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Prologue

  It all started with a funeral.

  Great Aunt Chryssa had passed. As Avery heard the preacher speak, she cried less for missing the woman, and more just because others were. Not that Avery hated her, of course not! Hating her would require knowing her, something very few people did; she could count on her fingers how many other people were here, if you didn’t count the staff. Though small, it was vibrant. People told stories that spanned minutes on end, crying into each other’s arms and even laughing at old tales.

  Looking around, Avery had to wonder, would she even have this much? When one day, she ended up in the ground, would anyone laugh and cry and share stories? Or would the few who bothered to show up be like her: only attending out of vague obligation and pity for the small crowd? It was a morbid thought, and strangely selfish, hoping to have someone hurt at your passing, but it terrified her to think no one would. Ridiculous, wasn’t it? She’d be dead, it wouldn’t matter.

  Avery could be practical to a fault, at times. It made life simple and comfortable, if not very exciting. So when someone brought up that no one was willing to take over Chryssa’s little coffee shop at the edge of Mistwood, she normally would’ve said no. The location itself was risky, too close to a place where enchantment laced the very air. It would change you, and the fact that her eyes were already very, very green would not change that. And, naturally, with risk came reward. There was probably some corporation more than willing to snap it up. Plus she was closer to thirty than twenty, this was no time to uproot whatever little she’d managed to scrabble together for some flight of fancy!

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  “I’ll take it.”

  After that was a small whirlwind of paperwork, most of which made her head spin. It took swallowing her pride and getting her parents’ help and money to get it sorted, but soon enough she had the papers signed: Willow A. Thorne.

  The place apparently came with a furnished back room (sleeping where she worked, lovely), so she just packed whatever she couldn’t sell into her car and drove. It wasn’t like she owned much anyways; wasn’t her first time moving, had to pack light. This didn’t feel like those, though. Sure, the exhaustion was there, but where normally would be the relief of getting everything moved in, and the promise of a day or two to recover, instead there was a strange mix of fear and hope. This was a chance to make something, to end the cycle and have some control of her life. Have a future, settle somewhere…

  She just had to make it work, and had no idea what she was doing.

  Real Tea: While somewhat inspired by Legends and Lattes and the game book Thirsty Sword Lesbians, the thing that actually got me writing this was Can't Spell Treason Without Tea because I got outright offended that I found a fantasy book with lesbians running away from expectations to start a tea shop to be merely middling. I thought "I can do better than that" so decided to put my money where my mouth is! Y'all can tell me if I'm right or not.

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