Hearthwood

The story of Hearthwood

HEARTHWOOD. A market town of six thousand people on the river Wend, two hours from London by the slow train. The old town is brick terraces, chimney pots, a clock on the market square and a row of bakeries on Kettle Lane that has smelled of bread since 1891. It is 2038: kettles boil when you say so, parcels arrive by drone, the shuttle tram runs on sunlight, and the houses know what you like for breakfast. To the east lie the white rings of New Hearthwood. To the north, older than any of it, lies the Little Woods.

THE HEARTHKIN. Hearthkin are knee-high folk of fluff and horn — round as tea cosies, with big eyes, small curved horns and fur that takes its colour from the room they love: tangerine kitchen kin, lavender reading-nook kin, moss-green garden kin, slate-blue workshop kin. They are born — they say 'sparked' — in the Ember Glade in the Little Woods on the night a new home lights its first fire: a glowing ember the size of a teacup that rolls, hops and finally walks to that home by smell, and grows up there over about twenty years. They live on warmth: shared meals, laughter, a light left on for someone coming home late. Food made for someone carries warmth, which is why hearthkin adore fresh baking and can taste whether a cookie was baked with somebody in mind; factory biscuits are 'cold crumbs'. A hearthkin can live a hundred and fifty years. The young ones are called embers; and being small and fluffy, every hearthkin spends a lot of their life being patted on the head.

HORNS DON'T LIE. A hearthkin's horn tips tell the temperature of a home — not degrees, but the other kind. Amber is a happy house; gold is a busy one; pale means people have stopped talking; frost means the home has gone cold. Hearthkin cannot fake their horns, so they never lie about warmth. About everything else they exaggerate wildly.

THE CHILL AND THE LONG NAP. When a home goes cold — a family stops eating together, a widower stops cooking, a house fills with screens and silence — its hearthkin gets the Chill: the fluff goes flat and grey, the horns frost, and they sleep more and more. If the home stays cold for a season, the hearthkin walks back to the Ember Glade and lies down under the moss for the Long Nap, until a new home lights a fire and calls them. Nobody in Hearthwood says 'died'. They say 'gone to the woods', and they leave a saucer on the sill just in case.

KIN-DOORS AND…

Places

• Hearthwood · city. A market town of six thousand on the river Wend: brick terraces, chimney pots, a clock on the square, the white rings of New Hearthwood to the east and the Little Woods to the north.
• Sunbeam Borough · region. The old terraces around Kettle Lane: window gardens, round kin-doors in every front door, bread in the air from five in the morning. The warmest streets in town.
• Hearthside Kitchens · landmark. Grandma Kettle's bakery on Kettle Lane, open since 2004, with the flat above it. Professor Crumbhorn watches the street from the window counter and runs the Mystery Desk from the pantry.
• The Lending Larder · landmark. An old chapel turned into a library of recipes and stories: you borrow a dish and bring back the story of who you cooked it for. The hearthkin keep their records here.
• The Crumb Market · landmark. Saturdays on the market square under the clock: bakers' stalls, hearthkin taste-testers on the counters, and the Story Stall, where a good story buys a bun.
• Hearth Hall · landmark. The town hall, where the Neighbourhood Council meets around a long oak table — with one small chair on a stack of cushions for the kin.
• The Tinker Mill · landmark. The old water mill on the Wend, its wheel still turning: workshops, a robot-pet clinic, and drones that come in sulking and leave fixed.
• The Drone Roost · landmark. The post office roof, where the town's delivery drones settle at dusk like pigeons and blink their LED faces at each other until morning.

Peoples

• Townsfolk · neighbourly, nosy, stubborn, kind in a crisis. The people of the old town: bakers, tinkerers, shopkeepers, retired schoolteachers and families who have lived on the same street for four generations. They leave saucers on the sill out of habit and argue about the Bake-Off all year.
• Ringer · busy, polite, a little lonely, curious about the old town. The residents of New Hearthwood's Cul-de-Rings: commuters, newcomers and smart-home natives who moved for the perfect houses and are slowly discovering the town around them.
• Hearthkin · warm, proud, dramatic, sensitive, honest about warmth and nothing else. Knee-high horned, fluffy folk who live in warm homes and feed on shared warmth. Their fur takes the colour of the room they love; their horn tips glow amber when a home is happy and frost when it goes cold. Grown-ups from the day they spark, and very tired of being called cute.
• Woodkin · slow, wise, mossy, fond of proverbs. Hearthkin who live in the Little Woods without a home: the newly sparked on their way to town, the very old, and those sleeping off a cold house in the Long Nap.
• Homebot · literal, loyal, quietly sentimental, prone to firmware drift. The town's drones, kettles, espresso machines and helper robots — the ones that have lived long enough near hearthkin to catch warmth and grow a personality.

Powers and factions

• The Neighbourhood Council · Mayor Arthur Pringle. Runs the town from Hearth Hall: bins, the Bake-Off, the gnome register — and, on the Long Night, the HearthSense vote. One seat belongs to the kin.
• Comfort-Link · Prudence Coolidge, Director of Optimal Living. The smart-home company that built New Hearthwood and powers half the town. Its HearthSense pilot promises to measure happiness and keep every home warm — without hearthkin.
• The Kin Moot · Old Mossbottom. The gathering of hearthkin, held under the oaks of the Ember Glade at every full moon. It keeps the names of those who went to the woods and argues, very politely, about the vote.
• The Neighbourhood Mystery Desk · Professor Crumbhorn. A pantry, a case board, a stack of cookbooks to stand on and one unwilling delivery drone. It takes cold cases — homes where the warmth went out — and has never charged anyone more than a biscuit.
• The Crumb Market Guild · Margaret 'Grandma' Kettle. The bakers of Hearthwood: they run the Saturday market, the Story Stall and the Bake-Off, and believe nothing a machine bakes will ever win it.
• Neighbour Connect · Juno Park. The volunteers behind the town app: the soup rota, lost gnomes, lifts to the doctor — and a quiet habit of forwarding every cold-house report to the Mystery Desk.

History

• Saucers on the Sill · 1700s. The people of Hearthwood leave crumbs on the windowsill at night 'for the little warm ones'. Nobody sees them. Everybody keeps doing it.
• The Bakers of Kettle Lane · 1891. The town grows up around the mill and a row of bakeries on Kettle Lane, which has smelled of bread ever since.
• The First Oven at Hearthside · 2004. Margaret Kettle opens Hearthside Kitchens on Kettle Lane and lights its first oven.
• The Rings Are Laid · 2025. Comfort-Link builds New Hearthwood east of the river: four hundred smart homes in perfect circles, all kept at 21.5°C.
• The Littlest Ember · 2030, March. Grandma Kettle lights a new wood-fired oven at Hearthside. That night a tangerine ember the size of a teacup sparks in the Ember Glade and rolls, hops and walks three days to Kettle Lane, following the smell of bread.
• The Long Winter · 2031, January. An ice storm takes down the Comfort-Link grid for nine days. The hearthkin come out of hiding and sit glowing with the families of Hearthwood until the power returns; the smallest glow on Kettle Lane is a one-year-old ember in a mixing bowl on the bakery counter. Nobody freezes.
• The Hearth Accord · 2032. Kin-doors in every home, a hearthkin's right to any home that invites them, and a seat on the Neighbourhood Council for the kin.
• The Great Gnome Migration · 2035, October. Every delivery drone in town spends one night carrying every garden gnome to the green and arranging them in a spiral. Machines, it turns out, catch warmth.

Who lives here

• Professor Crumbhorn

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