Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15 The Secret Carrot of Gaia
Venus, Jadeite
16/24
“I hate you right now.”
Jadeite grinned. “When do you ever not?”
“Well, I find you more tolerable when my fingers aren’t freezing off.”
He threw her a quick glance and reached for one of her hands to examine it more closely. “Your fingers are almost blue!”
“I told you I was cold! I’ve been telling everyone that I’m cold ALL the time!” Fishing for something in the deep pockets of his fur coat, Jadeite finally produced a pair of gloves. Venus took them with hesitation. “The ones you’re wearing are nicer.”
“Which is why I’m wearing them, silly woman. Those are my old ones. Accept them with grace.”
“I do everything with grace,” she replied huffily as she slid her fingers into the worse for wear gloves. They were black and made from thick wool, but looked like they had seen many better days. There were also rather dirty, little specks of grey and green all over the fingers. “Urgh, what’s that smell?” Jadeite lifted her newly glove-covered hand to his nose and sniffed. “Pipeweed.”
“Of course,” Venus replied, a mock-sincere expression on her frozen little face.
“Do you want to help me make the snowman or not?”
“Sure. Let’s make a snowman.”
Twenty minutes later, they had formed a snowman out of three big balls of snow. Venus - her cheeks ruddy from the cold - was smiling. Jadeite took a step back to examine their work. “Well, he’s a bit pudgy around the middle, but we can call him Nephrite and be done with it.” He reached into his pockets again and produced a few coals and a dirty carrot. Shoving the coals into Venus’ hands, he cleaned the carrot in the snow until it was bright orange again. “Go on, you can make him eyes and a mouth with the coals.”
With almost childish glee, the Venusian did just that: the snowman soon sported a wide grin.
“Do we bring him to life now?”
Jadeite turned to her, eyes as wide as saucers, carrot still in hand. “Excuse me?”
“Which charms do we use? And can we make him do stuff? Do you use snowmen as servants? Do they fight in your wars? Is it complicated magic, the kind that gives you a headache or are you completely fine afterwards?” Her questions were fired off into the cold afternoon without reprieve until Jadeite began to wave his hands at her. “We don’t bring him to life! I can’t bring a snowman to life. It’s just snow, frozen water!”
“Well, let’s call Zoisite then. I’m sure he can do it. He seems good with spellwork.”
“I... snowmen are lifeless objects. They’re for... decoration and stuff! Zoisite can’t bring him to life, I can’t bring him to life, there’s no life to bring to it. They’re like flowers in a vase, only outside in the snow, you know?”
Venus’s face fell. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Jadeite groaned. “In making it!”
“But...” Venus’s looked at him, her big blue eyes two orbs of disappointment. After a minute, he could swear that her bottom lip began to quiver. Jadeite couldn’t take it anymore: he roughly shoved the carrot in her hands.
“Okay, fine. I didn’t want to tell you because it’s all very secret, but the snowman only comes to life after you’ve given him this carrot - the secret carrot of Gaia,” he continued with inspiration and sudden bravado, “for a nose and let him accumulate... energy! He needs to accumulate energy from the snow for few days and then he’ll come alive. Are you happy now?” For good measure, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned over, lowering his voice to a whisper. “This is practically high treason, me telling you. So you better keep your trap shut.”
Beaming, Venus put the carrot between the snowman’s eyes and mouth.
“How many secret carrots of Gaia do you have?” she whispered to him, eyes shining.
“Oh, not many. They’re very rare.”
Venus beamed, and examined the snowman with pride. Finally, winter was beginning to be fun!
Jadeite sighed. Time to hand Serenity’s guardian over to someone else before she caught on to the fact that this secret carrot was nothing more than leftovers from his lunch.