volcanic glass · cooled fast
no. 3 · st-coll.
cooled too fast to crystallise. a glass that remembers being lava and behaves, on the bench, as though still slightly so. catches the lamp and returns a small portrait of the room, distorted, unreliable.
kin to the mirror, in that one cannot hold it without becoming briefly visible inside it. closer kin still to midnight, which it resembles after the lamp is out. cousin to the basalt from the same hill, though the family resemblance is faint.
if knapped, takes an edge thinner than the eye can resolve. do not lift carelessly. do not lift unless you mean to.
field-note — turned the lamp away from it and it kept a little of the light, for a count of three.