The first crystal I caught on velvet was imperfect — a simple plate with two arms shorter than the rest. I had perhaps three seconds to examine it before my breath fogged the brass tube, and another two before the edges began to round. The work demands patience inside an impossible window.
Temperature and Crystal Habit
Each flake begins as a hexagonal seed drifting through supercooled vapor. Temperature dictates the habit — plates below minus two degrees Celsius, needles near minus five, and dendrites in the narrow band between minus ten and twenty. The atmosphere writes its conditions into the ice.
A frozen letter from the cloud that made it.