Wisteria Falls @wisteria-falls - Tumblr Blog

Nearly thirty years ago, two love-struck witches returned to their Northern California hometown and opened a bar with the change they’d saved up from a half-decade of working dead-end restaurant jobs. The bar didn’t last, but their romance did: three businesses and three kids later, Courtney and Phoebe Brannon have built a life that unites the pride they hold for their magical ancestry with the affection they feel for the town that’s supported them through it all.

Hidden along the coast of the Pacific-Northwest, Wisteria Falls is an amalgam of artisanal leanings, sequoia tree weather, magical secrets, and small town personality. Its storied past is rife with accounts of fairies, fey, witches, and werewolves, all of which are considered folk tales by the locals. Most of them, anyway.

There’s a story told by the residents of Wisteria about a raven-haired girl floating across the sky on a bicycle made from the bones of ravens and frogs. The bike wasn’t made from ravens and frogs, of course; just a broom spell gone wrong, conjured by a pair of first-time parents, that lead to a shrieking girl learning to fly over the Wisteria coast. Oona is introverted, sardonic, and a bit overly reserved, with a penchant for books rivaled only by her middle-sister.

Stories of the supernatural often center around sites of extreme density: ghosts in crowded cities, fairies in overgrown forests. Often, though, the most chilling tales stem from the most open oceans in the world. Sirens who haunt the sea, kraken making widows of a ship’s worth of spouses. People have generally decided that these rumors are little more than myth, but that doesn’t stop the coastal towns from which those ‘myths’ originated from celebrating those stories and becoming popular tourist destinations as a result.

Years ago, a coalition of town government officials and local entrepreneurial-types bought up a string of businesses and buildings near Wisteria’s town center with the hopes that the location, aided by Wisteria’s breathtaking forest and coastal views, might become a popular tourist destination, should the right shops and restaurants be installed there. Their efforts proved fruitful, and said part of the town is indeed popular with tourists. There was, however, one holdout amongst those businesses that received a buyout offer, which is why a small, multi-generational electrician company is still residing on that block.

Wisteria is famous for the miles of dense forest that surround it. Though a few trees are cut down every year to make room for new residents, roads, and radio towers, the forest nonetheless maintains its air of whimsical, fog-filled enigma. One building, however, pierces the veil of leaves that lines the forest: the home of Courtney, Phoebe, Oona, Sorcha, and Aoife Brannon.

Close to the center of town is a cafe owned by a wife-and-wife duo who, along with the three daughters who help them run the place, seem to know the name of every first-time customer who walks in. It’s little more than an urban legend, of course, but the Bel, Book & Bistro has long thrived on much more than rumor alone: specifically by offering a good cup of coffee, nice food, and a relaxing place to read in.

A few months ago, two students at Wisteria University encountered each other in the halls of W.U.'s English building and struck up conversation. A dozen dates and many kisses later, Connall and Sorcha are known around town as the golden couple of Wisteria Falls. Though their families have resided in Wisteria for generations, they’ve adeptly avoided meddling in each other’s business (both literally and figuratively) by occupying opposite sides of the town’s cultural and geographic spectrums, meaning that when our story starts, neither Connall nor Sorcha is aware of the other’s magical origins.

Alexander ‘Art’ Kunst was meant to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a well-respected, highly-paid doctor of medicine. Instead, Art dropped out of Wisteria University and made a bet with his parents: he’d open a small book shop and cafe in Wisteria using part of his trust. If it failed, he’d go back to school and become a doctor. If it succeeded, he wouldn’t. It’s been a little over a year now and in spite of some hefty competition, Art has yet to step foot on W.U.’s campus. The fact that his bookstore, Chaucer’s, is on a block of Wisteria famous for its artisans is purely coincidental.

With the eyes of the town focused on their elder siblings, Ellie and Aoife have managed to keep their troublesome misadventures under everyone’s radar, which frequently proves to be a problem when their activities become magical, overwhelming, and dangerous. Luckily, a certain cat-and-dog duo seem to have a supernatural sense for when the girls are getting into trouble, and frequently end up saving them from their self-inflicted peril.

Few things in life are as comforting as watching a coastal sunset from the tranquility of your bedroom, with a nice warm drink in hand, and a furry pup or cat resting alongside you. Sometimes Sorcha will convince Connall to fill in for a furry friend, but most of the time, it’ll be Lysander and Jinx helping them relax away the stress of their everyday. If they aren’t at their owners’ sides, then the pets are usually accompanying the youngest Dempsey and Brannon sisters while they explore the town or get into trouble in the surrounding forest.

For over one hundred and fifty years, the Wisteria Township Tribune has covered the politics, gossip, and supernatural folktales whispered around Wisteria Falls. Still in print today, tourists and residents alike can conveniently grab new issues from inside many local businesses, such as the Bell, Book, and Bistro, Chaucer’s Cafe and Books, and the newspaper’s neighbor across the street: The Albert Museum of Wisteria History. Staffed almost exclusively by Geoffrey Alexander Giles, a professor of history at W.U., the museum holds many artifacts important to the town’s history, as well as many aged articles written by the Tribune.

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