Page 39 of Satisfied By the Slime
“I lived in a cave for decades. I understand boring.”
Something flickers at the corner of her mouth.
She hands me a long wooden spatula and points to the largest stainless steel pot on the counter. “Coconut oil goes in first. Eight cups. The measuring scoop is in the tub.”
I scoop the oil while she measures lye into a glass pitcher with the focus of someone handling something that could burn through skin. Which I suppose it can.
The granules hiss when they hit the water, and she stirs them with a dedicated spoon, holding the pitcher at arm’s length while the chemical heat rises.
I set the pot on the burner, and the coconut oil starts its slow dissolve from solid white to clear. The smell is warm, round, fatty in a way that coats the air.
I stir.
The spatula drags through the thickening liquid, and I find the rhythm she described, steady and circular, letting the heat distribute evenly.
She moves around me in the small studio like water around a stone. No wasted motion.
She measures olive oil into a second container, checks the lye solution’s temperature with a kitchen thermometer, adjusts the burner under my pot by reaching past my arm without breaking stride.
Her elbow grazes my surface as she passes, and the contact sends a briefpulse of gold through my forearm that I tamp down before she notices.
She glances at my work so far. “Nice. Keep that exact rhythm. I need to prep the oat colloidal.”
She moves to the other end of the counter, where a jar of finely ground oats sits beside bundles of dried rosemary. She measures oats into a bowl, crumbles rosemary between her palms, and the studio fills with the sharp green scent of it.
Her fingers are dusted pale with oat flour. A strand of reddish-brown hair has escaped her clip and hangs along the side of her jaw, swaying slightly as she works.
I stir, and I watch her, and the two actions feel like the same thing.
The lye solution cools to the temperature she needs, and she carries the pitcher over with both hands, careful and steady.
“Ready to combine. This is where it gets critical. I pour, you stir. Don’t stop, don’t speed up. If it seizes, the whole batch is wasted.”
“I won’t stop.”
She pours.
The lye hits the warm oil and the mixture clouds instantly, turning from clear to a pale, opaque cream. The chemical reaction starts immediately, a subtle heat bloom that I feel through the base of the pot and up through the spatula into my hand.
I stir.
The consistency changes with every rotation, thickening by degrees, resisting the spatula in new ways each pass.
Maisie watches the surface of the mixture with an intensity that seems to be her particular brand of love. She loves this. The transformation of separate, ordinary ingredients into something new.
She’ll never say it that way, but her whole body changes when a batch comes together. Her shoulders drop. Her breath slows. The tension she carries like armor thins just enough for me to see the person underneathit.
“Trace is coming,” she murmurs, leaning in to watch the pattern left by the spatula. “See how it holds the line now? That’s getting close. Keep going, same pace.”
I keep going.
The mixture ribbons off the spatula when I lift it, holding its shape for a full second before sinking back.
Maisie reaches past me for the oat-rosemary blend, and her forearm presses against my side. She lets the touch linger this time.
Her skin is warm from the studio heat, slightly damp at the inside of her elbow, and where she touches me I feel the steady drum of her pulse and the faint vibration of the muscles in her arm.
“That’s trace,” she says. “Stop.”
