THE DAYS PASSED and apart from Pirouette who viewed the whole matter with Perfectine disdain, the other girls of Wonder dorm watched with polite amusement whenever Vetta got out her ceramic project and endeavoured to make progress with it. Then it got kind of boring even for the most indulgent among them and any fascination as to what the vase looked like was dampened by repeated views of the growing shape.
'It has no handles then?' one observer observed as Vetta turned the thing around and around one evening to check the cement was dry so she might endeavour to place a new piece in its unique slot.
'I hope not,' Vetta said, pausing in her appraisal with a look of slight panic on her face. 'I do not remember any. Do you think there should be?' She looked at the remaining pieces carefully arranged on a tray. There were only five left by this time, all of about the same size. None had the look of a handle about them.
Meresinth laughed.
'If it didn't before it was broken then one would not expect it to afterwards.'
'That is a relief,' Vetta said and resumed her concentrated stare at glaze and patterns, cracks that were all but invisible now, and the remaining pieces. Thus she was left to herself once more as everyone else got on with their lives.
All Vetta could think of was making a broken thing like new again so she could return it to its owner, the lady living in the Twilit Estate. It was like righting a wrong, reducing a moment of stress in an anguished world, bringing perfection back into flawed reality. It was a way of helping.
Then one day there was only one piece left and those who caught a glimpse of the project anticipated success. Yet Vetta returned the incomplete thing back to its safe cupboard shelf several times with a look of dismay upon her face as if that final moment was too much for her. With a sigh on one occasion she simply got up off the carpet and wandered out onto the balcony to get some fresh air and duck the swooping wings of wobbly pigeons in search of handouts.
The others waited and when the Poldorama girl did not return, there was some speculation that she might have thrown herself off the balcony in despair. Then everyone turned their attention to the worktable upon which the almost-vase sat, glinting in the room light. Next to it was that one single piece which seemed to blight the young girl's endeavours. Meresinth could stand it no longer and approached the table.
'Don't touch it!' Anthera warned the mischievous Arbornica girl.
'I wasn't going to do any harm,' Meresinth insisted. 'Just trying to puzzle why there's that great big hole in the side. Look, the piece that fits in there is right there, waiting to be placed.'
'Perhaps she is lingering over it, enjoying the puzzle so much she does not want it to end.'
'Or she's too stupid to see what's in front of her face,' Pirouette said unkindly. 'You know how she's always walking or running into things. Probably broke someone's heirloom and is guilty-bound to fix it. Only she doesn't know how.'
'No. It's not quite like that,' Esper said softly. 'There is though something that puzzles her about this piece,' and she looked at the irregular curved hexagon which showed a generous part of the floral design of the vase.
There was a sound then by the window. Vetta had indeed not thrown herself into oblivion. The others scattered and pretended they were doing something else as the girl re-entered the room.
Everyone was silent and watchful when Vetta went over to her work table and looked at what remained to do.
She examined the distinct vase shape as it had grown piece by piece from the slightly concave base, turning it slowly around, noting how the pieces gathered together formed some semblance of the original piece. Here and there cracks still showed in areas devoid of patterns but the lip was complete, a smooth edge in a full circle.
Then as she turned the largest gap came into view, and everyone watched more intensely. Vetta stared at it and picked up the piece that obviously went there. She turned it round in her hands, aligning it and occasionally pressing it to the constructed vase. The clinking sound was audible across the quiet room, as was the sigh that followed yet another apparent failure and Vetta placed the piece upon the table in defeat.
A shadow fell across her worktable and she looked up to see Meresinth Woodbine hovering close.
'I can see you're struggling,' she said kindly. There was a cackle from Pirouette's corner where the Perfecta girl flicked through a magazine so brightly printed its pages glowed and threw coloured light across the ceiling with each page turn.
'It is most baffling,' Vetta said.
'Sometimes, where I come from, we like to see things from the inside out.'
'That's nice,' Vetta said, none the wiser.
Esper came up just then as well and Anthera skirted the edge of the table too. She picked up the troublesome piece and presented an edge to the perplexed girl.
'See how the curve swells the shape so the inner part seems bigger than the outer?' she said, her magnified eyes scanning the shape in detail.
'Um,' Vetta said with unabashed puzzlement.
'It is as Meresinth said,' Esper pursued. 'Sometimes we have to see inside something to understand it better.'
'May I?' the Arbornica girl said, taking the piece from Anthera just as Dolly Bloomen snored a little louder when she shifted in her bed. Pirouette added a snigger to her cackle of earlier as she skipped her magazine perusal onto the accessories section.
Everyone who was interested watched as the Arbornica girl's long fingers snaked deftly through the circular opening at the top of the vase while holding the hexagonal piece. She lowered it and twisted her wrist until the piece faced the gaping hole.
'Slight turn clockwise,' Anthera whispered, watching the tricky manoeuvre with intense interest.
'What direction's that? Ow, I'm beginning to cramp.'
'Towards where Vetta's sitting,' Esper added a helpful instruction.
'Ow,' Meresinth said again, then there was a clink and the hole was filled. Perfectly. It stayed there even without the glue.
'It fits!' Vetta squealed. 'How did you do it? I tried so many times and it was always too big.'
'You tried by putting the piece through the hole from the outside,' Esper endeavoured to explain. 'The inner surface was larger.'
'Bit like concreting a floor and finding you've concreted yourself into a corner too far from a door or window,' Anthera tried to create an image of a similar problem.
'Oh. Like finding an odd number of cheese wedges among an even number of guests,' Vetta said in happy understanding.
'Exactly,' someone replied offhandedly.