The Glassworks – Part 1: Molten

"Turn," said Mira. "Always turn. It sags if you stop."

"I'm turning."

"Faster. Gently. Both."

Liis rolled the long iron pipe in her hands, and at its end a glowing orange bubble swelled and wobbled like a heartbeat. The glassworks was a vast brick hall on the edge of Tallinn, hot as a bakery, roaring with furnaces and echoing with the clink of tools. Outside it was minus ten and snowing. Inside, sparks drifted through the air like fireflies.

Liis, thirty-six, a lighting designer from Tartu, had come to commission a series of lamps and ended up at the bench with a pipe in her hands. Mira, thirty-three, the glassblower, was small and strong, with a short dark crop, forearms scarred by a hundred burns and a quiet, slightly amused expression. She stood close behind Liis, steadying the pipe with one hand and guiding the bubble with the other.

"Blow," said Mira, near her ear. "Softly."

Liis blew. The bubble swelled into a trembling golden globe. She laughed out loud.

"There," said Mira. "You made a lamp."

"I made a very bad lamp."

"You made a beginning."

For a week Liis visited the glassworks every afternoon. She learned to gather the glass, to shape it with wet wooden blocks, to read the colours of the heat. The other blowers teased her gently. Mira did not, but she always saved Liis the stool by the furnace and a mug of black tea.

"You are very bad at the finishing," said Mira, on Friday.

"I know."

"It's a wonderful thing to watch." Mira set down her blowpipe. "Liis. I would like to say something and it is not about glass."

"Say it."

"I would like to kiss you."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Annealed.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Annealed.