The Weight of Light

The air in Silas’s workshop always hung thick with the tang of dust, spent flux, and something else, something sharp and cold, like splintered winter. Jory wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a hand, leaving a smear of grime. Another failure. The crystal shard, meant to be a delicate petal, lay on the scarred workbench, a jagged, useless ghost. It looked like it had exploded inward, a star collapsing, but it was just Jory’s clumsy grip, his too-much pressure, his desperate impatience.

Silas, an old man held together by stubbornness and the smell of ancient leather, didn’t look up from his own work, a shimmering cobalt bloom taking shape in his gnarled fingers. He never spoke much. Just hummed sometimes, a low, tuneless drone that grated on Jory’s nerves like a dull file on raw metal. Jory had been at this for nearly six months, an apprentice, a burden, a walking catastrophe in Silas’s precise, quiet world. He was supposed to learn the craft of the glass-weavers, how to coax form from light and silence, but all he seemed to do was break things.

“Too much,” Silas mumbled, not looking, not even breaking his rhythm. His voice was gravel. “Think it’s a hammer, boy?” Jory’s jaw tightened. He wanted to shout, to throw the next shard, to just walk out into the blistering sun and never look back. He wanted to understand, to make something that didn’t immediately shatter or twist into a grotesque mockery of a flower. His hands, though, they just didn’t get it. They were built for grabbing, for lifting, for pulling. Not for this delicate dance with something so fragile it felt like it might vanish if he stared too hard.

He picked up another sliver of raw crystal, cold and unyielding. The instruction manual, a slim, brittle book with faded illustrations, talked about ‘feeling the inner warmth,’ ‘coaxing the latent form.’ What the hell did that even mean? Jory just saw a rock, a pretty, expensive rock. He tried to mimic Silas’s movements, the way the old man held the shard just so over the heat, not too close, not too far, letting the invisible energy seep into it, soften it, make it pliable. Jory’s shard either stayed hard as stone or melted into a useless blob, the intricate internal structure collapsing into cloudy slag.

One particularly frustrating afternoon, after he’d ruined a whole tray of the precious material, Jory finally slammed his fist on the bench. The dust jumped. “What’s the point, old man? It’s impossible! It just breaks! It always breaks!” Silas, for the first time in weeks, set down his own work. He looked at Jory, his eyes, the color of old river stones, surprisingly sharp. “It breaks because you fight it, boy. You think it’s a battle.” He picked up a perfectly formed, crystalline rose from a display shelf, its petals catching the dim light, refracting it into a thousand tiny rainbows. It looked alive, impossibly delicate, yet resilient.

“Feel this,” Silas said, pressing it gently into Jory’s palm. Jory held his breath. He expected it to crumble, but it didn’t. It was light, almost weightless, yet there was a tensile strength to it, a strange, resilient give. He could feel the minute vibrations of his own pulse through the crystal. It was cool, then warm, conforming to his skin. It wasn’t fighting him. It was just *being*.

“It’s not about making it into a flower, Jory,” Silas continued, his voice softer than Jory had ever heard it. “It’s about letting the flower out. It’s already there, you see. Just trapped.” Jory stared at the rose, then at his own scarred, clumsy hands. Trapped. He had been trying to force it, to bend it to his will, like shaping clay or hammering metal. He had never considered that it already had its own will, its own form, just waiting for the right touch, the right understanding to reveal it. He was trying to *create* something, when Silas was simply *revealing* it.

The next morning, Jory didn’t rush. He didn’t fight the material. He didn’t even try to make a flower. He just held a small shard, closing his eyes, letting his fingers trace its edges, feeling its weight, its coldness, then the subtle warmth as it took on his body heat. He listened to the workshop sounds, the distant clatter of the market, Silas’s soft humming. He placed the shard over the small burner, watching the flicker, not the flame. He tried to imagine the form within, the unmade petal, the invisible stem. It wasn’t about what he was doing, but what the crystal was allowing. It wasn't about breaking it. It was about listening to it.

He worked slowly, deliberately, for hours. He broke three more shards, but this time, there was no frustration, only a quiet sigh, a slight adjustment to his grip, a tiny change in the angle of the heat. He was starting to see the crystal not as an enemy, but as a reluctant student, or perhaps, he was its. He wasn't making a flower, he was learning its language. He held up his latest attempt, a single, slightly uneven, but perfectly intact, crystalline leaf. It wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. But it hadn't shattered. And as he held it, the light caught it, and for a fleeting second, it seemed to pulse with a tiny, fragile heartbeat of its own. He picked up another shard, breathing steady.