café saturn (brewed with love)

chapter one: baking powder

• chapter one •
mouse

possible allergies (tws) for this chapter: implied depression, obvious lack of self-care

**

The most important parts of Mouse's life, they thought, were also the most fleeting. Like water slipping through their fingers, they happened in inconsequential ways, their significance unnoticeable until the moment had already passed. Perhaps it was the curse of a small town, one where the land's magic was poorly distributed and the most interesting topic of conversation was the weather. The curse that meant everything impactful felt bland at first.

It was certainly the case with one Kaia Larsen.

Sun season fell away with the first reddening of the leaves, and August cooled and smoothed itself into the beginnings of September. Mouse should have known from that first taste of the drop season that it was a time of change, but they were far too used to a place where change was never consequential, and let it slip from their attention.

Mouse was working the opening shift the first time they met Kaia. Given that they were the only employee available to work early mornings alongside Joni, they were understaffed. Not that it mattered. Customers rarely stopped by before eight.

Barely a week into the semester, and the fresh drop season was already showing itself off through a display of heavy rain. It was early for Portobello Bay to have such an onslaught of precipitation—but then again, the magic never listened to such things. It rained when it wanted to rain.

They thought that, especially with the downpour of drop season rain sheltering Cafe Saturn from the passersby outside, it would be ridiculous to come into the cafe this early in the morning. Mouse themself was barely awake, clinging to the smell of coffee just inches out of their reach.

As Mouse would come to learn, Kaia liked to defy expectations.

At somewhere near seven thirty in the morning, a flash of movement and a tinkling of the bells above the door indicated someone had braved the storm.

She was tall and she was wet, rain sticking her clothes to her skin and drenching her hair a shade like rust. The girl didn't have an umbrella nor did she seem to care, dripping puddles of water in her wake. The backpack resting on her shoulders indicated she had to have been a high school or university student, and she paused in her hurry to glance around the cafe with a look of wonder.

And right, Mouse thought, it was that same look shared on the faces of the very few tourists that ever made the mistake of coming into their shithole of a town. One of the only cafes in Portobello Bay, and it was certainly one of the stranger places around. The curved, cylindrical shape of the interior was designed to look like the inside of a tree, and the bookshelves carved from floor to ceiling in each wall were lit up not by artificial lighting but by the strange floating spots of light that outsiders always mistook for fireflies. The moss and glowing mushrooms that sprouted from the floorboard cracks made mopping a pain, but they seemed to keep customers happy. Each of the tables carried a dim, flickering candle that never burnt out—because the magic liked Joni, the owner, and so it kept her candles burning.

The cafe was the only thing that came close to an attraction around here, but Mouse would take it.

Mouse didn't need to see the girl's amazed face to recognize her as new. Living in the same population of four hundred people for nineteen years does that to you—you start to memorize the faces of everyone in town like the cracks lining the pavement. Anyone new becomes interesting, becomes fresh, becomes a change in the monotonous lull that was life in Portobello.