The writer is Ella Earth, nourished by the soil, who meets Patrick the Piscean Water, and the writing is seeded in truth and grown in her imagination. Ella tries to make sense of her feelings through fragmented memories, like the mosaic in her garden of two fish in the same pool both seeking happiness, but swimming in different directions. She discovers 'the animal in her,' has not died and she sloughs off her skin like a snake and is reborn.


At the end of each chapter Ella uses a metaphor of building a clay vessel, a clay vessel that Patrick has cupped in his hands.