Chapter 1: The Storm and the Stitch

It began with a storm.

Not the ordinary kind that drummed politely against the eaves and passed on after an hour’s sulk. No, this one carried voices. Whispers stitched themselves into the wind, thread-thin and restless, curling between the thunderclaps as if the clouds were trying to confide a secret no one else could quite hear.

Lina had grown up with storms. In the English countryside, rain was as constant as breath, seeping into every season, woven into puddles, fog, and the damp cling of woolen scarves. But this storm… this storm was different.

It found her in the attic.

The attic was her refuge, the one place where the world downstairs could not reach her—where voices, demands, and the weight of other people’s expectations thinned into silence. Dust softened every corner, the air always carrying the faint perfume of cedar, forgotten books, and mothballs. She sat cross-legged by a battered trunk, its cracked leather corners and brass latches stubborn with age, like an old man who refused to let go of his secrets.

But inside lay only one thing.

A cloak.

Not just any cloak, but a patchwork of fabrics that should not have belonged together. Velvet squares stitched beside raincoat canvas. Corduroy pressed against paisley silk. Some seams were so clumsy they looked child-made, while others gleamed with such delicate embroidery that moonlight itself seemed to cling to the threads.

It smelled faintly of lavender, though beneath that lingered something older, indefinable—like the air inside ancient churches, or books written in a language she couldn’t read.

Pinned to the collar was a note. The paper was brittle at the edges, the ink curling into flourishes no modern hand would bother with.

For the one who still believes in mending what others discard.

The signature was nothing more than a single looping initial: H.

Lina frowned. She knew this trunk. She had searched it before—more than once. It had always been half-empty, filled with nothing more remarkable than a few moth-eaten scarves and a cracked umbrella. Never this. She would have remembered.

The storm rattled the attic window, louder now, as though it too demanded her attention.

She should have been afraid. Cloaks that appeared overnight, cloaks that hummed faintly when touched, cloaks that felt as though they had been waiting for her—such things belonged in stories, not in her attic.

And yet she wasn’t afraid.

She felt… seen.

The tiles outside clattered under the rising gale. Lightning flared across the horizon, so bright it painted the rafters white. With a violent crack, the attic window burst open, the storm shoving its way inside. Cold rain sprayed across the floorboards. The candle stub by her side guttered, then died.

And the cloak moved.

It stirred on its own, a restless shiver through its many fabrics, as though waking from a long sleep. One trailing thread lifted from the hem and curled through the air toward her hand, inquisitive, like the flick of a cat’s tail.

Her heart thudded.

Before Lina could think better of it, before she could summon the common sense that told her to run, she reached out and pulled the cloak around her shoulders.

The attic dissolved.

The storm swallowed her whole. Lightning cracked again, but this time it wasn’t only light—it was a seam tearing through reality. For a single flicker of an instant, Lina saw the world split apart, and she was no longer certain which side of it she belonged to.


✂️


The smell reached her before her eyes adjusted.

Damp earth, wild dandelions, and something warmer—like spring itself rising from the soil after a long, sleepy winter.

Lina blinked, disoriented.

The attic was gone.

She stood in a clearing bathed in dappled sunlight, the air honeyed and green. Around her rose trees unlike any she had ever seen, their bark plaited like braided rope, their leaves rustling with a susurrus that was not quite wind. It sounded… conspiratorial, as though the trees were gossiping with one another.

Moss spread thick and soft beneath her shoes, freckled with mushrooms that glowed faintly at the edges, as though someone had painted them with moonlight. A narrow ribbon of smoke coiled upward from a crooked chimney in the distance, marking the presence of a cottage tucked between the trees.

“…What,” she breathed.

The cloak was still wrapped around her shoulders, warm and solid, its weight strangely comforting. It did not rest on her so much as hold her, snug as an embrace from someone who knew exactly how tightly to squeeze. The hem stirred against her calves, tugging her gently toward the path that led to the chimney’s smoke.

She hesitated. Then—because standing still seemed even more impossible—she took a step. Then another.

The path curved toward the clearing’s edge, where something shifted in the underbrush. Lina froze.

A fox padded out from the ferns, russet fur bright against the moss.

But it was not only a fox.

Spectacles perched precariously on the tip of his narrow nose. A waistcoat of plum-colored felt, worn shiny at the seams, clung to his body. And at his belt, as absurd as it was certain, hung a thimble strapped like a knight’s sword.

The fox adjusted his glasses and spoke.

“Well then,” he said, his voice dry and curling, like parchment crinkling beside a peppermint flame. “Took you long enough.”

Lina’s mouth opened. No sound followed.

The fox peered at her, eyes sharp and bright. Then he tapped his chin with a claw, as though considering a puzzle.

“You must be Lina,” he said at last. “You’re wearing her cloak. Curious.”

Her tongue untangled just enough to form words. “Her—who?”

“Eliwyn,” the fox replied, with the certainty of someone naming the obvious. “The last tailor.” His ears flicked toward the cloak. “But you—” he leaned forward, nose twitching—“you don’t seem magical. Hm. Unfortunate.”

“I’m not,” Lina admitted.

The fox blinked. Then, to her surprise, he brightened. “Even better, then.”

Before she could ask what he meant, he turned smartly on his paws and trotted down the path toward the smoke. His plum waistcoat bobbed with each step, thimble clinking faintly at his side.

“Wait!” Lina called, stumbling after him. “Where am I? What is this place?”

The fox glanced back over his shoulder, glasses flashing in the sunlight. “Why, Tetherwood, of course.” His eyes gleamed with mischief—or maybe kindness, it was hard to tell. “And you, my dear,” he added with a sly curl of a smile, “have arrived right on stitch.”


✨


The gate creaked as Lina pushed it open. Ivy curled thick along its iron bars, its leaves whispering against her sleeves as though they, too, wanted to know her name. Beyond lay a narrow path of uneven stones, leading to the cottage whose chimney still trailed its ribbon of smoke into the blue-green sky.

Thimblewick—so the fox introduced himself with a prim bow—trotted ahead, his plum-colored waistcoat flashing in and out of sunlight. The thimble at his side clicked faintly against the buckle of his belt, the sound strangely steadying, like a clock keeping time.

Lina followed. The cloak tugged gently at her shoulders, urging her onward as if it, too, knew the way.

The cottage looked abandoned, yet not unloved. Its roof sagged, but wildflowers had claimed the eaves in bright, defiant bursts of yellow and violet. Shutters leaned crookedly on their hinges, but lace curtains still clung to the inside windows. Even the door, though scarred with age, bore a handle polished smooth by countless hands.

Lina hesitated at the threshold.

She had no idea that this peculiar world would not only test her skills, but her heart. She did not yet know that threads could stitch memory into scarves, or that songs could be woven into slippers. That raindrops could be spun into cloth, or that lonely creatures sometimes needed only soft things—warm, mended things—to find their way home again.

All she knew in that moment was the warmth of the cloak.

Its hem brushed against her ankles like a living guide, always tugging forward, patient and insistent. And inside her—beneath all the quiet, tangled knots she had long tucked away—something fragile and forgotten began to stir.

It felt like the beginning of a story she had once stopped telling herself.

Like a thread, at last, finding its needle.


🧵End of Chapter 1