SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Bureau of Returning Persons — area sheet

Vossa

Vossa: the near shore of a wide level lake of white fog inside a crater rim, in watercolour, glossy black glass domes standing at the waterline, thin steam rising from cracks in the grass, and a small town of poured dwellings whose walls carry thin black mended seams.
Cf. FilmThe ground the plate is drawn from.
VOSSA

where the glass is worked

The glass was there before the town was.

You came round the lake to it. The glass stands at the waterline, black, warm on the side the fog does not reach.

Vossa works the glass. It makes more than it keeps, and it is quiet about it. Things mended at Vossa go home with black in them, and nobody who has been here mistakes it.

The ground breathes. The lake lifts a little and settles again, and nobody at Vossa builds within reach of where it last lifted.

The hollows at Vossa are lipped in glass, black, and they hold the fog longer than stone does. It is the one thing Vossa keeps that it did not make.

FrameAn oval cut by a straight line: the lake's edge, which the town keeps back from. ViewpointDrawn from above, as inhabited areas are.
Key
  1. 25 The glass at the waterline warm on the dry side
  2. 26 Vossa the workrooms, their windows to the lake
From here

How far is not recorded. How long is.

Office annotationThe ring under Vossa is entered as restless. Nothing is entered as having risen.