Red light

3. Yellow glaze (Tobirama)

The sensation in my fingers was incredibly satisfying.

I loved everything about it. The softness. The wetness. How it bent and gave way for my fingertips.

I leaned forwards, my black, long-sleeved T-shirt rolled up to my elbows showing off the crying cloud and the lower part of the Japanese garden tattoo, consisting of a bridge, a koi pond and several trees with lanterns. The tattoo artist had used such a fine needle to make it, it looked like a picture.

My fringe tickled my nose, but I refused to move any muscle in my face to blow it away. I was making a delicate piece which required deft and able fingers, and a slight move such as tensing my facial muscles ever so slightly to get my fringe away from my eyes could be devastating.

My electrical potter's wheel hummed as it spun, and I shaped the cup carefully as the ceramic sputtered onto my already stained cargo trousers. I was making a teacup but Asian in style, tall and slim, having no handle, the traces of my fingers still visible as part of the finished result. On the table next to me were four already finished ones, two covered in blue lacquer, two covered in turquoise. My goal for today was making two more that were going to be bright yellow.

I stopped the wheel, stretching my back out. I often forgot about ergonomics, having my chair too high up, and my back was paying the price. I smirked at my own nerdy dedication as I looked around my little apartment during my little break.

It wasn't big, by any means, my apartment. A square hallway leading to a small living room, where I had placed all my pottery equipment, a kitchen that was open to said living room, separated by a kitchen half-island. I had a bedroom, quite decently sized, and an en suite bathroom that was newly renovated with grey stone tiles and a big rain shower where I loved to soak. The rest of my apartment was white. And everywhere were shelves, all of them covered in my ceramic creations, from simple ones like the mugs I was making and pots where I'd put flowers, to more advanced vases and urns and teapots. They ranged in all sorts of different colours, and I sometimes painted them in my very specific style of symmetrical, white flowers.

And it was a complete secret. Nobody was allowed to visit. Nobody knew about the pottery. Not because I was ashamed, neither of my apartment (that was too small for my fortune but, let's face it, who would have the energy to move all of my pottery to my new place?) or my quirky choice of hobby. No, it was because I wanted at least this part of me to be my own. My entire body belonged to the Internet and, therefore, to everyone. When you googled my name, the fact that I was a world-famous porn star was the first one to show up. I even had a Wikipedia page stating my date of birth, height and estimated weight. The pottery, I was keeping to myself.

It did look beautiful in the apartment, I had to admit. Well, if it wasn't for the fact that each and every piece of my work stood on a square of newspaper.

I sighed, looking into the corner where the reason that each and every piece of my work stood on a square of newspaper was snoozing. Ahh, the love of my life. Her name was Betty, and she was a rescue cat with long, white hair and quirky eyes. I had gone to the rescue after I turned eighteen and was moving out of my parents'.

"I want the cat that's been here for the longest."

Betty had been a young cat then, and had been almost completely void of fur, and so ugly that nobody wanted her. As I lifted her up into my embrace, she had mewed pathetically and clung to me, and we had loved each other immediately.

Now, she was the most gorgeous cat you could imagine. But she adored my pottery. Or, to be more precise, she adored slamming my work into the ground. She would look at each new piece, sniff it, then used her paw to top it over the edge of whatever shelf it stood on. Fortunately, Betty was terrified of newspaper, so placing my work on a square of it was my only way of saving it.