café saturn (brewed with love)

chapter two: earl grey

• chapter two •
kaia

possible allergies (tws) for this chapter: mentions and depictions of trauma and resulting paranoia/anxiety

This place was a little colder than the last. Kaia thought at first that it had been an effect of the rain they'd been having, but as the late sun season storms were replaced by lazy sunshine, Kaia realized it was really just that cold.

It didn't make sense geographically: this town was thousands of miles across the country from the last town, nestled by the sea in a spot that should've been warm. She supposed that, like the town itself, the magic here was cut off from the rest of society. It didn't understand that it was supposed to be warmer than it was, and so the land was cold even when the blooms were bright and open and rays of sun washed the ground in dappled light.

Kaia usually didn't like the cold, but this time, it was different. It was a stark, welcome reminder that she wasn't there anymore—she was safe, and she was alone, and she was in love with the new world under her feet.

Here, nobody knew her. And, if she could help it, nobody would.

**

Perhaps the cottage's rent shouldn't have been as pleasantly surprising as it was, but Kaia couldn't help it. After spending her life in big cities where living costs were astronomical, the real estate in Portobello was...affordable. More than affordable.

And the cottage was secluded, which was the main attraction. Not that Kaia didn't love people—in the hollow gaps of this big, empty forest, she felt the absence of the crowds, the many people with whom she'd surrounded herself months ago, and it sent a pang of loneliness running through her body. It lacked her family, and it lacked her friends, and it hurt.

But it also allowed her to escape him, and that made the aching emptiness worth it.

Part of her deemed it a blessing to be completely, utterly alone. In the early evenings when the sun cast a sheer golden glow over the forest floor and she walked barefoot across beds of rotten pine needles, she revelled in the fact that she was by herself. She trailed her fingertips over knitted tree bark and felt like the only one in the world.

The cottage may have been a little rundown, sure, but she would make it her home. It was a work in progress: the cottage was in need of care and each room was stacked with the boxes her parents had carried in, but it had potential. She scrubbed the mildew out of the floorboards on the front porch and she polished the rusted silver faucets and she trimmed back the wild overgrowth in the garden. Or, she'd started to, but the second half of the garden remained untouched and chaotic after figuring out what a massive project it would be.

Don't blame Kaia. ADHD was one unpredictable bitch, one that meant she left half the projects she started unfinished in favour of starting others. It also meant that once she got on a cleaning spree, she couldn't stop. Not even when it was hours past her bedtime and her throat ached for water.

In the few days before the start of classes, when she should have been introducing herself around town, she took care of the house. She decorated each French windowsill with potted plants to accompany the ivy winding down the exterior, and placed candles on every available surface to rid the house of its dusty smell. She whispered old stories to the moths in the carpet and left out honey in a bottle cap for the ladybugs to dine on. Curtsied to the whispering wind when it climbed through her window.

And it was okay.

It was okay that everything about this new world was unfamiliar and it was okay that the few people she'd met in town regarded her as only an outsider. It was okay that the town was too small to have public transit, and she had to walk twenty minutes to reach the nearest bus stop. It was okay that her house was falling apart, because at least she wasn't.