“Okay, so you were my guard,” Luz says.
"Yeah. Among other things."
“But I don’t, um – I don’t actually need that here. Guarding, I mean. I’m not royalty anymore. And the people here are okay, mostly, except when they suck, and then Vee goes after them anyway. I don't… I’m not sure I can…”
She trails off, less because she’s trying to formulate sentences and more because she can see Hunter’s heart shatter. Even as she does, she checks herself – what does she know about his feelings, really? His face barely crumples. He just closes his eyes for a second, and presses his mouth flat, and swallows. Then he takes a breath and faces her with the exact same calm as before.
She doesn’t know why she’s so certain that’s heartbreak. In anyone else, she’d read it as tiredness or annoyance.
“I’m coming on too strong,” he says, and his voice is just as steady as it always is, no outward signs of distress. “I'm sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Luz says, and means it. “I can tell you’ve had, just, the worst time. And I know this isn't what you hoped for. I just – I don't know what you want with the human world, besides me. Won’t you miss home?”
“You're forgetting I’m not allowed to go home either way right now,” Hunter says, “on account of the atrocities.”
Luz rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a smartass.”
His mouth twitches. He might be trying not to smile.
“I’m just saying,” she continues, “you found me. You did find me. Like you wanted to. And I’m safe here, like you want me to be. So you don't have to… I mean, you did your duty. You did what you were supposed to do. I hereby release you from any further contractual obligations. Okay?”
It’s meant as a reprieve, but Luz immediately knows that she’s chosen the wrong thing to say. Hunter isn’t quite as good at masking this new heartbreak. His fingers spasm, curling around the edge of the couch cushion, gripping like a lifeline. He lets out the kind of breath that someone might if they’d just been shot. His ears flatten, pointing toward the floor, an unconscious reflex that makes him look like a kicked puppy.
When he speaks, his voice cracks. “You don’t want me?”
Luz feels her own expression crumble. Confusion and guilt war for dominance inside her, a stitch between the ribs.
“Here,” Hunter adds, unconvincingly. “You don’t want me here?”
“I don’t want you guarding me here,” Luz says. “All of this stuff, you being so hung up on Vee and my mom… it’s freaking me out. I don't want them to get hurt.”
“I won’t hurt them,” Hunter says immediately. “I wouldn’t hurt them, not if they’re treating you well – I wouldn’t ever do anything you didn’t want me to do, Luz. I swear.”
“See, that. That's freaking me out.”
His brows draw together.
“You’re sitting here locked in a basement on my behalf,” Luz says, “because you volunteered to be locked in a basement.”
“Okay, well. In my defense. There are some very specific extenuating circumstances right now.”
She waves this aside. “You said you’ve been trying to track me down for months.”
“Of course I have. Anyone with sense would have. Belos was-"
“Yeah, I know. But my mama isn’t Belos.”
Hunter stays quiet and still for a solid minute. Luz actually counts the seconds. His only movement is to press a hand to his eyes, like he’s pushing back a headache, or maybe trying not to cry.
“I’m not trying to be mean,” Luz adds. “I promise you, I'm really, really trying not to hurt your feelings. But you get it, right? It's just… a lot to process.”
“I get it,” he says, with what might be an attempt at a smile. He folds his hands in his lap, surveying her politely and deferentially, like a corporate executive might respond to a CEO. “I'm sorry I've made things harder for you. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I know,” she says. “It’s okay. I’m really sorry I don't remember.”
“Could be that it's for the best,” Hunter says lightly. “I won't cause your family any trouble, Luz. Promise. It’ll probably be a while until they actually believe that, but in the meantime – you don't need to come down here anymore. I won't pick a fight.”
She has a sudden, overwhelming impulse to fling herself into his arms. Just one more nonsensical reaction, extra proof that something's missing inside her.
“Do you want me to stay away?” she asks.
Once again, Hunter lapses into silence. It's hard to tell whether he’s thinking or just refusing to answer, at least until he counters, “Do you want to remember me?”
“Yes,” Luz says immediately. She doesn't even have to think about it. Without meaning to, she touches her chest, the place that aches every time she reaches out for someone who isn't there. It's been aching since way, way before Hunter stepped onto the Nocedas' porch.
“I want to know,” she explains, “why I miss you so much.”
This, finally, is what makes Hunter break. He buries his face in his hands and lets out a ragged little sob, his shoulders shaking, his breath choked.
Something in Luz wants to wrap her arms around him and snuggle up on the couch and let him cry into her neck. Something in Luz wants to curl up with him under all the blankets in the house and ask him to tell her stories. Something in Luz is suffering physical pain with every elapsed moment in which she doesn’t do that. The desire to hold him edges past want, into need. It hurts.
The rest of her is still loosely gripping a steak knife. And so afraid of sending mixed messages.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, okay?” she says, backing toward the stairs before her instincts can turn traitor. “After I’ve slept. After we’ve both slept. I want – I need you to get some rest tonight. You'll feel better once you do. Okay?”
Hunter grunts in vague acknowledgement. He doesn’t seem interested in discussing his continuing sobs, and Luz is fighting back tears herself, and she doesn't have the strength not to go to him if she cries. So she just climbs the stairs, shutting the door carefully behind her, and she flips the lock closed.
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I went to my first fiber festival this past weekend! Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival; if I'm still in this state come June next year, I'll probably be back and would love to meet anybody else there. Socializing/hanging out/talking to people without feeling like I was obstructing Real Customers was the one thing I missed, though I didn't really get to any of the free lectures so maybe that's where I could've met some people. Since it was an unknown situation with a lot of people and nearly an hour drive each way, I strategized to make sure I'd go:
First day, I signed up for a couple volunteer shifts. Absolutely a recommended strategy.
Got to be helpful!
They happened to have goodie bags, to help me justify the gas and time (I now have a nice tape measure to replace the one that's been vacationing with a missing sewing kit for a couple years and a lasercut wood two-inch gauge window that might help me with consistency versus my suboptimal practice of just trying to knit perfect squares when swatching in pattern)
I got to learn things about the layout and schedule I wouldn't know to ask when answering questions and acting as a gofer -- especially true working two different locations
And of course, some people were pretty much guaranteed to be happy to see me!
Second day, I signed up for a workshop in the morning so I'd be there and able to shop for anything I needed at the end. Ombre yarn dyeing was the class! It's acid dyes, something I'm several years off from wanting to get into enough to commit to dedicated cookware, full pots of dye powder, etc. The room with the workshop was a barn that had plenty of outlets--but they did not represent plenty of breakers. So there weren't quite enough functional heating elements for the class to have sufficiently cooked our yarn before leaving, and I did need to risk a giant stock pot at home for three batches of four jars, almost-simmering in a water bath for thirty minutes each, of the yarn that hadn't proven it was done (all but the two palest greens). I was a little worried the delay/drawn out heat situation would affect the results but if it did it wasn't much; I got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for with my two color gradient and the single is great too!
The single dye gradient is the color Moss, which did some interesting things with the red portion separating out once they were heated. Every skein has redder blotches, so I'm not bothered about any inconsistency -- if anything it'll help my finished product camouflage stains. Though it was definitely a surprise for me and the other Moss user in the class when our first yarn to have exhausted the dye was the complementary color to what it went in as.
The two color gradient used Rhodamine Red on one end, which was one end of one of our instructor's samples where she chose a cool-green for the other end to show how multi-component dyes mix less predictably than most paint. (It was kinda like shading with markers where you can still see washes of the pink and green in what you squint at and call a grey-brown.) The other end was Cantaloupe, which was one of the maybe three colors she didn't have a sample cut of yarn for. But she described it as the flesh of a perfect ripe cantaloupe and obviously I had to see that, and it sounded like it would be fairly guaranteed to combine nicely with the magenta while being just enough around a bend in the color wheel to be interesting--warm orange versus cool pink. As I said, it turned out pretty much exactly as I was picturing. Not anticipated was how much the jars looked like they were full of some delicious dragonfruit-mango beverage. Were I still a barista I'd be trying to recreate this for my shift drink.
Image descriptions under the cut.
[ID: Five images following fourteen small skeins of sock yarn dyed in individual glass jars, in two gradients. One gradient is six skeins from a medium forest green through a pale creamy pink, the other is eight skeins from a vibrant yellow orange through an even more vibrant magenta. The first photo is inside under fluorescent lights, showing the 32oz glass canning jars with metal lids and rings, full of dye and yarn on a table at the end of the class in which they were filled and heated for a short time.
The next two images are animated gifs. The first gif is two frames showing the finished dye jars sitting in grass, with their yarn and with it removed. The green gradient left only transparent blue color in its jars, and most of the pink to orange gradient's water looks more orange without its yarn, aside from the third and fourth jars from the orange end, which shade toward a neon lilac with the peachy pink yarn removed. The second gif is a view of the inside of the bright green wash bucket, with just the pink-orange yarn in it, then all of them mixed up, all as they were after a soak with the rust-brown water, in the first rinse, and that rinse water alone showing its transparent but still brown tint.
The last two photos show the gradients lined up along a weathered wooden bench on the side of a deck. The first photo has the wet piles of yarn bundled in front of each of their respective jars with remaining dye. The final photo has the clean, dry yarn wound into center-pull balls and still vibrant in the direct sunlight. End ID]
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