update from sparkleup
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<p>She hesitated on the corner of Linden and 18th, stopping mid-stride and staring down the street. She should turn. She should turn left and walk the next two blocks. She should head up the stairs. She should open the door, set her phone down, change out of her clothes — clothes she’d now have to return to the market — clean up, start cooking.</p>
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<p>She should tell Katrin what happened. She should look for a new job.</p>
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<p>“Shit,” she repeated, this time aloud, and kept walking straight. Five blocks to the plaza. She’d grab a coffee, sit on one of the benches. Watch the early afternoon crowds putter along the mall.</p>
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<p>Or maybe she shouldn’t grab a coffee. Maybe she should be saving her money.</p>
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<p>Or maybe she shouldn’t grab a coffee she could no longer afford. Maybe she should be saving her money.</p>
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<p>She kept walking.</p>
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<p>She got her coffee.</p>
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<p>She sat, and she watched.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>Katrin and Winter stood still heads bowed, both searching through their thoughts.</p>
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<p>Winter couldn’t guess at her wife’s thoughts. The fox was always so inscrutable. Winter would sometimes watch her face while the vixen worked, the blank mask of pure white, punctuated with only the pitch-black nose, those darkest-brown eyes, and try to decide if the inscrutable part was the white fur or some sort of Scandinavian magic.</p>
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<p>Today, she couldn’t tell. Katrin’s matte-white fur reflected light so well that there were no shadows to reflect her emotions. And yet, there was still something foreign to those features. The almond-shaped eyes, the blunt muzzle, the ears almost hidden in thick fur.</p>
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<p>Katrin and Winter stood still, heads bowed, both searching through their thoughts.</p>
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<p>Winter couldn’t guess at her wife’s thoughts. The fox was always so inscrutable. Winter would sometimes watch her face while the vixen worked, the blank mask of pure white, punctuated with only the pitch-black nose, those darkest-brown eyes, and try to decide if the inscrutable part was the all-white fur or some sort of Scandinavian magic.</p>
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<p>Today, she couldn’t tell. Katrin’s matte-white fur reflected light so well that there were no shadows left to reflect her emotions. And yet, there was still something foreign to those features. The almond-shaped eyes, the blunt muzzle, the ears almost hidden in thick fur.</p>
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<p>Perhaps another Swede would be able to read that face, to say what Katrin was feeling, but not Winter. Not right now.</p>
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<p>“And they didn’t give any recourse?” The fox looked up to Winter. “Just <em>come pick up your last paycheck and drop off your shirts</em>?”</p>
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<p>The lynx nodded. “Just that. Mr Stevenson just said he couldn’t keep both managers on board, and, well, Kayla’s his daughter.”</p>
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<p>Katrin nodded and slid her paw across the countertop to twine her fingers with the lynx’s. “I understand. I’m sorry, love.”</p>
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<p>“It’s okay.” Winter sighed and gave those fingers a gentle squeeze in her own. Even with the flour still clinging clinging to her wife’s fur, even with the coarseness of her pads, worn from so much kneading of dough, they seemed so delicate in her thick-furred mitts. “I’ll start looking tomorrow.”</p>
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<p>The lynx nodded. “Just that. Mr. Stevenson just said he couldn’t keep both managers on board, and, well, Kayla’s his daughter.”</p>
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<p>Katrin nodded and slid her paw across the counter top to twine her fingers with the lynx’s. “I understand. I’m sorry, love.”</p>
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<p>“It’s okay.” Winter sighed and gave those fingers a squeeze in her own. Even with the flour still clinging clinging to her wife’s fur, even with the coarseness of her pads, worn from so much kneading of dough, they seemed so delicate in her thick-furred mitts. “I’ll start looking tomorrow.”</p>
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<p>“Okay. Let me know if you need any help, I’ll do what I can.”</p>
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<p>The lynx nodded.</p>
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<p>“It’ll be okay, love. I promise.” Her smile was tired, but warm all the same.</p>
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<p>“It’ll be okay, love. I promise.” Her smile was tired.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>Gone were the days of sitting up at the kitchen table, circling help-wanted ads in the newspaper. Hell, gone were the days of the newspaper, it felt like.</p>
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<p>Instead, Winter grew addicted to job posting boards, both local to her town and some that ran on a wider scale. Once she got her résumé all fixed up, she started flooding local stores with it, starting with all of the local grocers — as Stevenson’s had been — and then broadening her search to related retail outlets.</p>
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<p>Gone were the days of sitting up at the kitchen table, circling help-wanted ads in the newspaper. Hell, gone were the days of the newspaper.</p>
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<p>Instead, Winter grew addicted to job posting boards, both local to her town and some that ran on a wider scale. Once she got her résumé all fixed up, she began flooding local stores with it, starting with all of the local grocers — as Stevenson’s had been — and then broadening her search to related retail outlets.</p>
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<p>And then unrelated.</p>
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<p>Then non-retail positions.</p>
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<p>She would work in shifts, spending an hour prowling through postings, then spending five minutes making sure her files were in order, then another two hours applying. The act of uploading a résumé to a site that promised to read all it could from it, then required her to fill in all that information again in form fields became rote, numbing.</p>
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<p>There were a few calls back, but more often than not, the response was silence. It was starting to feel futile. It was starting to feel like hollering into the void. She would click submit on yet another application, and it would just…go away. It would go nowhere.</p>
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<p>There were a few calls back, but more often than not, silence. It was starting to feel futile. It was starting to feel like hollering into the void. She would click submit on yet another application, and it would just…go away. It would go nowhere.</p>
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<p>Even an outright rejection would feel better.</p>
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<p>She had set herself a week to exhaust all of the usual application channels. On the third or fourth day, she started driving around to stores and dropping off paper copies of her applications as well.</p>
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<p>It was on one of those outings towards the end of her timeboxed week that she first noticed the ride share sticker in someone’s window.</p>
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<p>It was on one of those outings towards the end of her time-boxed week that she first noticed the ride share sticker in someone’s window.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>“Winter? For Malina?”</p>
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<p>“Yep, that’s me,” the lynx replied cheerfully.</p>
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