On the internet, Katja had bought red and blue fabric, fabric with a velvet look, and thin knitting yarn of the same colours, and that order had been delivered late yesterday afternoon. As she had been very tired yesterday, she had not done anything with it yet.

This morning, Angelique and Rosanne would come to pick up their 'Volcano' and 'Embrace'. Katja decided to start working on her fabric before then, so both women could see the effect.

She measured out the measurements for each cupboard compartment, and deliberately cut the fabric a bit longer, as she wanted to use its corners to shape into dots with the knitting yarn and use them to secure the fabric to the cupboard.

She placed the first cloth on the shelf where she wanted it. The cloth was not just to lie on the shelf, but to run up at the back and be fastened there. The cloth would be like the back and seat of a chair. She saw that the cloth was large enough to turn the corners into dots at the top. She had cut four threads of the same colour liberally to length beforehand. She knotted the first one around such a point and attached it to the cupboard.

"Handy with this cupboard, there are bars everywhere I can tie them to!"

She did the same with the other tip at the top.

"So, the back hangs..."

She suddenly got an idea. To prevent the fabric from sliding forward, she cut a slightly longer thread and tied it along in front of the crossing from 'back' to 'seat'. In the front too, she made dots from the corners and again used the knitting yarn to secure the corners.

"The first compartment is ready!"

With a smile, she looked at it, wanting to put the glassware 'Embracing' in it, but she stiffened, her smile disappeared and she was in her mind, in her whole experience in another room, a room where there was a chair of the same red colour. It was the red chair, a leather armchair, in which she was tied naked by ankles and wrists every day, after which usually several men came in to supposedly admire her nakedness and take her to extreme heights by jointly stimulating and abusing her sensitive spots. By default, she had gone through it crying, and by default cumming violently, after which the men took turns raping her. Especially when they were in a group, they took a spiteful pleasure in it, jostling each other to do crazier and crazier things, stimulating her over and over again so that the next one enjoyed it even more. Satanically deranged, she had called them in her mind.

As Katja stared at the red fabric in her closet, she relived such a session. She dropped to the floor crying, kicking at random.

Maureen, who was just about to make coffee, heard her and quietly went into her workroom. She was startled by the violent re-experiencing, didn't recognise that about herself. She herself usually froze, but Katja seemed to want to kick the guys who, in her experience, forced themselves on her again.

Maureen realised, Katja had to go through it, that it was difficult, but that it would eventually bring her a piece of healing. Still, at one point she could no longer stand it, crawled over to Katja and put her hand on her shoulder, softly calling her name: "Katja, Katja, it's me, Maureen, you're safe Katja, it's not real, it's a memory coming up. Please come out, come, just calm down."

She kept talking softly to her and after some time, she noticed, the kicking lessened and Katja's eyes began to move, as if she was looking for the perpetrators, still afraid they would grab her again.

Her eyes found Maureen. She looked at her sternly, taking deep breaths over and over again. She kept looking at Maureen, and they both saw and experienced something they could not yet put words to.

.

The bell rang. "That will be Rosanne and Angelique. You go freshen up in the kitchen or upstairs, just wash your face. I'll go to the front door."

They got up, Katja went upstairs to her bedroom to cool her face with water and put some cream on it. She saw in the antique mirror that her eyes were still too red, but she did not know at the moment what she could do about it. She was too confused by what had just happened, and didn't want to stay away too long either.

Quietly she walked downstairs, trying to smile as best she could and greet Rosanne and Angelique. Angelique held her hand a little longer and looked at her: "Just relax Katja, you can be yourself with us, whatever is going on."

Katja looked startled at Maureen, wondering what she had told them.

Angelique reassured her again, "Maureen hasn't told us anything, we have no idea what's going on, and we don't need to, but I can see that you're tense, that you've been crying and frantically trying to behave differently from how you feel. And I just wanted to point out, that's not necessary."

Katja nodded, relaxing a bit. Her smile disappeared and her whole face had a sad expression. She saw that Maureen had already put the 'Volcano' on the dining table.

"I will grab the 'Embrace' too. I had meant to put it in the cupboard, but didn't get that far. Come along and I'll do it anyway and you can see if you like the effect."

The women followed her to her study, where Katja grabbed the 'Embrace' from her desk. "I had wanted to put it here on that red fabric, because I thought that would make it look even more beautiful. But something came up for a moment."

She placed her glassware on the red fabric and was surprised herself by the effect. "It's like it's starting to sparkle even more..." she sighed.

"That's exactly what we need," Angelique told Rosanne, "red fabric underneath and behind it."

"Do you have an idea of the sizes?" asked Katja.

Angelique shook her head, but Rosanne said, "I know that both the boards are forty centimetres wide and thirty centimetres deep."

Katja thought, and calculated aloud, "So then you need a piece of cloth forty wide, and a length of thirty centimetres plus the height, well over the height of the 'Embrace'. Can you attach the fabric to the wall at the top?"

"Yep, at the top we can poke pins through it, sticking it diagonally behind the wallpaper. Where the board is on the wall, we can do something like what you've done here, or no, if the piece would be a bit wider, we can fix it against the wall with pins, and on the side of it tap the board in with thin nails."

"And at the front of it loosely hang a small piece over it?" asked Katja.

The women looked at each other and nodded.

"Shall I cut a piece of over forty centimetres, with a length of one metre?"

Rosanne and Angelique looked at the huge roll lying on Katja's work table.

Katja chuckled: "You don't have to pay for it though, I like it when my work gets a beautiful place."

The ladies shot into laughter. "That's quite a nice solution!" said Rosanne. "I won't say no to it!"

"Is the other shelf of the same size?" asked Maureen.

Angelique nodded.

"I bought grey and black from the same fabric. Since the 'Volcano' mountain has a lot of black, I would go for the grey fabric myself. What do you guys think about that?"

"Boy, what a treat," Angelique responded, "really cool! I also think the grey is indeed the best."

Rosanne nodded, to which Maureen replied with a "Then I'm going to cut that one!" and walked to her study.

"Did you agree that way?" asked Rosanne to Katja.

"No, we did pick and buy those fabrics together, but nothing else. Apparently Maureen thinks it's a good plan too. To be honest, it only just occurred to me too, I hadn't thought of those beforehand. I was so surprised by the effect..."

She picked up the 'Embrace' and put it in another part of the cupboard.

"Look at the difference, that fabric makes the glass look so much nicer! I'll put it back right away though, it just belongs in a place like that. By the way, I also have corn blue fabric, same kind of fabric." Katja pointed to the other roll lying in the cupboard.

"Do you prefer red or blue?"

"Red, that also fits best next to that grey one the volcano comes on. There are shades of red in that volcano. What do you think Rosanne?"

"Totally agree! We are like that saying, two souls one thought. Actually that's not true, we are two souls, but our souls together are so one, that there are hardly two souls any more. But that aside! So I think the red one is the best option too!"

Katja smiled and laid the roll of fabric down so that she could cut properly straight. She had a half-metre ruler with it, which she used to be able to keep the width of the fabric the same everywhere. To cut the last thing, the width, she laid the roll parallel to the table edge, and cut along the table edge, so that too would be straight.

"You do that skillfully! Done that before?" asked Angelique.

"No, never, just for my own patch for the first time. I just saw it in front of me the moment I wondered how best to cut straight. And it works!" she laughed.

Rosanne smiled happily. "And how is the panther in you in the meantime?"

Katja tilted her head as she pondered. "I think that panther is starting to come around the corner more and more. Just now, that plan to cut a piece of fabric for you guys, that was a panther idea. Before, I would have discussed it with Maureen first, because I found it hard to make decisions on my own. But this happened automatically, I decided on my own. Gosh, pretty cool, I wasn't aware of it, so thanks for asking about the panther! By the way, I've put it in the windowsill here for now, but I want to find another shelf there on the wall, of the same style as the cabinet. Then I'll put fabric over that too and put it on that."

"Good idea! We visit auctions a lot. Once we come across something like that, I'll send you a picture of it, then you can see if you want it for the price they ask for it. Not everything is auctioned in fact, a lot just has a fixed price. They always pick out a few things at the auctions we like to attend, and the rest you can buy for the set price. I expect, if we come across such a shelf or such a rack, it will have a set price, don't you think?"

Angelique nodded: "You never know with those guys, but I expect you're right."

"Well, I'd love that! And in the meantime, I'm looking further myself, including for more such cabinets. Maureen and I both have two workrooms, she on the other side of the house, me here. And we almost want to fill the walls of both rooms with such cabinets. At most a small space in between, so that the cupboards themselves come into their own."

"Good to know, we'll keep an eye on it. You guys can always say no, right?"

Katja beamed: "I think this is so cool, that we got in touch and can help each other out a bit further this way."

"I wouldn't be surprised if our contact will deepen and we can help each other in all kinds of ways. Nothing obligatory mind ya, but I hope you'll feel free to ask us for help, even with emotional things. We've been through a lot, maybe we can help you with that. See for yourself, if you want that sometime, you know where to find us."

Rosanne looked at Angelique in surprise, wondering what was going through her, but decided not to say anything about it. She would do that later on the way back.

Maureen came in with a grey piece of fabric. "Was quite difficult to cut that neatly. How do you do it Katja?"

"Handy, she does it handily!" laughed Rosanne.

Katja chuckled and showed Maureen how she had done it.

"Damn, so simple! I did manage it though, look at it, nice and straight, but I struggled with it quite a bit, measuring, measuring and measuring again!"

They took the rags and the 'Embrace' to the living room, carefully wrapped both works of art in the fabric and lowered them into the two bags Rosanne and Angelique had with them.

"In the back of the car there is a crate ready, we will put the bags in there. That should be fine right?"

"Seems so," Maureen said.

They walked along to the car, watched as the women carefully lowered their treasures into the crate. Shouting greetings and waving, they got into the car and drove off, waved after by Maureen and Katja.

"How did you come up with the idea of offering them help for emotional things?" asked Rosanne.

Angelique looked at her grinning: "Those two are soulmates, but because of their woundedness, they haven't realised it yet! When they get to the point where they start to realise it, probably just such a cosy road of rejection awaits them as we have been through. With us, they can be themselves, just lovers, without being judged. Let's just wait and see, they're not ready, not yet, but that won't take long..."

Rosanne smiled. She recognised statements like this, she had them more and more often herself. Sometimes thoughts popped up, which the world said they couldn't know, but which bubbled up from inside their souls, or sometimes even sprayed up like a fountain. And especially with the latter... they couldn't actually stop it, then they just spoke out what their souls indicated.

To chapter 58. Soul connection

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