Carpe Diem - Chapter 3
Pairing: Sketchbook (Kaisa/Johanna)
Summary: Carpe diem: one of the five latim mottos of the arcadist, or neoclassical movement. Literally translates to "seize the day"
Picking up where Locus Amoenus left off, this fic follows the lives of Kaisa and Johanna for a couple weeks as their feelings grow and develop.
Notes: Sorry but infodumping/letting someone infodump to you are the ultimate love languages
Read it on ao3 or read the first installment on this verse or read the second installment on this verse
A recurring theme that they noticed on the stalls was that they were mostly decorated and selling a couple of products related to Halloween already, never mind that they were still in September.
Another recurring thing that didn’t escape Johanna, was how excited Kaisa got whenever they passed by stalls that displayed such things. Whenever they walked by a particularly interesting Halloween decoration, or an artist who had selected some “creepy” or darker products to put in front of their stall, Kaisa gasped just loud enough for Johanna to hear, and very subtly bounced up and down on her heels. Very subtly, in a way that she was sure she only had noticed because she was walking oh-so-close to her. It didn’t really surprise her that Kaisa hadn’t been expecting her to pick up on it, because clearly the girl had been underestimating how closely Johanna paid attention to her.
Not that she hadn’t been doing that from day one, that is.
“You really like Halloween, don’t you?”
Kaisa turned to her with wide eyes when she asked it, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
“Yeah, kind of. It’s silly though.”
“New rule!” Johanna’s sudden chirp made Kitty look at her like she’d grown a second head. “You’re absolutely not allowed to hold back on what makes you happy, or to feel bad for it. Let’s try this again. You really like Halloween, don’t you?”
Kaisa could only look down at her feet, hoping the black and purple hair that fell over her face covered the way she was absolutely failing to hold back a smile, uselessly biting at the inside of her lips to try to stop them from stretching.
“I really do. I was really obsessed with witches when I was younger, and Tildy always fueled my passions. She gave me every book on every subject I asked for, and an obsession with witches melted into an obsession with Halloween, which became one with the historical roots of the holiday and the Celtic people. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons why I chose to major in History as well as English.”
Success, Johanna thought, looking down at Kaisa who was now displaying the most adorable smile on her lips. She’d always been somewhat aware of the height difference between them, but like this she could see very clearly that Kitty was at least a full ten centimetres shorter.
“That sounds so fun!” As she assured, Johanna wondered how many other interests Kaisa had that would make her sound so alive when she spoke about them. It was kind of sad to know that they were all most likely being neglected, though. With how furiously Kaisa focused on college, Johanna doubted that left her much time to learn about anything that wasn’t related to her lectures. If she had any say in it, though, she’d make sure Kaisa spent as much time engaging with the things that made her happy as possible. “Do you have plans for this Halloween? We could spend it together, if you’d like.”
The look Kaisa gave her was shimmering at first, before being clouded by disappointment. “I’m afraid I have. Tildy forces Frida to go trick-or-treating every year, and makes me go with her. It’s one of her many strategies to force us to have a night of rest from studying. I already promised I’d be doing it. Frida wants us to dress like characters from a cartoon she likes.”
Even though Johanna smiled as Kaisa answered it, bemused at the image of two workaholics being forcibly kicked out of their home to ask for candy (Kaisa’s mother sounded more charming by the minute), Kaisa didn’t feel content about completely turning down her invitation. It was something she’d very much like to do, and she’d hate it for Johanna to get the wrong idea.
“We could do something the day before, though!” She rushed to assure her, terrified that Golden might think she’d been giving an excuse. “Or the day after. Even if it’s not Halloween related, I’d just love to hang out-”
Johanna gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, sensing her distress. “I’d love it too! I’m sure we’ll think of something nice. What characters are you and your sister dressing as?”
It was hard for Kaisa to even contain her sigh of relief when she understood that Johanna really didn’t feel like she was being brushed off. “Amity and Lilith, from The Owl House. Do you know it?”
They kept on walking, Johanna’s brow furrowed in thought. “Isn’t that the gay rights cartoon? I think I saw it on twitter.”
“Yeah, you’re probably thinking of the right one. Frida hasn’t said anything about liking girls or boys yet. I think she’s still very young to have that figured out. But I’m willing to bet that Tildy has some sort of magical filter that she uses when making adoptions that miraculously points her to the lesbians, honestly.”
Johanna was glad she hadn’t been drinking anything. If she had, she certainly would have choked on it and it would have spilled through her nostrils, and it would not have been a pretty sight.
“Gosh, I need to meet your family.” Johanna said through her laughter, happy to see that Kaisa had joined her in on it. “Radical change in topic, but I am starving. Want to grab a bite?”
“Sure!”
Funny, Johanna thought. Even her single worded answers sounded more full of life now.
They skimmed through the next stalls, since most of the food ones were deeper into the market, and only stopped for one that caught Kaisa’s attention. It sold small, handmade perfumed candles, and anyone that passed by the two of them while they were there would have thought they were clinically insane with the way they frantically picked candles of each available scent to smell it, discussing which were the best ones. While they came to the consensus that the coffee bean and vanilla one was the champion, Johanna for the most part was drawn to the wildflowers and tea scented ones, while Kaisa didn’t relinquish her opinion that the apple and cinnamon candle was special. Johanna left empty handed out of pure self control (the tons of unburned candles in her bedside table’s drawer would certainly not appreciate it if she brought home another one just to abandon it), but Kaisa purchased both their favourite candle and the one that smelled like apple pie.
Once more food vendors began popping up, their nostrils were assaulted with the scent of every kind of food you could imagine, which honestly felt like karma for so desperately smelling everything on the candle stall. One of the first stalls had a large metal bowl at its centre, and bags of powder of many colours around it, and there was a child walking away from it with an enormous blue and purple cloud on a stick.
“Cotton candy!” Johanna exclaimed when she spotted it. “Would you like it?”
Kaisa scrunched her nose. “Not really. It’s so… sticky. The texture isn’t really my jam, I guess. But you go ahead and get it! I’d love to see you try and eat that, it’s bigger than your head.”
Showing her friend her tongue, she tugged her hand to invite her to continue walking. “Nah, that’s okay. I’m not too fond of the taste, I just think it’s fun to eat it.”
“Once again, I won’t be the one to stop you.”
“No, but you’ll be the one to take pictures of me with cotton candy stuck in my hair and blackmail me with them later.”
“Fair enough.”
They took a while to look at all of the available options, paying close attention to the other market attendees who walked past them holding any sort of food so as to make an informed decision. The ultimate winner was a stall frying beignets and sprinkling confectioner’s sugar on top. If the smell of deep-fried pastry alone wasn’t enough to draw them in, the look of utter pleasure in the faces of those who they saw eating them certainly was.
Their paying time took three times longer than it should, a result of both of them arguing about how they should be the one to pay for the other while the shopkeeper looked absolutely unamused. In the end, Kaisa won and paid for them both with the argument that Johanna had already driven them here, which meant that Johanna was already plotting every sort of plan to pay for their next meal.
At the centre of the square, a couple of benches were positioned around what would be a bonfire as soon as night fell, and they took a seat on an empty one. As they bit into their beignets, neither contained the hums of delight at the sweet, warm explosion in their mouths.
After a few bites in silence, because that was definitely the kind of food that was too good to talk while eating, Johanna gasped and reached into one of the bags she had acquired while in the market.
“You know what would taste great with this?” Before Kaisa could even think of an answer, she took her jar of honey from the bag and opened it. She offered it to Kaisa first, who dipped her pastry only just enough so that her next bite would taste of honey, and then promptly poured such an obscene amount of it on hers that it began to spill and drip down her fingers.
“Hm, this is so good.” Johanna moaned. While Kaisa was sure that she wasn’t tasting the honey as much as Golden, she would admit that it gave the beignet a delicious depth of flavour.
And then she looked at Johanna and completely lost all rational train of thought.
Her eyes were closed in appreciation and her head was leaning slightly back as she chewed. What captured her attention, however, was the drop of honey that had caught on the corner of her lip, and was painfully slowly making its way down to her chin.
If a human could blue-screen, Kaisa imagined that this was it.
What was the appropriate reaction to this? Probably telling her about it and giving her one of her own napkins, since Johanna would probably already be needing hers to clean her hands. Was this what her mind was telling her to do, though? Absolutely not, because the only thing her damn brain was working for at the moment was providing her with a very vivid imagery of how nice it would be to kiss that drop of honey away from her face and into her own mouth.
With her face most definitely red at the appalling thought and her hands suddenly clammy, Kaisa wished it wasn’t weird to shake your head violently in a public space (what? At least she’d get the feeling of shaking that thought far away from her) and acted on what was probably the middle ground between those two options.
Reaching up with one of her spare napkins, she allowed her hand to float just in front of Johanna’s face.
“May I?” She asked when Johanna opened back her eyelids and looked at the offer with open curiosity. At her nod, she wiped the honey away.
“Thanks.” If Johanna’s voice was several octaves higher, Kaisa didn’t comment on it. It wasn’t like she had the credit to do that, anyway. “This is… really good.”
“Yeah.” Kaisa bit into her food again with gusto, willing her mind to allow her to forget that moment of insanity. It wasn’t creepy if she hadn’t done anything inappropriate, right?
They finished eating and without even communicating seemed to agree on just sitting there with each other for a while. Johanna extended her legs in front of herself while Kaisa sat with one knee bent and foot close to her skirt, and the other leg extended towards Johanna.
“It just occurred to me that I do not, in fact, know much about the historical roots of Halloween.” The wind played with Johanna’s curls, making her bangs swing softly from side to side.
Kaisa snorted. “Are you sure you want to go there? Get me started and it’ll be hard to get me to stop, you know.”
“I’d love to go there, actually.” She smiled. “Anything you’d like to teach me, I’m all ears.”
Sighing contently was the only thing Kaisa could think to do, really. How long had it been since anyone other than Tildy and Frida had been ‘all ears’ to her? Not only to her interests, but to anything at all? Had that ever even happened?
“Well, you see, it is generally agreed that the Celts had three harvest festivals…”
Johanna wasn’t sure how long they spent there. She didn’t care, either. All that she knew is that she’d gotten this girl who she had spent months wondering if she even knew how to speak to give her a full lecture about a topic she was passionate about. She’d never even known she had the slightest interest in druids or roman cultural assimilation or the issue with the typical definition of a “celt”, but watching the muscles in Kaisa’s face move and hearing the pitches of her voice which were apparently unlocked when she was excited made Johanna decide that that was one of the coolest topics in the world, actually. She’d be sure to check out a book on it next time she was in the library, so she could actually hold a conversation with Kaisa next time she talked about it.
At one point, Kaisa stopped talking and looked around them, letting out a chuckle.
“We have to stop meeting like this.” She quipped, but Johanna didn’t understand it. The haze of tranquillity that had come over her when Kaisa had begun her monologue still lingered, and she struggled to pay attention to anything else.
“Hm?”
Kaisa pointed to the sky by means of explanation, and to Johanna’s surprise, it was no longer blue, but somehow orange, pink and purple at the same time. Hadn’t they arrived just past three o’clock, she wondered with startlement.
“It looks so pretty from here.” Johanna marvelled. Even those masterful watercolours they had seen paled in comparison to the real thing.
Kaisa’s gaze wandered back and forth from the sky to Johanna’s face, struggling to decide which was the better view. “It really does.”
They drank in the moment greedily, knowing it was impossible to drown on such a beautiful thing (and that if it were, they would go down gladly). The sounds were softer now that night was falling and most people had left, the colours were shifting as the sun bid goodnight and a market worker worked to light the bonfire in front of them. This time, unlike the garden, Johanna didn’t have to teach her how to appreciate the moment. She wouldn’t let this one go for anything.
The flames rose up in front of them, filling the autumn air with their warmth, and Johanna extended her hands towards them gladly.
“I disagree, you know.” She said, looking at Kaisa mischievously. “I don’t think we should stop meeting like this. I wouldn’t change this for anything at all.”
Neither would I, Kaisa thought, worried at this feeling that was settling in her chest even though it felt like it was too big to fit in it, worried about her carefully selected priorities that all seemed irrelevant in the face of all this peace. Neither would I.
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