Not in alarm or in fear or in the possibilities of future unknowns. Instead she just listens intently, “I told him it was only for a little while,” she murmurs, not quite smiling. “Let’s hope this time the world agrees with my promise.”

  The cottage had settled into itself years ago.

  Not abandoned, not exactly, but lived in the way old quilts are lived in. Patched without comment. Softened without shame. The floor slopes slightly near the hearth, where the beams have given up trying to hold everything perfectly square. The wallpaper was once roses, but time has turned them to ghosts. Faint outlines with perfume memory and thorned grace.

  Eileen doesn’t mind. Homes are never supposed to stay the same shape. Time has taught her that. Besides, the cottage creaks when the weather changes and sighs when the bread rises right. That is enough.

  The morning sun is already reaching in through the kitchen windows, laying down golden stripes like offerings across the floor. The teacups, high on the shelf just beneath the tin of ancestral licorice, rattle faintly. As if making commentary on the mood. A consistent gossip of sound. They were always doing that, jealous of the pan probably who often see more use.

  Eileen ignores them with practiced ease.

  She moves through the room the way some women pray. Quiet, focused, without need of an audience. A cup always finding itself near her hand. A sprig of mint wandering into a waiting pot. Even ribbons show up. Soft, green, older than her newest grief. They too curl around her fingers while she rummages through drawers filled with things too kind to throw away.

  “Today is Twoseday,” Eileen murmurs, standing in front of the window, its panes fogged with the breath of early spring. Outside, the trees yawn in mossy silence. The sky wears that particular shade of grey that can turn sunshine or stubborn drizzle depending on who asks it politely enough.

  It twas a day for a meandering hike, perhaps.

  Unless the quilt proves persuasive.

  Or the yarn decides to tangle itself in protest.

  But the kettle has already begun its low whisper, and the wind has not yet made any threats. That settles it.

  The window sighs as she steps away. Its breath still fogged where her hand rests on the sill. Behind her, the cottage shifts gently. Floorboards creak like old knees stretching into the morning. The hallway smells faintly of cedar and wool. An old house scent, softened by time and steeped in comfort.

  The sandwich comes last.

  Simple, fresh bread, lavender cheese. With a single slice of apple, tart and brave. She wraps it in wax paper, the old kind, creased from being reused too many times to count. She folds the edges with the sort of care most folks reserve for love letters. Then, as always, she ties it with a green ribbon and places it into her basket by the front door.

  Not for herself. But for the ones on the road who need a little something to get them going again.

  “Always keep one for the unknown,” she says softly. Not like a spell, but like a rule passed down in kitchens. Stitched into cupboards. Folded into aprons.

  It is a habit, yes.

  But also a promise.

  A kind of remembering.

  She reaches for the lower drawer to place the extra sandwich wrap... and winces as her side catches. “Still sore from the last nonsense…” she mutters, rubbing at the spot like it might apologize back.

  Oh my. The tea. The thought bubbles up like when pasta is left to simmer just a second too long. She glances at her mug waiting patiently on the counter, steam curling in gentle ribbons above the rim.

  She leans down and breathes it in. Wild mint and elderflower. Now it just needs a little something for her. Using a honey dipper, she adds one heavy plop of the stuff. Comfort, made liquid. Combining into a recipe older than apology.

  And then she hears it.

  An out of place sound. Somewhere beyond the trees.

  Thin. Wavering. A whimper… not quite, animal, not quite silence. The sort of sound that doesn’t cry to be found but still hopes someone will come. The way winds sometimes whisper secrets into the present.

  The cup does not reach her lips. She sets it down softly instead. As if the tea might still be waiting when she returns.

  Her hand finds the shawl next. Her other, the trusty basket. Then she is out the door.

  Because grandmothers do not always need to know all the answers.

  But they always must come when a child calls.

  The cry comes again. Thin. Wet. Wavering. Caught somewhere between animal and accident.

  Eileen’s boots find the trail before her thoughts do. Her shawl is already drawn across her shoulders, the basket swinging lightly at her side. She isn’t running, grandmothers rarely do but her pace is steady, deliberate, just simmering below a mad rush. The kind of stride that remembers every root on the path, and which ones like to trip people.

  The forest gives way to her like it recognizes an old friend. Past the moss slicked logs. Past the crooked ferns that always brush her knees.

  And then, she stops.

  There, half curled in the brush, is a fox. No... not quite. Or perhaps quite nearly.

  Fur like smoke caught in amber, threaded with gold and shadow. Its flanks shimmer faintly in places, as if not all of it is fully here. Ethereal. Delicate. Beautiful in the way broken stained glass sometimes is, if you catch it in the right light.

  A creature out of storybooks. The kind people whisper about. Blame things on. The kind no one helps because it looks different.

  Eileen doesn’t pause. She kneels like one who has done this before.

  “Oh, love,” she says softly, setting the basket aside. “What have we gotten into?”

  The trap around its leg is rusted. Old. Ugly. Iron. Cruel in design. Not just meant to hold, but to punish. It bites into the fox’s leg, already blue with bruising and slicked with slow, dark blood. Blood that beads against the moss, clinging to its fur like ink spilled into tea. The creature’s breathing is fast and shallow. Each rise of its chest a question it doesn’t have the strength to finish.

  Eileen kneels without ceremony. No alarm. No panic. Just steady, calming breath. Just intention.

  She inches closer. The fox doesn’t flinch but its body tenses faintly, like it remembers pain that didn’t leave a scar while its eyes track her with worry and ache, slit-pupiled, too bright for the shade. “I see it,” she murmurs. “I know what it feels like. We’re going to fix it.”

  She speaks as she works, hands careful, voice low. Words for both of them. The mechanism resists her at first. She braces one knee into the moss, fingers curling under the trap like she’s dismantling an old riddle. With a grunt and a twist, the teeth finally yield. The trap clicks open.

  But the fox doesn’t run for it can’t. Its body instead folds into the moss like the air has let go of it. Still breathing, but wrong, its breath too light, too far away.

  Eileen doesn’t hesitate though. She lifts it gently, folding it into her shawl with the same instinct that has cradled children, kittens, and heartbreaks alike. The shawl accepts the fox easily, its worn blue knit, now dotted with faint glimmers where the creature’s blood seeps quietly through. But the fox doesn't resist or vanish in a puff of illusion. It just breathes instead, barely alive. Holding on like a memory that hasn’t quite faded.

  “There we are,” she whispers.

  The fox noses weakly into the crook of her neck. Its eyes slip close, it isn’t healed, not yet. There is more to this wound than meets the eye, Eileen knows it needs advanced tending.

  She could go back to the cottage. But she knew there was a glade nearby. One with the right herbs, if she left for it now, the sun would still be overhead.

  So she moves. Not fast, but with a steadiness that asks more of her than usual. Each step, a quiet bargain with her body. One foot, then the other. She turns east, toward the wild growth and soft green cures. While Behind her, the trap lies open in the moss. Still rusted and soon forgotten.

  The walk to the herb glade should take twelve minutes. But it takes fifteen. Not because Eileen slows, but because the forest wills her to.

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  The brook that once laughed beside the path now murmurs low, stretched thin like a lullaby forgetting its tune. The light shifts, not dimming exactly but leaning, like a house built at the wrong angle or on poor foundations.

  She notices it after the third twist in the trail, a scent. Not one of herbs or soil, but something older. Clean, metallic, and strange. The moss is thicker here, the roots denser too. The air colder, not with frost, but with attention.

  Still, she carries onward. Grandmothers do not spook easily and the fox’s breathing has turned to a tremble. She can feel it through the shawl so she pushes forward until the trail opens but not into the glade she remembers. It opens into a hollow that wasn’t here before. The terrain feels older, wider. Like the gaze of a distant uncle who always looks a little too far past the horizon.

  Sunlight filters down from above, but it does not warm. In the center of the clearing, nestled between two trees that lean too closely together, stands a well.

  A dark stone thing, softened with deep moss and crowned in herb growth too perfect to be wild. Yarrow, plantain, goldenseal and feverfew, a quiet bounty, arranged like intention. Along with a full ledger of nearly every forest plant she could name. It is, impossibly, everything, she needs at the moment and so much more.

  Eileen doesn’t speak at first. She steps forward slowly, steady as church bells. The fox shifts faintly in her arms, as if comforted and wary at once. “Well,” she says, eyeing the stonework, “Aren’t you the quiet type.”

  There is no bucket, no pulley, no rope for the well does not appear to exist to draw water. Instead, it feels like it’s waiting for something. Not a hostile waiting but not inviting either, just listening instead. But she doesn't have time today to meet with it, not personally not in the same way that she prefers to do.

  So she kneels near its base instead, careful not to get too close. One hand begins gathering herbs with practiced care while the other swaddles the fox. Her touch, the only tool she needs, as it always has been.

  The yarrow is warm beneath her fingers. The feverfew, damp with dew that shouldn’t be here. The plants yield easily, like they’ve been waiting for her hands to tend to them and so she thanks them with a whisper. “Thank you,” almost to the moss itself. “I’ll put them to good use. That’s a promise.”

  She doesn’t pluck more than needed or take any of the others for spare, just enough to make a poultice for the injured fox. Maybe a little extra for some tea, to soothe a cough in the morning should it arise.

  But before she turns away, her hand brushes the wax paper sandwich still tucked into her basket, the ribboned one, the one prepared for the unknown.

  She removes it, not as an offering or a bribe. Just a gentle gesture. “For the unseen,” she says gently to the well, placing it on the mossy rim. “For the ones on the road who need a little something to get them going again.”

  The ribbon flutters faintly in a breeze that isn’t there and the well does not speak. But the stones warm, just barely. She has already turned away and does not see the shimmer that dances like dew catching sunlight. Nor the glyph that flickers across the granite, too fast to read, too soft to fear.

  Above the sandwich, a single mote lifts. White and slow, soft as dandelion fluff. It drifts behind her, unnoticed, following.

  Eileen having turned away, tucks the herbs into her basket and adjusts the fox in her arms. “Come now,” she murmurs, “we have pain that needs soothing.”

  The well stays behind.

  The walk back is quieter than it should be.

  The forest doesn’t resist her, but it doesn’t welcome her either. The brook murmurs thinly, stretched taut under something unseen. The birds stay silent. For only the rustle of Eileen’s shawl and the creak of her boots mark the path.

  The fox sleeps in her arms... if sleep is what this shallow, drifting breath can be called. Its head rests against her collarbone, tucked into the wool of her clothes in the same spot the little one had once stared up from, beneath the trap, its bindings. Instead she focuses on the rhythm of her steps, part concern, part certainty, in the quiet march towards her cottage.

  The cottage greets her the way familiar places do, without ceremony.

  She nudges the door open with her hip and steps inside. The air is warmer than it ought to be for a house left unattended. The kettle, which should have gone cold, still radiates a faint heat, as if trying to let her know that she has been missed. One of the teacups then turns slightly on its hook, as if it had been looking out the window and didn’t want to be caught doing so.

  Eileen sets the basket down and crosses to the hearth. A wool lined bread basket waits in the corner, cushioned with a cloth more patch than original fabric. She’d meant to mend it this morning. Now it will serve another purpose.

  She settles the fox into it gently, tucking the cloth around its sides. It doesn’t stir, but it's breathing slows, deepens. “There we are,” she murmurs. “No sense in waking the pain before we’ve asked it what it needs for absolution.”

  The herbs go onto a clean towel first. She starts with a jar full of waters distilled and boiled pure, she adds goldenseal to it, to let it soak creating a sun caught glow held deep within its liquid heart.

  The mortar and pestle are fetched from the bottom shelf next, where they sit beside the box of lost tea strainers and the too many brands of cinnamon sticks gifted by her family over the years.

  Quietly now, she grinds, a soft hush in the air… plantain leaf first, bruised gentle, then yarrow's whisper, and feverfew's sleepy sigh. A slow drizzle of honey, amber light caught in its thread, to twine the herbs together. Then with steady breaths she sends, warm with a grandmother's own love, to nudge the little poultice towards mending.

  Her mother taught her this way. Not through incantations, but through ratios and patience. A knowledge shared freely with any soul willing to learn. The cottage watches. The mixer gives a sleepy churn. The oven hums once before going quiet again.

  Once the poultice is ready, she returns to the fox and kneels beside the hearth. She lowers herself to the floor with a quiet grunt, not age, not clumsiness, just the echo of too many bruises gathered in places polite company doesn’t ask about.

  She then returns to the fox whose wound no longer bleeds for she cleaned it earlier with the soaked goldenseal washing while letting the poultice ruminate. Now she applies it gently, working around the raw edges of the jagged wounds with practiced hands.

  The fox doesn’t wake, but its whole body exhales, its paws unclenching. Its ears twitch too... not in pain, but in response to comfort it hadn’t expected. Eileen smooths the cloth around it again, rinses her hands and dries them on the towel with the faded embroidery. The kitchen is quiet again, the hearth murmuring with contentment, the rafters still holding the warmth of unseen company. She moves without hurry to the drawer beneath the cupboard, the one that sticks if opened too quickly, and eases it open with the patience only old houses and older habits can grant.

  Within she lifts a small red cloth from its resting place, fingers pausing where the edge have begun to fray. The fabric is worn thin in places, softened by years of careful handling, but it still holds its shape with the quiet resolve of something made for use rather than beauty. A stone is nestled at its center, resting there with the casual dignity of objects that know they matter. Smooth and round in the palm, the stone holds no shimmer or glow, no charm or flourish. As if its weight is the only magic it needs to function.

  Eileen turns it once in her hand, brushing her thumb across the groove that runs along the base, a mark left by time or intention. The stone remains still, but the room leans toward it slightly, as if the walls remember what it is for. She places it gently on the table and sits beside it. Her voice does not rise in its presence and she speaks to it in the way she might speak to a friend walking beside her.

  “Ethel,” she says, and the name itself seems to settle the room. “It happened again, fourth time this decade. Same spiral altar, copper veins, a false sacrament, all of it, repeated. The knife too was picking targets, but I think it was already confused before I arrived.”

  The stone does not answer, but the air does. A ripple of stillness spreads across the surface of the table, not seen so much as felt. Her shawl brushes the side of her arm, moving not with wind but with a soft awareness, as if something in the room has begun to listen more closely. Across the stone, thin threads of light begin to appear. They stretch outward like hair caught in static, slow and deliberate, curling and folding into the grain of the table. The lines shimmer briefly, then shift into patterns that resembles handwriting, though no hand could make lines so clean.

  One word takes shape, it curves inward, finishing itself with a softness that suggests sorrow before language, Unraveling. The second word arrives with slower motion, its ends tapering into silence, Holdfast. The lines linger for a breath longer, then fade back into the surface of the wood as though they had never been there. Eileen watches without blinking and she waits until the stone goes completely still again before speaking.

  Her voice steady, low. “It’s happening to you too?” she asks. “I had hoped it was only me. Foolish, I know.”

  The stone is quiet for a moment but then the cloth twitches slightly. One small twist twirling at the edge, then another. Not words this time, but shapes, soft as fingerprints. They spiral inward before resolving into a single phrase on the wood grain of the table. Threads snapping at the border.

  Eileen frowns gently, concern tucked behind her eyes. “Which one Ethel? Which border are we referring too?”

  No answer comes at first but then a tiny flicker at he edge of the wood darkens, not with scorch, but with the slow saturation of ink or grief. Another word takes shape, Darkness.

  Eileen's breath stills and she closes her eyes for a moment, long enough to feel it. “Its bleeding into her dreams?” she asks, her voice careful and hopeful. Hopeful that the answer, is something other then the one she expects.

  Her hope dashed by a sense of acknowledgement presses gently against her awareness, like someone holding their breath just to listen better. The cloth trembles again, then flattens. Lines shimmering again into existence, a longer phrase beginning, one stroke at a time. Gertrude feels it in her bones, a nameless name repeating.

  This info makes her lean forward slightly, hands braced against the floor. “That can't be Ethel.” Her voice is small and certain. “She remembers better than any of us. She’s the one who held the list and she fixed the loop before it broke.”

  The wood stirs under her fingertips, Not anymore it seems. It was clear then that Gertrude's disease was reaching its final stages. She knew then that neither of them would ever meet with Gertrude again, for the distance between them each of them was far too vast for anyone of their age to cross.

  So she sits back for a moment, hands folded in her lap, the cloth curling and uncurling twice. Until a new line emerges, one that makes her smile, the kind that bites at the lingering thoughts of memory, a reminder of how valuable all those moments now are. “Then it’s growing worse than any of use fear.”

  Another pause, then, quietly, the cloth moves once more. Not a word this time, a question. Are you well?

  Eileen’s eyes soften. She touches the edge of the cloth as if it were a friend’s hand. “No Ethel, but I am able to make more time to be kind. That’s close enough for me.”

  The final word appears slowly, deliberately, as if carved by breath alone. Soon.

  Eileen nods, knowing full well, that her words may not be true. “Soon then, Ethel.”

  She smooths the cloth one last time before folding it, careful with the corners. Not reverent, but respectful. The way one handles old blueprints for a dream house that never came to fruition, but are still so dearly remembered.

  Only after Eileen has settled down for the night, do the mote arrive. They slips in behind her, not through the door or the window, but through the thin seam where the wood meets the world. A shimmering mote, small and white, soft as breath on glass.

  It drifts quietly past the spice shelf. Pauses near the kettle. Lingers above the pantry with something like... consideration.

  Then it turns.

  Near the edge of the doorway, where an old nail juts from the frame. The one she’s means to hammer back in for weeks but always forgets until her shawl catches it. The mote halts, lowers and brushes the wood.

  And the nail sinks in.

  Not loudly, not magically, just naturally. As though the nail was always meant to return its journey home, back to the spot in the wood where it first began to root.

  The mote rises again from the beam, floating upward before nestling into the corner where the rafters meet, where the shadows always hold a little longer than they should. It watches Eileen closely as she leans over the fox again, one hand gently adjusting the cloth. Her breath is steady, her presence, quiet as a promise.

  The windchime stirs once on the porch. Then it does so again, but no breeze follows.

  Where the nail once threatened to catch her sleeve, only a smooth patch of wood remains.

  Outside, the forest breathes.

  Not heavily, not hungrily.

  Just enough for the moss to stir around the edges of the forgotten well.

  The sandwich is gone now.

  And beneath the roots of the well, somewhere deep in stone and system, something ancient begins to wonder. Not what kindness is… But why does it even work?