Still water is an exacting liar. Across a lake held nearly flat, sunlit mountains appear to sit beneath the surface because specular reflection sends rays from each point of the slope into the observer's eye at matching angles, while the water's near-uniform surface normal preserves the geometry. The image seems solid. It is only disciplined light.
Ripples are merciless editors. A wave does not destroy the reflected rays; it divides the water into countless small facets, each with a different surface normal, so each facet redirects a different sliver of mountain or sky toward the eye. Order collapses locally. Where neighboring facets point apart, their images no longer align, and the mountain breaks into shifting fragments. The physics is geometric. Surface roughness converts one ordered view into a moving spread of directions.
That glitter is not failure. Sunlight striking the tilted facets can reach the eye in brief, intense flashes; Fresnel reflectance, which rises at shallow viewing angles, often strengthens the effect across open water. The flashes race. Because the facets continually change orientation, the eye receives an unstable mosaic rather than a single projection, with bright points appearing where the angle happens to satisfy reflection. No mountain has shattered. A mountain remains whole; its borrowed double simply spends itself in coins of sun.
