...windowsill, sat Sia seemingly...,
it felt a bit awkward to me to phrase it that way instead of "Sia sat...". Not enough to break the story, but I felt a little hiccup in the flow.
Every time she holds the blade up in the air, she would put it back down...,
switching from present to past tense. This one didn't give me the same hiccup, but it did give a slight air of awkwardness.
In the process she puts on a very loving smile to show how welcoming she was towards her daughter.
This felt like over-explaining to me. If there's a way to show this without outright saying it, it would come off smoother. Maybe, "despite the interruption, she put on a welcoming smile for her."
I liked the sentence afterward. It felt like just the right amount of explaining. "This wasn’t the first time Yadira had entered like this. "
"The newearl of much fairer spins back"
This may have just been an overlooked typo?
"As Yadira lets go, and reaches down on the floor for something, Sia winces and places a hand over her ear."
I felt the wincing was too far delayed from the shouting. By the time I got to the wince, I had to look back to see what she was wincing at.
Maybe, put the wince at the beginning of that sentence, and then have a description after “What did I tell you about shouting in people’s ears?” to remind us. Though the second may be overkill.
“Hmm,” says a sly Sia, looking into the bag.
This is something I like. It's something quick that the reader will likely gloss over without thinking, but it adds a layer on top of the dialogue to give the reader a clearer picture of what's going on.
could be seen working
This is something you tend to do - and I think stukasa too - that I personally don't like. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I think it's because it feels like you're forcing us to look at what is phrased as a subtle thing.
I would prefer simply "was working with"
I feel like that's just an opinion though. I just kinda cringe when I see that phrasing.
The man, Bitol, stops for a moment.
I feel this is redundant. We get enough information with "Bitol". And I don't think it's beneficial to add "The man".
This is something I notice that I don't like that you add often. Instead of referring to a character by name, you refer to them by some descriptor. I do think it's a good idea to remind the reader of some details about the character (for instance, adding "teal haired" as you're introducing Bitol). But it's always felt awkward to me to refer to a character by that descriptor. Unless you're purposefully hiding information from the reader (The cloaked man slid out a dagger).
Pop music begins to softly play.
This feels awkward to me. I would do something closer to, "Pop music plays as the ship starts", maybe?
Since I'm going into writing details in this section, I may as well put here how much I loved the interaction between Sia and Yadira in the car. You had to bluntly show the subtleties of Sia's mannerisms, but that gave us just enough information to infer her state of mind. And bouncing that off of Yadira's oblivious nature was great.
a soft muffled gunshot was heard.
I don't know if I should be complaining about this snippet or not, but I would prefer "Yadira heard a muffled gunshot" or "a muffled gunshot fired". "was heard" seems awkward to me.
I'm not going over anything that the characters say, because to me, that's just how the characters act. For instance, Yadira has a lot of grammatical issues in her dialogue, and I wouldn't change a single one. I assume they're all intentional, since they add so much flavor to her.
All that being said, this seems much better than what you were putting out before your break. It's way more colorful. I think you're making better use out of descriptions, adding more details to give the reader a much better view into what's going on.
I feel like I'm able to comment on a lot more stuff this time around because of the color you were able to add.
