When the howling winds go silent…
Raven takes a deep breath and allows herself to relax in that rare peace and quiet. The café provides a welcoming reprieve. Full of interesting people, like the goddess and the ancient one. Raven understands why they like the café. Good coffee. Quiet music.
The momentary peace and quiet so often impossible to find.
When an old friend walks in and sits down across from her, Raven hears the howling again. Faintly, but there. Time proves funny, in the grand scheme of things. Coincidences happen. So does chaos.
But for a few moments before fate turns, the howling winds go quiet...
RAVEN AT THE CAFE is available to read for free until the 1st of May, when another story will be posted. For readers who would prefer to read on a device of preference, or who would like their own personal eBook of this story, you can find it here.
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Raven at the Café
A Café Story
The howling winds that whistled through her mind cut off the minute she walked through the door of the café. Scents of coffee and pastry swirled in the warm air. Comfortable and cozy warm, not hot and oppressive or humid and stuffy. The bookstore next door, seen through a large arch through the wall was busy, people moving between the stacks. A soft jazzy music played on hidden speakers inside the café, quiet enough not to hinder conversation but loud enough to fill silences.
Shame that. Raven liked silences. She so rarely got them.
But the music was better than the howling winds so she didn’t mind too much.
The café was filled with people too. Sitting around the edges in comfortable, stuffed couches and chairs around low tables, little conversational nooks. Sitting at the round wooden tables filling the center of the seating area, in surprisingly comfortable looking wooden chairs. There was a goddess sitting in a cushioned seat with a small side table near the entrance into the bookstore, flipping through magazines. And…
Oh. Her. Sitting at one of the central tables, sipping tea and reading an erotic romance Raven remembered seeing in a bookstore somewhere.
No wonder Raven had been drawn to this café if people like that visited the place.
Near the front window, a handsome man sat sipping a coffee and occasionally glancing up at the counter. Wizard. But also more. Interesting.
At the counter, a witch still in her first century was taking an order from a young man carrying a guitar. The witch’s large gray familiar sat up on a stool beside the register, swishing his thick, fluffy tail. He was a large cat… Maine Coon. That was it. And he had a lovely shade of pale blue eyes. When the young man got his coffee and moved to a table tucked between the counter and the front of the café, the cat leapt off his stool and joined the young man, sitting on the cushioned arm of the man’s seat as the man took out his guitar and started to strum quietly.
Raven expected the sound to work against the quiet jazz music, but the young man found a sound that harmonized with the music already playing, and the combination was quite pleasant.
Quiet conversation all around the café filled in the spaces between the musical notes. And noise from the bookstore next door filled in around that. Behind her, even through the closed door, Raven heard the sounds of traffic, the occasional honk or pedestrian shout on the busy street. The click of street lights changing. The loud laughter as a group of young people walked past.
There was a lot of sound. A lot of noise. But at least it wasn’t the howling winds. At least it wasn’t the ominous echoing eternity that usually filled her head. This was ordinary sound. She could deal with ordinary sounds.
She went to the counter and ordered a black coffee from the witch, who’s name tag said her name was Nina. Not that Raven needed name tags. But it was nice for the people who didn’t know who someone was on sight. She idly wondered what that might be like as Nina made her drink and handed it to her.
The money for the coffee appeared in the register and the witch accepted this with only a faint frown. But Raven knew she’d forget the strangeness in just a few moments, so she turned back to the seating area and found a table opening up near the back.
A man in his middle years was busy typing on a laptop and he barely looked up when she sat at the table next to him. She smiled as the sounds of his story whispered through her mind. A storyteller. They were fun. Their heads were never quiet either, but at least they got stories from all the noise.
She sat sipping her coffee for ten minutes in the relative quiet, only the sounds of the story being created next to her, quiet conversations, the music from the front. Jamar was a very talented guitar player. She could understand why Boo liked the young man and his guitar. And if the whispers were anything to go by, she suspected Frank’s newest book would be a twisted delight of a crime novel.
The goddess flipping through magazines looked up once, gave Raven a very slight nod, then returned to her magazines, occasionally picking up the cappuccino sitting on the low side table beside her chair to sip. Her long nails clicked against the mug whenever she did.
The ancient one… Agnes Waters she called herself now. She never even looked up at Raven, but she did tip her tea cup in Raven’s direction right after Raven sat. The only acknowledgement. Otherwise, her full attention was on her book.
Must be a very good book.
Raven closed her eyes briefly to savor the ordinary sounds of humanity that weren’t the howling winds. When she opened her eyes, he was standing beside her. She smiled up at him.
“We’ve met here before,” he said, checking a silver pocket watch he’d had tucked into a neat, blue pinstriped vest. His matching pinstriped suit suited him. Tailored to his thicker frame, his gray hair and full beard giving him a sort of grandfatherly look she imagined was very useful.
“Yes,” she said. She frowned a little. “And I think this might be the first time here.” She considered the timeline. “Or maybe it was the last time?” She worked in a more linear timeline than Henry, but had all the timelines more or less all at once in her mind if she cared to look at them.
“I think we met a few months from now,” Henry said, “and we’ll meet again here next month as well.”
She gestured to the seat across from her at the small table and he sat. No one else in the café paid him any attention. Not even the goddess or the ancient one. But then, Henry had been here several times. So that shouldn’t have been surprising.
“How’s the howling?” he asked.
“Quiet in here. Still too much noise.”
“Yes. I imagine.”
He looked up and smiled when Nina joined them, setting a mug down in front of Henry. A cappuccino. Those must be good here. Raven had seen several people with them.
“Thank you,” he said to Nina and she gave him a pleasant nod. Then a little frown.
“I’m sorry, have we met before? I feel like you’ve been into the café before but… I’m usually quite good with faces.”
“I’m sure we’ve met once or twice. But I also have one of those faces.”
Nina nodded as if that explained everything, though she was still frowning a little as she walked away.
“She’ll remember soon,” Henry said. “Though from her perspective, I haven’t been in for months.” He sipped his cappuccino and sighed. Then he took his pocket watch out of his vest pocket and glanced at it again.
The watch was a lovely silver piece with an intricate tree of life pattern on the front and a little blue glow just behind the tree pattern. He snapped open the lid, consulted the time, and snapped the lid back down, replacing the watch in his pocket.
“We have time,” he said. “At least another five minutes. How do you like the café?”
“It seems a very comfortable place for…unusual people.” Raven didn’t nod at the various supernatural people in the café. She knew Henry would know what she was talking about. Afterall, he’d been here more often than her.
“Very much so,” Henry said. “I fancy myself something of a regular at this stage. Though, I think… Yes, I’m here more next year than I am now. But I find the work brings me back and I can’t say as I mind. The coffee here is quite good. I believe the tea is excellent too.”
From the corner of her eye, Raven watched Agnes Waters raise her mug of tea in a little solute before taking a sip.
“I don’t suppose you know what will happen next?” Raven asked.
“I know the possibilities. It’s all we ever know.”
She nodded. Raven knew the timelines, could see forward and back. But she only knew what was going to happen as it happened. Very few people would understand that difference. Henry was one of the few.
Seeing was not the same as experiencing. And the future could be changed with a gentle wave of a fan, sending an air current in a slightly different direction. Raven found that element of unpredictability fascinating in the grand scheme of things.
“It’s significantly quieter in here than I was expecting,” she said, sipping her own coffee, which was warm and slightly sharp, the roasted flavor more pronounced on the front of her tongue. “Is that Nina’s doing?”
“Not on purpose,” Henry said. “It seems to be a natural part of her interaction with the café. They are partners in this. So to speak.”
“No wonder I come back here.” Raven closed her eyes to savor the ordinary noises once again. Then looked up at Henry. “I won’t interfere, you understand. But I do have to do my part.”
“Of course. Of course. It’s the natural way of things. Necessary. It would be impossible if it weren’t that way.”
“Have you ever wondered about that, though?” she asked, her gaze sweeping over the tables, the bookstore through the attached arch. “That I’m necessary to the working of things?”
“Well, what would be the fun otherwise?” He pulled out his pocket watch again and checked the time. “Oh dear. It’s that time. You’ll excuse me.” He set his mug down and gave her a little head nod before he rose and headed toward the bookstore.
Raven heard the howling again then, just at the back of her mind. Not roaring forward to fill her up yet, but there. And she felt the turning of the clock too. The inevitability of it all.
Then she glanced at Jamar and Boo sitting in their little nook, Jamar strumming his guitar.
A twang. A missed note. A slight frown from the musician. Boo looked across at her.
The twang carried to a young woman sitting at one of the central tables. She winced and her shoulders hunched. Which sent a ripple of air in a different direction. Raven watched the current brush past Agnes, who ignored it. That current ruffled the hair on a man’s head two tables away and he swiped at the hair on his forehead in response. The gesture was sharp and he accidentally sent his mug to the very edge of the table, so that it hovered in a suspended moment between dropping to the floor or remaining where it was until he caught it.
Raven watched that moment stretch out. That pause in potential as both things could be true and only the Universe itself might know what would happen next.
Drop, and thing would go one way. Caught, things went another.
The young man scrambled to grab the mug and it tipped the rest of the way off the table, shattering on the hardwood floors, pieces of white porcelain scattering in a pool of black liquid.
The young man cursed and pushed back from the table. Nina hurried over with a towel and a broom and dust pan. A person coming through the arch between the bookstore and the café jumped at the noise and jostled someone leaving the café. That person dropped their purse when they bounced into the wall. Which made them curse. Which earned a sharp look from an older woman inside the bookstore standing with a small child. The child paused in their headlong charge toward the kids’ section of the bookstore to look up at their grownup.
And Henry stopped right in front of the older woman and the child just before they started to move forward again.
The person who’d startled at the mug shattering apologized to the person who’d dropped their purse. The person who’d dropped their purse hovered in that place of things-could-go-either-way for a split second that most people wouldn’t have noticed. Then they gave the other person a little wave of acceptance and stumbled past Henry into the bookstore as a young man came racing around a free-standing shelf. He bounced off the shelf and it toppled forward, spilling books across the floor, some of them scattering into the café.
The goddess caught one of the spinning books with her foot, keeping it from sliding farther into the café and hitting the leg of an older man sitting at the table in front of her.
The bookstore owner appeared at the toppled bookshelf. The young man issued profuse apologies. Henry smiled at the child and the older woman he’d stepped in front of and then tipped an invisible hat to them and moved back into the bookstore.
The older woman huffed, grabbed her little one’s hand, and they circled around the chaos of fallen books. Taking a different route to the kids’ section.
Henry appeared again at the arch between the bookstore and the café. And he and Raven both watched the man walk past the arch, circling into the café to get around the fallen book chaos.
He was a tall young man, in his early thirties, with a serious expression on an otherwise conventionally attractive face. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a light sweatshirt. He ducked his head as he skirted past all the fallen books, his attention turned into the bookstore. He frowned at the books. Then changed directions and went into the café, exiting through the front door without stopping to get anything. As the bell over the café door jingled on his exit, a perfectly struck chord issued from Jamar’s guitar.
Raven pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly as the roaring howl in her head quieted again.
She could get used to that quiet. She would definitely be back to the café.
She focused on her coffee until Henry returned to join her.
“Everything went as you’d hoped?” she asked.
“The child didn’t get hurt,” Henry said. “That was important.”
“And the young man?”
“Since he didn’t see his father’s neighbors, because the older woman and child went a difference direction through the bookstore, he won’t think about his father. Or feel guilted into going to see the old man soon. And they won’t argue. And his father won’t throw anything at him. And he won’t retaliate and kill his father on accident. Which means he can finish his research. And discover that one small step toward a new cure for cancer. Which will benefit that child when she grows up.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Raven mused. “How a single change in situation, a badly hit chord on a guitar, a mug falling or not falling, can change…everything.”
“What I find funny,” Henry said with a soft smile, “is that we don’t meet in person more often.” He checked the watch on his wrist. A plastic band in rainbow tie-dyed colors with a colorful kaleidoscope face so large it covered his entire wrist. “Oh dear. I’m afraid I have to go already.” He smiled at Raven, his hands folded in front of him. “It’s always a pleasure.”
“Always?” she asked.
“Well. Most of the time.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t assumed that. I mean, that child and that young man would consider this encounter a pleasure if they understood.”
“Which they never will.” But then, most people, even Nina and her familiar and the goddess and the ancient one would only just understand. Of everyone, Henry probably understood the best. And that he considered it a pleasure to encounter her was…nice.
“Good luck,” she said, nodding at his watch. “We’ll meet again soon.”
Henry tipped his hat to her, a jaunty gray bowler hat that matched his pale gray suit and slim blue tie, all of which looked strange against the giant multicolored watch on his wrist. “Until we meet again.”
He waved at Nina on the way out. She returned the gesture with that same little frown, that turned to a soft smile, as if she understood a little of what had just happened.
When Nina stopped beside Raven’s table to ask if she wanted anything else, Raven refused a refill. She was tempted to stay here. The café was quiet. The roaring howl in her head now completely silent. And she could have enjoyed that silence for a while longer.
But she had places to be.
“Thank you for the delicious coffee, though,” Raven said. “And for a little peace and quiet.”
Nina chuckled. “If you can call that chaos quiet.”
Raven shrugged. “For me, that was.”
Raven glanced at Boo, where he was still sitting beside Jamar, as she left the café, bracing for the return of the howling and noise. The familiar gave her a small wink, his pale blue eyes picking up sunlight through the front windows, making them look almost white. She gave him a nod in return.
Not everyone was happy to see her. In fact, most people weren’t. But she was necessary.
So it was nice to know she’d be welcome backed here. When the howling got too loud, even for her, she could return for a little quiet time.
Where she might even change the course of history.
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Thanks for reading RAVEN AT THE CAFE. I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like your own personal eBook copy of this story, you can find it for sale here.
You can also peruse the previous Café stories that are individually available for sale here.
Henry has visited the Cafe several times over the last year and half. If you'd like to read his specific stories (so far...?), check out HENRY AT THE CAFE, then HENRY BACK FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THE CAFE. He also makes a guest appearance in STRANGE THINGS ARE AFOOT AT THE CAFE. And will wander through again. He really is a regular now. Even if his timeline is a little...off.
Don't forget, you can also get all of the stories from 2025 in the two big collections, STORIES FROM THE CAFE: VOLUME ONE and VOLUME TWO.
Until next month at the Cafe...
RAVEN AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2026 Kat Simons
All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.