For the rest of his life, Braeden could not remember how he found the cottage. One moment he was sitting in his apartment debating the virtues of getting out of bed today, when he was overcome with a sudden desire to take a walk. Which, in retrospect, always seemed odd to him. He generally took the perspective that walks, like any other form of exercise, must be avoided at all cost. She was the only person who could piece through his resistance to exercise with the promise of good conversation, but she has been gone for months by then. But, despite his normal reluctance for exercise, his found himself walking out his front door and down the street. Although he told himself he had no real destination in mind, a part of him had a very clear sense of how to get there, wherever there was. Whenever he came to any intersection, his legs would take over as if he had walked this route every day of his life and take him confidently down one direction or another. He walked for what seemed like hours this way, his legs taking him down streets with names he had seen or heard of before.
Eventually, he came across a street that had no name at all. It was an unpaved stret that laid between two impressive looking Victorians. Had Braeden been an observant man, he would have noticed that this road seemed terribly out of place from the otherwise normal street it was connected to. The telephone poles, an ever-present part of life of any city, did not run down the road. Nor did the cars driving by, or the people walking by, seem to notice its existence. Indeed, if you tried to sit down and talk with any person who lived on that street about that street they would, at most, mildly acknowledged that it existed before getting uncomfortable and changing the subject. But Braeden had never been a very cautious man, certainly not as of late, and he did not notice any of these things. Instead, he ignored all of this and walked straight up that dirt street towards a cottage at the top of a hill.
The cottage looked like the type of cottage you would find in a fairy tale. Not the modern day fairy tales with gallant knights and beautiful princesses, but the fairy tales of old that were designed to teach children there were indeed things in this world worth being afraid of. It had one prominent stone fireplace that emitted an eerie amount of smoke. The rest of the cottage was made out of an old wood that he could not recognize. When he ran his hands across it, the wood felt smooth and newly cut, even though it clearly seemed like the cottage had been here for at least a century. But the oddest thing about the cottage is that it seemed totally apart from the city, the road was unpaved and seemingly unused, the telephone lines never came in, and it enjoyed a relatively large patch of nature around it that was relatively unmolested from the growth of the city. It was as if the rest of the world had tried very hard to forget all about the cottage and thought it best, for all concerned, to grow around the cottage rather than impact it in anyway.
But Braeden was not concerned, at the moment, with the quirks and history of this impossible cottage. All he knew was that he had to raise the elaborate bronze knocker, modeled after a goat head, and bring it down on the double wooden doors three times. It had to be three times, any more, or any less, would have been clearly inadequate. Then for several minutes after the sound fled and left him standing there alone nothing happened. In that time, he stood there and wondered if perhaps it was not the best idea to knock on the door of a complete stranger in a neighborhood he had never heard of. Relieved, he almost turned around then and walked, but just as he was about to do so the door swung open and a clearly flustered lady stuck her head out and pronounced, in a tone of a teacher speaking to a disobedient student, "You're late."
"Late? For what? I don't even know why I am here." If Braeden's brain was capable of rational thought at this moment, it would have wondered more about why, if he did not have an appointment, his legs were so very insistent that he get here quickly.
She signed, and looked down at him between a pair of black frame glasses "Not knowing where you are supposed to be is no reason not to be there on time."
It was logic that was so flawed, but said with such confidence, that it was impossible for him to refute or argue with. Instead, he said "Sorry?"
She looked him up in down for a moment, in the way a farmer may inspect a potential animal. Then, apparently reaching some sort of conclusion, she shrugged and gestured inside. "No matter, you are here now and it is time we begun. Lucky for you, I was making cookies." Once again, if he was thinking rationally, he would remember the many stories of why you should not enter strange people's houses and eat their food, especially when you do not even know where you are, or even what time of the day it is. Fortunately, for him, he wasn't. After all, if we always thought rationally, then there would be so much fun in our life we would miss, albeit probably less trips to the hospital as well. Besides, even if his brain were working, it would have not been able to resist the utterly intoxicating smell of cookies coming from inside the cottage.
Braeden was not sure exactly what he expected to find on the inside, but he was surprised to see that in comparison to the outside of the house, which looked about as far from friendly as possible, the inside felt warm and comfortable. There was a small fire going in the fireplace that managed to heat the house to an almost impossibly perfect temperature. The house was lit by a few modern looking light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Although the cottage held many wonders, what attracted his attention the most was a small plate of cookies sitting on top of an ancient oak table. Before he even had time to think about the potential dangers of taking chocolate from strangers, he was sitting at the table and taking a large bite out of the first cookie he could grab.
The only word that could possibly describe that cookie was divine. They tasted the way that all cookies he had before aspired to, but somehow fell short. The only way a cookie could reach this level of perfection is if every grandmother in the world got together and shared their most intimate baking secrets, which we all know is impossible because it is well known that if you bring multiple grandmothers together with baking involved it will quickly turn into a competition with a level of fierceness that would make a championship boxing match look tame in comparison. After only one bite of it, he felt his problems slip away and for the first time in months he felt a sliver of happiness slips into him, in the form of a moist and delicious cookie.
When he had finally finished, he laid back in the chair exhausted but content. "Those were the best cookies I have ever had."
