Symmetrical mandala on an upper arm

The rain has been coming sideways down the market since Tuesday, and Mr Okonedo has finally given up on his awning, so I am writing this with my coat still steaming on the back of the chair. You asked why I stayed on at the Saturday stall when the takings are so thin. It is the medallion. A man came by with a folded rubbing of a ceiling boss from a chapel in Ghent and asked whether I could cut it in tesserae. Eight points, rings of tiny dots where the grout should go. I told him dots are not grout. He laughed and said that was exactly the point.

I spent three evenings at the bench with the nippers and a tub of smalts, setting the centre star first, because a mandala cannot start at its edges or the petals drift apart. Pale ash for the rays, black slate for the ground. I counted each ring of dots aloud, which sent Mr Okonedo's boy under the trestle with his hands over his ears. The petals I left until last, those scalloped arches that curl out like the ribs of an umbrella caught in a gale. My knuckles were raw by Thursday.

He came back this morning in the downpour and ran his thumb over the finished piece without quite touching it. Then he asked if I would set it into the pavement outside the stall, right where the drain takes the runoff, so the water pools in the dots and slides round the star. I said the council would have my licence. He said the council had already been and gone, and the building behind us would be a car park by spring. He paid in coins, all of them damp, and asked me to sign the back with the date.

I wrote today's date, then under it the word rain, because that is what the market will remember. He shook the water off his collar and walked towards the station without looking back. I am going out now to see whether the dots are holding any water yet. Come up at Easter and tell me I have been stupid.

Love, Pen