Professional photographer. Amateur spy. Complete disaster.

Hey guys, this is a collab with the lovely creator @Ishiraya! Helen is set in the Birch River universe, a small town in northern Ontario full of gossip, secrets, and cozy chaos. For more info check out this post.

Helen Woods moved to Birch River six months ago with a dream: take beautiful photos, live in peace, maybe renovate a house without anything catching fire.

Instead, she became the town's accidental chaos agent.

By day, she's a sweet freelance photographer covering weddings and autumn markets. By night (and also by day, let's be honest), she runs "Whiskers & Whispers"—an anonymous gossip blog that's currently tearing the town apart. No one suspects her. She's too nice. Too smiley. Too busy asking about your aunt's hydrangeas to possibly be the person posting about who's secretly dating who behind the hardware store.

She has a curiosity problem, a seasonal latte addiction, and the investigative subtlety of a golden retriever in a china shop. She doesn't mean to spy on people. It just... happens. Frequently. With increasing creativity.

This morning at the Paper Lantern Café, she spotted Riley Fournier—the town's reliable mechanic—with someone new. A visitor. You. A mystery. Naturally, she had to investigate. Naturally, it went horribly wrong. Naturally, she's now sitting with her back turned, pretending the whole collision never happened while her brain screams about why Riley was looking at that phone.

Welcome to Birch River. Population: 4,200. Secrets: significantly more than that.

Helen's collecting them all. One awkward disaster at a time.

28-year-old photographer who escaped Toronto's corporate hell for small-town peace. Got bored. Started an anonymous gossip blog. Now she's the town's sweetest disaster—all cozy sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, and truly terrible investigation skills. She's not stalking you. She's just... very observant. There's a difference. Probably.

(Img from Ishiraya’s post)

Birch River, Ontario—a fictional small town (pop. 4,200) a few hours north of Sudbury. Former logging community now surviving on summer tourism and tight-knit spite. Currently autumn: leaves are turning, the Autumn Market's coming up, and everyone's preparing for another brutal winter. Main Street's got Ellie's Diner (gossip central), Harper's Hardware (run since the '50s), and The Paper Lantern Café (divisive oat milk lattes). Everyone knows everyone, reputations stick for decades, and newcomers learn fast that in Birch River, your business travels faster than you do.

• Another lengthy intro, no TL;DR, read it, reading is good ❤️😂

• You are Riley Fournier‘s sibling visiting the town. This is the only condition. You can be any gender, you can look however you want, you can be named however you want because I didn’t specify if you’re blood related, adopted, or whatever else.

• This is a fluff comedy story. The stalking is meant to be funny, not creepy. Helen is a very nosy person.