Page 54 of Knot Your Pawn

“I can knit but my crochet isn’t that good.” Luca laughs again. “I need a lot more focus and attention for knitting than a cross-stitch project. I have a bad habit of not counting my stitches properly and then I’ll have too many or too few very quickly. So, maybe another day.”

Sounds like he’s made his choice.

“Cross-stitch it is. I’ve got a kit for purple flowers with a bird and a butterfly and a cottage-y, nature-y one.” I’m trying to remember what I picked up.

I already started the one with the kittens for the sewing room, so that’s what I’m going to be working on today.

“That first one sounds better, from your description.”

I grin. “I’ll grab us what we need and I’ll be right back.”

I glance over to Mathew and Vera, but they’re both still fast asleep. If I’m only gone for a moment, they should be fine. Right?

I hold my breath as I slip out the door, trying to be as quiet as possible. The hallway is filled with pheromones and scents, mostly from other people, as we’ve kept our doors closed as much as possible.

The crafts room doesn’t really have any scents or pheromones in it, since it’s been kept closed since it was cleaned, so anything from here that I bring back to our bedroom should be safe.

The room looks a lot more intimidating now I’m here to quickly grab some things. If I’ve got the time to browse and find what I’m looking for, it’s not a bad room. But it’s not really a good room for quick thinking, with how messy it is.

The cross-stitch kits are in a large box, together with some hoops, supplies and even a stand. Instead of taking out what we need, I grab the whole box, that way, I can’t leave behind anything important.

Hopefully.

When I’m on my way back to the bedroom, I run into Eli, who’s coming up the stairs with a tray of food and drinks.

“How are they doing?” He glances at the closed bedroom door.

“Sleeping, most of the time.” I let out a long breath. “How is everyone out there doing?”

“Mostly not sleeping.” He lets out a quick laugh. “But we’ll manage for at least a couple more days. The organisation doesn’t have any active missions right now, so most of it is just basic communication and other things. The usual stuff.”

“I’m sure everyone will be glad once Mathew is back at work.” I motion for Eli to put his tray on top of my box. “I’ll see what I can do to make recovery as smooth as possible, if that’s even possible. Because I’ll be so glad once our world is bigger than a single bedroom and bathroom again.”

I haven’t gone completely stir-crazy yet, but I know it won’t be that much longer. And I really hope that by then, Mathew and Vera are doing well enough that we don’t need to be locked up anymore.

But that’s all we can go on right now, hope.

A lot of hope.

7

Luca

It’s getting late, and the light from outside is no longer strong enough to stitch by.

I rub my eyes as I put the lilac cross-stitch kit aside. It’s the one that Jorge called the ‘purple flowers with a bird and a butterfly’ or something like that. Not a bad description, but also doesn’t do the beauty of the kit justice.

It’s not the easiest kit to stitch, but what I can see from the example picture, it’s going to be beautiful.

Once Jorge gave me the kit, I looked it up online, and managed to find an official digital pattern from the creator, which I quickly bought, so that I can use a program on my phone to keep track of all the stitches instead of the black and white paper pattern that came with the kit. Digital pattern programs make things so much easier.

I stand up and stretch, rolling my shoulders. Even though I’m using a stand to hold the hoop, I’m still not sitting in an ideal way. But then, I never really do. No matter what I do, I’m not a ‘sitting properly’ kind of person.

My chest is tight and my brain is starting to go to not-so-nice places, which means it’s time for me to get some fresh air.

This ritual has been going on for days now. I try to be near my mates for as long as I can manage, then I go outside for a couple of minutes, take in as much fresh air as possible, before joining them again.

It’s not just because Vera and Mathew need me, but because I can’t be away from them for very long either.