The Glassworks – Part 2: Annealed

"Yes," said Liis. "Please."

The kiss tasted of tea and warm air. Mira's hand rose to her jaw, scarred and sure, and Liis laughed against her mouth and slid her fingers into the dark crop of her hair. The furnace roared behind them. The sparks danced. In the open door, the snow whirled thick and silent.

"We should lock up," said Mira, a minute later.

"We should."

"I am very bad at it."

They banked the furnace together, hung up the aprons and stepped out into the snow, which had already buried the cobbles under a soft white coat. The street lamps glowed in halos. Their breath hung in clouds. Mira took her arm, and they walked slowly through the quiet streets to a tall old building near the harbour.

"The flat is on the third floor," said Mira. "It is small. It is warm. I have a very good stove."

"I'd like to see the stove."

"It is not about the stove."

"No," said Liis, grinning. "I know."

The flat was snug and bright, with a tiled stove, sheaves of glass rods in jars on every shelf and a bed under a skylight dusted with snow. They undressed slowly, laughing at thick socks and tangled scarves, and under a warm down duvet their love-making was gentle, unhurried and tender, shaped with the same patience Mira gave to a molten bubble. Snow hushed the skylight. The glass on the shelves glowed softly in the stove's light.

In the morning the world was white and perfectly silent. Liis woke to find a small object on the pillow, a tiny blown-glass bubble the size of an apple, pale gold, with a slight lean to one side.

"Is that my lamp?" she asked.

"It is your first one. I finished it at midnight." Mira, in the doorway, held out a mug of tea. "It is not very good."

Liis held it up to the window, and the whole room glowed gold through it.

"It's perfect," she said. "I'll need forty more. Possibly slowly."

More lesbian romance stories: Tea at the Conservatory · Bookshop at Midnight · Ballroom Rivals