Before the oyster stall opens

Original fiction extract.

The restaurant’s front doors were still locked when I arrived at the oyster stall. Beyond the counter, the dining room lay in straight rows of chairs. Lena stood over a tray of ice, sorting shells while the cleaner moved quietly between the tables. She looked at each oyster before placing it in the display.

The shells were clenched little fists, grey knuckles rough against her palm. She turned one, found the narrow join and worked with a concentration that drew the room around it. When the shell opened, a cool silver room appeared inside: smooth, bright and unexpectedly spacious beneath that stubborn roof. Lena tipped it towards the light, then settled it into the ice. Around the tray, crushed fragments glittered like a scattered audience, while her hands moved from one closed world to the next. Nothing in the careful sequence resembled the hurried meal I had expected to help prepare.

A waiter came to ask how many were ready. Lena counted without touching them again. Then she wiped a mark from the front of the counter and looked towards the locked doors. The chairs would soon fill, but for a moment the brightest things in the restaurant were already waiting on the ice.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to describe the stallholder preparing the oysters.

Write about 200 to 250 words.