“It used to be sand,” he said. “It remembers being sand. It remembers the birds, the way their feet felt, walking. Making little tracks. It never wanted to be glass. It never wanted to be sneakily transparent. It likes birds, likes watching them from the window, so it was crying. I shouldn’t have hit it, but I needed it to stop.” He glanced up then at the old woman’s face that was creased all over with a hundred million lines of worry and confusion. “Forget it.”
