Page 49 of A Light in the Dark
“Shifter silk is more expensive than mundane because the shifters are paid for their contribution. Yolana sells her mundane for roughly fifty dollars a yard for fabric. I’m not sure how much she charges for the threads. Honestly, I have entire cones of sewing thread. I put in a special order for itbefore the wedding order, and I’ll be set on threads for a while. I have white, black, and navy. I bought the navy before I had the cloth, not expecting the wedding order. It’s been taunting me for years.”
“Do you have silk suits already?”
“I have a set of seven black suits with a mix of white and black shirts. Two are classic cut, and the rest are in different styles so I can pretend I’m not cycling through seven suits for work. Cleaning them is painful. I have a washing machine designed to handle silk, but the detergent is expensive and I have to do them in small batches to make sure nothing gets damaged.” Joel sighed, reversed out of the parking spot, and headed back in the direction we had come. “If you can’t handle holding luna moths, now is the time to tell me. I’ll need to warn my parents. They enjoy decorating people with sleeping luna moths and taking photos of them. They charm them with magic and then handle their winged charges at will. Once the females have bred and have laid her eggs, they send them off to go be prey off their property. They have some pretty hefty wards in place to prevent predators from bothering the breeding luna moths. Healthy specimens are sometimes transported to new areas if the wild populations have gone into decline. But their property? It’s a luna moth sanctuary. Most of the trees here are good food for luna moths, other species that would compete for the leaves are kept out, and my parents collect the silk to pay for the habitat as needed.”
I couldn’t wait to see the place. If there were moths on every tree, I’d be a happy woman—and I’d be showing up at Joel’s door with excuses to go stalk Shifter Five’s goods andhit up the garden store. I’d have to involve the bookstore as well.
If it was open before we returned to Stonecreek, I’d have to check out the literary offerings.
“I can absolutely handle holding luna moths, but any shifter that vomits on me loses their bounty to my greedy ways.”
“If a shifter can’t keep their silk to themselves, that seems reasonable, although I’m concerned what you’ll do with it.”
“What else? Spin it, of course. I know how much that stuff costs, and I will not be allowing even a strand of it to go to waste.”
“Should I be concerned?”
I allowed myself a grin. “Only if you’re a luna moth shifter and you don’t want me making off with your silk. Otherwise, you should be safe. For the most part.”
“Will you still go to the garden store with me?”
I laughed. “Of course. I amnotinto punishing myself, Joel, and the garden store is filled with beautiful temptations.”
Him included.
“Oh, good. For some reason, it’s hard to find someone willing to go to the garden store with me. It seems I have a reputation.”
“For what? Having a beautiful garden and a determination to make it better every year? Oh, no. What a dangerous reputation.”
He snorted, cleared his throat, and after a moment, choked on a laugh. “I take too long, I’m indecisive, and I have a hard time deciding what I want when I overfill the cart trying to buy everything.”
“I have solutions for all those problems. I’m perfectlycapable of setting time limits, and if you can’t decide, I will decide for you after having gotten a second cart. Multiple trips are always an option. What other problems do I need to solve?”
“I have somewhat inflexible hours,” he admitted. “I donotlike interrupting my work for anything other than an emergency during my working hours.”
“Joel, my boss had to order me to take a day off work. I think I’ve only taken four days off the entire time I worked there, and I only did it because I was contagious and refused to get anyone sick. As long as the work hours are reasonable, they can be inflexible. But if I find out you’re working more than ten hours a day, we might need to have a talk.”
“I work nine, but I’ll do overtime if needed.”
“Nine with optional overtime is acceptable. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t allow my money to jump from my wallet into hers,” he confessed.
I stared at him. “You bought me a camera and my lunch.”
“Those were bribes to accept being my kidnapping victim, mine to do with as I pleased for the trip. That’s not the same! They just want the money, and I don’t play those games.”
Ah-ha! I understood; I came to the table as a homeowner capable of handling my budget and finances without help from some man. He knew it, having seen me live my life over the years without any outside evidence of assistance.
“I never understood the whole money jumping from one wallet to another thing. I only date men I can afford, and honestly, that did a good job keeping me out of the dating pool. Most of the men I’ve met were either unwilling to splitthe bill or expected me to prove I wasn’t just some gold digger and pay for everything. And those ones were just greedy snots. You got away with taking the bill solely because you presented paying in an entertaining fashion. You wanted to be a kidnapper, and the idea of roleplaying being kidnapped is highly amusing.”
“It really is. And that’s why I didn’t grab your camera bill; you were determined to pay your way, and I’m not going to interfere with that. Now, I had been willing to step in when you saw the project holder; I knew how pricy those are. Yolana hand sews them, and she only uses her best fabrics for them, and she hand designs the patterns and weaves them herself. They takemonthsto make.”
I gasped. “That was not silk screening?”
“She weaved the design into the fabric. She makes a special thread for it, because she wants the tightest weave and highest thread count, and she hand weaves every strand to get the appropriate design. What she can’t weave is then hand embroidered right into the fabric as she’s making it. All the loose threads, and so on, are hidden with a thin layer of some material that she smooshes between two pieces of her fabric. The front of the fabric isgorgeous. The back is utter chaos, and the chaos is cleverly hidden using skill and technique.”
I wailed, grabbed my precious holder, and clutched it to my chest. “I underpaid her!”
