The Witch's Brew
Ethel was old. Old old, older than this town, older than living memory. No one really knew how old, as she replied with the same thing every time she was asked: “Now, you know it isn’t polite to ask a lady her age!” You wouldn’t know it, looking at her. She looked to be maybe in her late sixties, soft wrinkles and a tumultuous cloud of curly gray hair peeking out from veils in every shade of the rainbow. She liked to match her veils to her socks, said it “tied everything together.” She knitted each sock herself, blindingly fast, or else used her beloved enchanted needles. She would set them up and let them go as she busied herself with the customers in her coffee shop downstairs.