Page 41 of A Light in the Dark
Joel followed me, and he raised a brow. “Should I be concerned?”
“Only if you touch my basket.”
He held up his hands. “I will not touch your basket.”
“Go buy your own stash. This is mine.” To make it clear he was not stealing my precious yarn, I held the basket close. To my dismay, several skeins escaped. Cursing, I snagged them and stuffed them back on top of the pile.
“Perhaps you would like to have them hold your purchase at the counter while you do more shopping?” He pointed at a spot near the front of the store, and a young woman grinned at me, waved, and gestured to the metal table nearby.
I hauled over my stash, and I lifted it up, set it on the table, and said, “Can you protect this from him? He might steal my prizes!”
“I’m not going to steal your yarn, Valerie.”
I glared at him. “No, you might try to steal the bill for my yarn. This is mine, and I’m buying it for me.”
“I’m not going to steal your bill unless you leave it unattended. If you turn around and leave the bill unattended, you only have yourself to blame for the theft.”
“Don’t you have craft shopping to do?”
“No, because I’m going to my childhood home today, where I have my personal stash.”
I grunted, thanked the store’s employee, and began searching the internet for a cross-stitch project featuring luna moths. After a few minutes, I found one I liked, purchased it, and opened the key, checking the colors and starting with Shifter Five’s color stock for embroidery.
Luck was with me.
The pattern used common colors with a majority ofblues, greens, yellows, dark blues, and black. I’d have to make a few substitutions, but Shifter Five’s embroidery collection would suffice for my needs. After emailing myself with the substitutions, I started with the few cones of thread available from his silk. Once I had chosen the appropriate cones, I worked through the spool supply before dealing with small skeins.
All-in-all, the embroidery thread would cost me several hundred, and I refused to regret it. After the floss, I went to the cloth selection, grateful the weavers had provided cloths of all types. Working on black silk would test my patience, but Shifter Five’s ridiculous production quantity meant I could buy an entire bolt of silk suitable for stitching on.
Shining my cell phone’s light into the weave indicated someone with skill had done the weaving, equally consistent compared to the commercial fabrics used by most for their projects.
Joel stared at me. “Are you buying an entireboltof silk?”
I clutched my prize close and snarled at him. “This ismine.”
Once again, he held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not questioning your desire to have the bolt. I just know how much that bolt costs.”
“I do not care how much this bolt costs. It’s mine.”
“Maybe you should care how much the bolt costs.” Joel sighed. “If you can’t afford the bolt, may my wallet forgive me, I can. But that bolt is unholy expensive.”
“It’s specialty silk suitable for cross-stitching. By default, that means expensive.” I hauled over my new acquisitions, placed them on the table, and returned to Shifter Five’s clothsection, picking a marbled blue and green bolt suitable for cross-stitching to add to my stash.
Then, as I had zero self-restraint and a need to be able to stitch exclusively with Shifter Five’s sinful silk, I loaded up a third basket with every cone, spool, and skeins of colors I did not have. As black, white, and beige were unfortunately common in patterns, I grabbed an extra cone each of those colors.
I sniffed while passing Joel, added them to my stash, and then headed to the needles and other embroidery supplies, selecting enough to be able to work with until I got home.
Then I made the mistake of checking out their project holders, discovering that someone had made ones from the shifters’ silks. Someone had crafted a zippered holder with sections to hold bobbins, a place for my scissors, a pouch for the cloth, and pockets and doodads for anything I might need to carry my project in style.
To add to the killing blow, it featured a luna moth motif.
According to the price tag, if I wanted it, I would need to spend three thousand dollars on it.
Prepared to have to call my bank to get them to unlock my card to issue the payment, as there was no way my credit card could hold the purchase, I carried it to the counter, placed it next to the cash register, and said, “I’m going to have to call my bank to get them to unlock my debit card because my credit card isn’t big enough for these purchases.”
The woman stared at both bolts of my cloth, at me, and at the project holder I’d selected. “I have never seen someone rampage on one shifter’s stock like this before.”
“It’s so soft and silky,” I whispered, staring at her withwide eyes. “I fondled every shifter’s silk, and this one is the best. If I am spending a fortune on silk, I am buying thebestsilk.”
