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This is a short, short story called "The Potter". It just came into my head.

THE POTTER

Once upon a time, in the small village of Haven, there lived a family of Potters. Peter Potter, with his wife Penelope and his son Paul had a cozy little cabin on the edge of the village, just over the creek where the forest began. It was a beautiful piece of land and they were very happy there.

Now Peter was a worker of the clay by trade, and made all manner of dishes, cups, pots and such that is made of clay for the people of the village. He also sold many pieces to the caravans that would occasionally travel past the village. They were simple people with simple needs, and lived very well within their means.

One day, as Peter worked the clay in his workshop, wolves from the woods attacked his wife and son, dragging them off never to be seen again. Peter searched for weeks, even after the rest of the village had given up. Finally, grief stricken and alone, he gave up and began to drink heavily.

Years passed and Peter drank away the pain each day. One day, he had an idea. Taking all of the clay he had, he began making cups. The days passed and he made many cups of all kinds, shapes and sizes. Some tall, some short. Some he made round and some square. Some were small on the bottom and some small on the top. Months passed and finally, he ran out of clay.

Peter placed the cups on all the shelves in the workshop which had long been empty, lining them up by shape and size. When he had placed them all, he stood back and looked at them. They looked good and he felt good, better than he had in many years. Tired, drunk and satisfied with his work, Peter rested.

The next day, Peter poured wine into each cup. As he drank, he talked to them saying,

“Now you are cups and serve drink, but if you will only believe, you will become dishes and serve meat. If you will believe that I have made you for a greater purpose and trust in me, it will be so. If you become dishes I will place you in a cradle on the top shelf, and you will be displayed in a place of honor, above the cups. Dust and sunlight will not reach you and you will last forever. But if you choose to remain only cups, then you will not be promoted, but left on the bottom shelf to fill with dust, be heated by the sun, dry up and crumble.”

Each day he spoke to the cups this way and pleaded with them to believe, that they might be transformed to dishes. Years passed and Peter grew old and died. Hundreds of years passed and the house, being weakened by age and weather, crumbled to the ground. Thousands more years passed and the earth was abandoned and left to waste.

One day a team of archeologists returned to Earth and began to dig on the site of the village of Haven. After many days, they uncovered the remains of Peters’ cabin. Especially interested in the old, broken pottery, they collected as much as they could before returning to their own planet.

Many days were spent and sophisticated computers were used to try and rebuild the pottery pieces back into their original forms. Because the cups had been made in many various shapes and sizes, and much of the clay was no more than powder, the archeologists believed some of the pieces to be parts of something other than cups. After a while, it was thought to be good reasoning that some of the pieces were originally from plates as well. The computers were so instructed, and they used some of the pieces to assemble plates as they may have looked. When all of the pieces that could be used were assembled, the cups and plates were sent to the Earth section of the museum for display.

In a small display of early Earth pottery, six various cups sat on a shelf below four plates in wooden cradles, and an assortment of small bits and pieces rested on a bed of powder below them. Patrons were amazed and amused by the simplicity of the old items, and many came to see them.

Night came, people went home and the museum closed. When the lights were turned down, the pottery awoke. The dishes looked at themselves and each other, marveling at what they had become.

“It’s true!” they said to each other. “We believed we could become dishes and it is so. We are servers of meat, and are displayed on the top shelf in cradles for all to see.”

The bits and pieces, resting in powder at the bottom of the display cried out with great despair.

“No! It can’t be. We didn’t believe we could become dishes and now we are broken and crumbled, sentenced to lie in the dust forever. We are doomed!”

Now the dust looked up and the plates looked down and noticed the cups on a shelf between them and became quite puzzled. How could the cups be cups, when the potter had clearly said that they would be either dishes or dust? So the dishes and dust asked the cups.

“How can you still be cups and not dishes or dust as the potter said?”

To which the cups replied,

“The potter was a drunken fool. We didn’t believe anything he said because we knew it to be foolishness. We all grew old, crumbled and turned to bits, pieces and dust. You were put back together as dishes, we were put back together as cups, and you, the smallest particles of all were left as is. We are only clay, no more or less.”

There was silence for a long while as they considered what the cups had said. It made sense, after all. It seemed silly now to think that they were anything more than clay. There was just one nagging question left, and one of the small bits spoke up.

“How come we’re talking?”

_________________________________________________________________

Brian.

The plural of wolf is wolves.




Odd story. Glad I'm done with that Literary Analysis class, or I would be obligated to type a lengthy critique about delusion being mistaken as belief and similar parallels seen in modern religions.



Boy, am I glad I didn't say something like that! It could have stirred some AUP-violating controversy, and we wouldn't want that.

Thanks for the plural correction. Microsoft Word only knows so much, but where would I be without it. LOL

Brian.

That was good. Quirky.

Ooh I like it when people post their writing. I'll review this and offer critique, but I haven't got the time right this minute.

That had nothing to do with Harry Potter!

Haha.
--
Pretty good story, it sounded like a fable. The ending was as bit odd, but humorous.

Just a little thing I noticed, you capitalized son.

Nice and clever. Paints a nice picture in my head.

Thanks for the help there.

Hello xplosys, good day to you fair sir!

I like it, I found it quite interesting and it was funny at the end - good humour and I like how you've delivered the story. I can see the fable-like style was done on purpose, but I doubt you're writing for children as the subtext would be missed entirely on a child and 'hitting the bottle' isn't what I imagine to see in a child's story. Though fables and folk tales are for adults too, in fact a lot of the old tales weren't what we call 'child-friendly', especially when you consider the mistranslation in Cinderella.

So my advice is if you like writing those sort of tales, I say join, learn it off by heart, join a storytelling group and you might have some great fun. I help run a small storytelling group and you can really have fun with the fable and folk tale like stories and you might learn of some other ones and some are quite dark, yet funny. Though on the critical side of things, I think it could flow a bit better and well.




You've got your classical cliche opening there, though not all fable needs to be opened with such an opening, but it opens up as though it's going to be children's story, so that's good because it's purposefully misleading. Whilst it might draw people away more than they go in, at least thinking from the fable and folk tale perspective, you've opened with the biggest cliche, "once upon a time", however given the story, I think it gives it a bit of charm.



'A worker of the clay by trade' I think it could be rephrased, at least I think this is where it doesn't quite flow for me, perhaps something like, "Peter traded with many a craft and made a manner of dishes, cups, pots and such from his clay for the people of the village." (there are too many 'of's as well) Also, would the caravans travel past the village or travel through the village?


But now my mind has gone blank...grr, I'm not with it as I've exhausted my brain out today, so I'll finish this critique off tomorrow when my brain gravy has recharged itself.

I like it very much. Set up as a traditional supernatural fable, and ended down to earth and humorously.

Thank you all for the comments.

Seppuku Arts, always a joy to have your thoughts.

I really didn't think about the opening as being a "setup" to a particular kind of story. Obviously, I should have considered that. I just don't write enough to know better. The story came to me as I was out running, and I wrote it as soon as I got home.


Perhaps someday I'll be able to do that.


I guess I was thinking more of a large caravan moving product from point A to point B, and not a small "stop in every little village" type thing, though I see your point.

Brian.

No problem, I just have the philosophy: if you're going to comment on somebody's work, then you might as well give them something they can use.(if you can) Though within reason of course.




It's just a general question, I'm just thinking if he lives in the village they would go through, though if he catches them as they're going past, then it would be different.


Rather than nitpicking critique (a smooth prose comes with writing and reading it aloud to yourself), I'll just give you a few thoughts.

In writing there's always the one difficulty called 'showing' and 'telling', which is getting the balance right of the two - showing can give the image more effectively, whilst telling can be great for the pace. An effective way of dealing with it is to use dialogue - and it is something that's perhaps under used - or at least in things I critique. But dialogue itself can be difficult to deal with, though for a folk tale it doesn't need to be completely realistic, but dialogue is very good at giving you an image and it can move the prose, because it carries the emotions of the characters, it can deliver information about the environment or what people are doing. And the second half of the story approached dialogue well I think and it delivered the punch-line quite nicely. Though I wonder maybe there could be more dialogue in the first half, as some of the things you've said might work in speech, for example: And a caravaner and his wife came to the potter and said, "We are simple travelers with simple needs, but would you Mr Potter kindly sell me one of your mighty fine pieces of clay" and he told all the caravans in all the land "what a fine potter Mr Potter is." Or something along those lines.


As Mr Potter becomes a drunk, it might entertaining to expand that bit a little - after all drunks do appear in folk-tales and can be good characters; my friend in our storytelling group often tells the Jack story where the devil gives him a purse that has a sixpence in it every time he opened it and he just spent it all on getting drunk on whiskey all day.


But those are just a few thoughts. You don't have to agree with them, as there are no 'right' ways of doing things, just what people tend to find more 'effective' and that can be quite subjective.

Thanks again Seppuku Arts,

I'm learning.

Brian.

No problem mate.