Hazel in the Demon's Den

Hazel became a bit less self-conscious around Will after the marshmallow incident. The next few weeks passed in a haze of finishing her character designs (just in time for the deadline), slowly checking out more of Will's property, and playing a lot of pool.

Pool wasn't all they did when he got home from work but they did play at least a few games a day. He would also ask her about her day and try to get to know her better by asking a bunch of other questions. Her answers were always guarded since she definitely didn't want him finding out about her gruesome past.

She was actually a pretty boring person. There wasn't much to say about her life. Her parents were murdered, she went mute and got put into a mental hospital, she liked art, and she wanted to travel. That was her in a nutshell.

Since Hazel didn't like talking about the first part, all she could really talk to Will about was her art and things she wanted to do someday if she got the chance. He listened so intently that she sometimes got the feeling he was making a mental list of places to take her.

He also took her out and showed her survival skills fairly often before it got dark. Apparently his worry that she would get lost in the woods hadn't completely gone away. Dummy.

But she supposed it was useful information since she had never lived in the mountains before. It was very different to urban San Francisco. And so beautiful. She could spend all day outside if she didn't have so much digital art to do.

Currently Hazel was on the back patio simultaneously sketching her view of the forest and using Discord on her phone to chat with the author of that online novel. Finally satisfied with the character designs, they now had to discuss backgrounds and how to condense the chapters into comic format.

The author, whose pen name was Muffincake, wrote very wordy chapters with a lot of dialogue. Translating descriptions of scenery into backgrounds would be easy. Condensing and cutting out dialogue…not so much. They had been arguing about what to do for chapter one all morning.

Muffincake—Hazel didn't even know her real name and vice versa—took a long time to respond to each message, hence the ability to sketch in between. She was nearly done with the outline and would be able to start mixing paints soon.

Hazel already had the perfect place in the cabin to hang it when it was finished. There were too many blank spaces on the walls and she wanted to fill them with a series of paintings about this mountain.

Will didn't seem to mind. She had already discussed it with him. In fact, she got the impression he was actually excited at the prospect.

Considering she had gambled her life by proposing to a roomful of strangers, she actually got really lucky. She had married an art enthusiast who didn't seem interested in her body and mostly let her do her own thing. Honestly, she couldn't think of a single way this could have turned out better.

Hazel could have ended up with an abusive drunk or a sex maniac or any number of undesirable types of men. After having some time to think about it, she realized that Will's logic for marrying her so no one else crazy would was actually pretty sound.

But she still wished she knew the reasoning behind it. Would he have done the same for any girl throwing herself to the sharks or was she somehow special?

Her phone dinged. Muffincake had finally replied.

'Topaz, the dialogue is important. I've seen other comics do multiple paragraphs of inner monologue in a row above or next to the characters/background. You can make it work'

It was highly tempting to chuck her phone over the railing. Hazel calmed herself by taking a few deep breaths of the glorious mountain air. This wasn't her poor phone's fault.

'Tell me exactly which dialogue/inner monologue needs to be kept per chapter and which can be shortened or cut out' she shot back.

The comic was supposed to launch in two months but at this point they were struggling so much with storyboarding that it seemed like it would never get done. Drawing a chapter would take her roughly 30-40 hours, which was the equivalent of a person working a day job Monday-Friday.

The comic app would release one chapter per week but they wanted her to have a small stockpile in case of emergencies. Which meant before they started she needed to have 4-6 weeks' worth of chapters done. The storyboarding for the first several chapters needed to be done in the next couple of weeks but Muffincake insisted on being difficult.

Hazel had to show samples of backgrounds to her as well for approval, particularly in rooms and scenery that were important to the novel. Each room would take her hours to draw and color.

Collaborating with other people was the worst. If she ever did a comic again it would be for an idea she came up with herself. No meddlesome authors to go through.

'I'll send those to you later today. Keep working on those background samples to send me' Muffincake replied.

It was entirely possible to finish this painting in a few hours. She could work on the backgrounds once it got too dark to paint outside. She needed to do something relaxing after arguing with Muffincake for so long.

Sometimes she wondered what Muffincake was like in person since she had only ever interacted with her online regarding her novel, which she referred to as her baby. Well, Hazel supposed she had poured countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears into it.

She was more than a bit obsessive about her baby. Was she that obsessive about everything in her life? High strung? An anxiety disorder, maybe? Or was she a chill person who got really worked up about only one thing?

More likely than not, Hazel would never find out. Muffincake lived somewhere on the east coast, according to the time difference when they chatted online. The chances of them running into each other were almost zero, though she supposed anything was possible.