“Benigna asks if you’ve ever seen lava before, her words emphasized by hurried breath. You’ve seen buttery caramel boiling, felt the heat of an oven on your skin. You’ve ogled at the Imax screen and eyed through National Geographic magazines. You know what lava is, of course. But you haven’t seen it crawl its way down, eating the fields close to this village, like a wave swashing on the shore. So shake your head and say, no.”
Sharon D. Mertins 