tau couldn't stop staring at. The tops curved back and ended in a point, like the shape of a hunting horn.

"Good morning," the Rider said by way of greeting, though even such a normal phrase sounded odd coming from the outsider.

Tau nodded.

If the Rider thought anything of Tau's silence, he didn't comment on it. Instead, he gestured to the objects still inside the kiln. "May I?"

Tau nodded again.

The Rider reached in and, with a care that Tau approved of, removed two of the clay fillings that Tau made with scraps to fill the kiln. These were animal figurines; a ground squirrel and an owl, both accentuated by the smooth green glaze.

Tau busied himself with emptying the kiln while the Rider scrutinised his whimsical wares as seriously as the traveling stewards of the southward noble houses. He tried to remain indifferent to the judgement of the pale stranger, but it's hard for a craftsman to remain entirely aloof. Of plates and jars, sure, but they say that a potter's fillings speak volumes of his character.

More fillings emerged as Tau placed the larger items in the crate. The Rider gathered them up one by one while staying out of the potter's way. There was a tree figurine styled after the proud pines whose greens defied the harshest winters. A fox. A rabbit. A snow sprite. A small tray for keepsakes.

By the time the kiln was empty, the Rider had collected an armful of oddities.

"How much for these?" he asked with an enthusiasm that Tau found hard not to warm to.

Tau felt a pang of guilt taking the Rider's coin, given that the fillings were worth nothing, usually given away at the market to people who bought his wares. But the Rider seemed happy to part with his coppers and Tau reminded himself that he had no reason nor duty to foreigners.

Back inside the girls were up and milling about by the hearth. Laia was coaxing a small fire with a stick while Leith clung to her sister's back, thumb in mouth. Their mother had not yet been by with the morning's meal, so Tau scraped together some flour and butter over the small fire into a semblance of breakfast. If it was lacking in taste, Tau couldn't tell from the way the girls attacked it.

When they were almost finished, Ellie arrived, full of apologies. Both girls ran to their mother, who set down her basket of fruit so that she could take the girls into her arms. Leith was sobbing and full of complaints: the house was too cold, the bedding too hard, there were no toys anywhere, and Laia had been mean to her. She wanted to go back home. Leith was more subdued but she did whisper something in Ellie's ear while glancing at Tau.

Tau stared, wide eyed, trying to reconcile the shy, giggling girls with the two he saw now. He watched helpless as Ellie soothed the girls and gave them more to eat. That seemed to calm them, even when Ellie told them firmly that they would be staying with Tau for a while longer.

"If you ask Tau for chores, it will make the days pass faster," Ellie told her girls. Leith scrunched her face up at the thought while Laia looked resigned.

Once Ellie had left, leaving the fruit and another round of pleading thanks, it took some trial and error to figure out what the girls could do.

Laia was set to the task of cutting slabs of damp clay to size. Tau showed her how to do this with a thin string, apply even pressure on both ends as the string was brought down over the clay. Leith them rolled them pieces of clay into rough balls to prepare them for the wheel. She handled the clay more than necessary, which would lead to cracking, but he told himself that it was a small thing that he could compensate for later. After all, the girls seemed to enjoy themselves. They watched fascinated as the lumps became pots and vats under the guidance of Tau's hands. They cheered when large bits of clay were discarded from the wheel. Tau didn't have a chance to sculpt these scraps into smaller items, let alone fillings; the girls got to them first. They made twisted shapes which they claimed were flowers and Riders and babies.

During the girl's midday nap, Tau snuck out to gather some necessary supplies. It seemed that the whole village had heard of his encumberment by now and even those who were usually more aloof wanted to give him something for the girls. Laia, especially, was quite beloved by the others for her fair face and the lovely songs she sang during festivals.

When he returned, Ellie had come to visit the girls again, this time the three of them laughing at the girls' morning adventures. The four of them shared a meal of chicken and rice before Ellie returned to host the Riders.

After lunch, Laia helped Tau clean out the dust and broken clay in the kiln while Leith took an afternoon nap. The older girl worked with a quiet efficiency that pleased Tau and she hummed a tune when she worked that made her all the more agreeable. She had the insides cleaner than Tau could have ever managed; her slender hands reached corners and holes that Tau could not. They found a bird shaped filling that had been fired to within an inch of its life, it's surface a chalk white. Tau let Laia keep it.

When the girls weren't occupied in the afternoon, they found games of their own behind the house in the snow. Tau felt dutybound to watch them, and he was right, because he stepped in just in time to save Leith from tumbling off a snow mound the two girls had built. He dived forward with a speed he didn't know he possessed and snatched the girl just as she toppled.

When Ellie came in the evening, Leith again had tears in her eyes, but Laia took the stew happily from her mother and heated it over the fire. Ellie didn't stay long. Her guests had their compatriots visiting for dinner. Apparently, Tau's fillings were a source of much discussion amongst them.

Tau was prepared for the girls' appetite this evening and supplemented Ellie's stew with a whole extra loaf of nutty bread. He gave Laia extra bedding and blankets for the two girls to use. When it was all set up, it looked to rival a towns leader's quarters. It was worth it to see Laia happy.

The next day passed much the same, except this time their mother came over in the evening, Laia gave her some butter biscuits she had baked. They filled the kiln in the afternoon, packing the spaces with smaller creations that Tau had made in the morning. The girls were handy in helping him pack his kiln; they handed each piece to him with a care only girls could possess, saving him the effort of going back and forth. Leith squealed with delight when some of her twisted shapes, the ones Tau thought could handle firing, were placed in the gaps of the kiln. He included some of Laia's more complete creations too while pretending to ignore the excited gleam in her eyes.

The girls went inside when a Rider came to speak with Tau, the same one from yesterday. He wanted more fillings if Tau had them, but the potter shook his head. There would be no fillings tomorrow; any scrap that could have made one had been commandeered by the girls. Tau had a suspicion that this would be the case for the entirely of the Riders' stay.

The winter passed in a blur until suddenly, the Twin Peaks of Greenvale were once again restored to their namesake. Living with the girls brought more grief and joy than Tau thought himself capable. Leith had developed the bad habit of climbing up Tau's back when he least expected it and covering his eyes, or simply latching onto him by the throat and laughing manically. Laia, on the other hand, proved to be an excellent potter's assistant, though that wasn't surprising given that Laia was good at anything she put her mind to.

On the morning after the villages had seen the Riders off, Ellie and Bowman came to Tau to collect the girls, both of them pleased and relieved about the winter's work. The coin from the Riders would help feed and clothe their brood, which would be increasing yet again before next winter.

Leith expressed her feelings about moving back home most outwardly. She had yet to grow out of her tears and tantrums and wouldn't be placated with the logic that Tau still lived just across the road and she could visit whenever she wanted. She cried for him as if he had died, which almost infected Tau with a tear or two of his own.

Laia was more practical in her assessment of the situation. She both liked and was well suited to pottery; her care and precision, along with her dextrous and increasingly muscular hands, made her the ideal candidate to continue to craft in the town. When she asked Tau if she could become an apprentice, it brought a tear to his eyes for real.

The town of Taldora thawed into its routine for the rest of the year. Crops were planted, markets were held, and children played freely again in the streets. The villagers all agreed that the potter looked happier with his new apprentice, and her chatter eased the silence that hung around him.

Author's Note

This was written for the September - October (which became the November - December) 3K Short Story Competition on the Labyrinth Forum. The prompt was to create a 'genre baby' and I wrote this Fantasy x Slice of Life mostly to see if I could do something with absolutely no stakes. Surprisingly difficult.

Anyway, if you liked this or want to read some great stories, head on over to the 3K Short Story thread at Labyrinth, read the entries which will be posted in January, and you can vote for your favourite.

Happy New Year, boys and girls.

Augie