Fire and Favour

You are Cass Miren, and you have one hour before the summer storm hits Varlo Bay. Your neighbour Petra fired a special commemorative bowl yesterday — a wedding gift for her daughter — but she slipped off to the harbour market and left you the shed key. The bowl is in the kiln. The kiln has a stiff iron latch no one has touched since spring. Outside, the sky is already going the colour of a bruise, and the first gusts are rattling the corrugated roof. You need to get that bowl out, packaged safely, and into Petra's hands before the storm makes the coast road impassable.