May's Cottage: May L / Gwen R
Long ago, shortly after May arrived in the woods around Repose, she cast two spells (the same sort that her mother had cast years before for her own home back across the ocean).
The first was one to keep her hidden. It muddled people's thoughts about her, allowed to move through town practically unseen, or at least unremembered. It was a simple thing to start, a spell of diversion, something small that would shift a person's mind away. It was a tiny spell to start, barely a wisp of energy in the greater scheme of things. But as seedlings will grow into oak trees with enough time and feeding, so too has the spell grown into something solid and unshakeable, letting her move about practically unseen unless she wanted to be seen. It was a very handy thing.
The other spell, perhaps paradoxically, was a spell of summoning. There were those people that came to a point in their lives when they needed something. An answer, a direction... When that happened, without knowing why, their feet would lead them into the woods, down roads that were seldom traveled by anything other than feet, and to a cottage. For them, the cottage was inviting, flowers and plants having their run of the place, a path to the front door but a sign (somehow more noticeable to those visitors who were seeking) with a single arrow that pointed to a path leading through a safe section of garden to a side door.
But on a particularly nice fall day (even if it was cool), the owner of the house was in that side garden, tending things and getting them ready for the colder months of the year. She was bent over, looking just a little weary still with wrinkles cutting their way into her skin, grey in her hair thick enough to be qualified as streaks but hidden by being gathered back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. When the girl's footsteps rounded that last corner, the owner of the house was watching the road with a hand tucked at the small of her back, arching back enough to stretch the muscles there.
And after a moment of observation, she nodded. "Well. Better come inside then." And turned toward that garden path to head (barefoot) toward the side door.