Applegarth

Although in her youth completely happy to reside simply in the cave beside the spring in Sastrines’ Grove, in her Autumn years Kaelin has been persuaded to build for herself a more comfortable dwelling, at least for the months of harshest weather.
 
 
The result is Applegarth, a low one-storey cottage of the local grey stone sitting beside a small winding lake, with forested mountains rising at its back. Its design is simple - an originally neat building with a long porch running across the front, to which extra rooms have been added as need arose so that it now sprawls comfortably and lopsidedly in the mountain’s shadow. A small extension of three rooms looking out over the lake waits unused, in the hope that Juliana and her family might one day return.
 
 
Behind the cottage and vegetable garden, an orchard climbs the beginning of a rise until it melts seamlessly into the forest. Here begins a mossy path of perhaps a mile leading to the Grove of Sastrines.
 
 
A small ‘bunk house’ takes up one corner of the orchard, used mostly to house the groups of children who come to learn from Kae or to help take in the apple harvest. The cottage itself has room for only a few guests, so larger groups of travellers or visitors for the shrine will find themselves cosily lodged here, comforted with fires of scented applewood and soft old linen sheets breathing the quiet perfume of lavender and rose. At need, the guest house can and has been used as an emergency hospital.