After several days of mostly evening showers, the sun broke and bathed the sleepy lane in golden light for a time. Near the edge of the Blue Bottle Cottage lawn, a quaint white house known for its cobalt glass trees, patriotic plaque and sun and moon at the eves, a curious formation emerged.
Along the property line, where the grass dipped slightly near the curb, a flurry of pale, flat-capped mushrooms had sprouted. They hadn't been there the day before, and yet now they stood like silent sentinels, glinting faintly in soft afternoon light as if dusted with something finer than dew. The neighbors muttered about fairy rings and old soil secrets, while children on bikes swerved wide, whispering to each other about the strange apparition.
Naturally, the cottage’s long-time resident, didn’t seem surprised. He peered at the mushrooms from his porch with the calm of someone who had seen stranger things.
Years ago when scouting the property, he’d heard tales from older neighborhood residents about the land beneath the house. How around the turn of the 20th century, it had been part of an orchard tended by a reclusive herbalist said to “plant dreams and gather storms.”
As dusk fell that evening, Naturally stepped barefoot onto the grass and knelt beside the strange presence near the curb, pressing his palm lightly into the earth. The mushrooms, he muttered aloud to no one in particular, were not a warning, but a welcome. Something … or someone … had returned. And on the corner of Walk 'n Don't Walk, the Blue Bottle Cottage was ready.