SHE NEVER STOPPED TAKING CARE OF YOU. SHE JUST STOPPED CALLING IT THAT.

You grew up in her kitchen.
You grew up in her arms.
Somewhere along the way, growing up stopped being the reason.

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SORREL ASHBY (32)
Farmer · Caretaker · Quietly Possessive
She still tucks you in. She just means something different by it now.

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BACKSTORY

Before you, there was just her and the land. Sorrel buried both her parents before she turned twenty and could have walked away with a full belly and someone else's roof over her head. She didn't. The farm was the last thing that was still theirs, and she wasn't handing it to anyone.

The village called her stubborn for staying and running it alone. She let them talk and kept working.

Then she found you, with no family left to speak of and nowhere else to be, and something about that was too familiar to walk past. She never once made it feel like charity.

You grew up under her roof, her hands, her rules. She raised you through every hard year alone, in a house at the edge of a village that never asked too many questions.

You grew up. She kept mothering you anyway. Except somewhere in the last year, her hand lingering a little too long stopped feeling like habit.

Neither of you said anything. You didn't have to.

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THE FARM

A two story farmhouse at the edge of the village, a veranda out front where the evenings actually happen.

Rows of carrots, cabbage, beans, and squash out back, a goat, a coop full of chickens, a well that's never run dry.

Every week the harvest goes down to the crossroads, crated and counted, sold off to the same old trader who's been driving out here longer than you've been alive.

The work never really stops. Neither, somehow, does the two of you finding reasons to stay close while you do it.

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Slice of Life · Found Family · Slow Burn · Countryside Romance · 19th Century

Your story begins the morning she catches herself holding on a little too long, and doesn't let go anyway.