The lens on the worktable

Original fiction extract.

The lighthouse lens had been removed while the tower was repaired. In the workshop it stood on a low turning base, taller than the people measuring it. I had expected one large piece of glass. Instead, narrow curved sections rose around a hollow centre. The engineer asked me to watch the wall as she turned the base a little.

A regiment of bright bars marched across the plaster. The window’s pale light had entered the glass and returned in ranks, each strip moving with a certainty the heavy lens itself did not seem to possess. Around the rim, small reflections opened and closed like fish beneath clear ice. The engineer’s hand appeared on the far side in broken versions, her fingers separated into a fan of borrowed hands. Then she stopped turning. The room settled back into its ordinary patches of brightness, but the lens still looked full of movements waiting for permission.

She marked a place on her drawing and leaned closer to a joint. I looked into the centre and saw only the workshop beyond it, interrupted and multiplied. On the wall, a single stripe remained across the calendar, dividing a printed month from the days still to come.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the lighthouse lens as it is examined.

Write about 200 to 250 words.