PlayerOliver

When you were a kid, you lived with your grandmother in the small town of Silvertree, on the edge of a magical forest. Grandma is a witch, and she taught you how to use your magic to affect the natural world, too. “Magic is a part of you,” she always told you. “Learning how to use it means figuring out who you are.”

Now you’re 19 and on your own. After years of living in the forest while you perfected your witchcraft, you’ve returned to take care of your grandmother’s house and crow-familiar while she’s gone. Figuring out who you are feels more important than ever - not to mention, figuring out what Silvertree is. A lot is just as you remembered: the friendly generous next-door neighbors with a kid just your age, the proud town council, the quaint little shops with quirky punny names, the gentle shadowy forest full of magic.

Stone in the shoe

You spend a while longer at the party, eating snacks and talking to a few people and occasionally petting a greyhound that trots past (which turns out to be a different dog than the one that was sitting with Eliot). You see Robin leave a little early, seeming slightly overwhelmed by the crowd, but most of the other guests seem happy to stay well into the afternoon. At one point, things quiet down so that Eliot can give a short speech, thanking everyone for helping him to celebrate his 80th birthday in style. Although he smiles and raises a glass, you can see that the day has already exhausted him. Shortly afterwards, he excuses himself to go and have a rest, and the party continues in his absence.


Eventually, once everything's been eaten and drunk and the greyhound has fallen asleep on the couch, people begin to drift out. At last, you leave the house and start walking back alone, taking a slightly different route just to see a little more of this side of town. After a couple of turns, you find yourself on a street where some kind of construction seems to be happening every few feet, with a few places that aren't under renovation simply sitting empty and boarded up. Still, it manages to be a pretty street in the late afternoon sun.


As you reach the end of the road, your eye is caught by the building right on the corner—what looks to be an old general store, although the old-fashioned sign above the door has flaked away enough that you can't read the letters. It would have been quite a nice-looking shop if not for the charred marks around the windows, all of which have been sealed up with wooden planks. A piece of paper has been stuck to the old door, and when you step a little closer, you discover that the building has been designated for demolition.


It's only as you step forwards that you spot something other than black soot coming through one of the windows. In a small gap between the wood and the frame, you see a hint of something green. It doesn't take you long to realize that it's a leaf, one corner just poking through.


You can't see much more through the window from this angle, and instead of trying to look more closely, you turn the corner to see the other side of the shop. As soon as you arrive on the new street, however, before you can take in anything else about the store, you see Marlowe standing just ahead of you, gazing through another large window where a bigger crack has formed in the wood. They don't notice you at first; they simply stand with their hands in their pockets and look into the store.


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