The Barista

• Suzy Goodwin, 8/23/2025
  My Barista illustration is a concept that has been in my mind and in work for over 7 years. I started her before I took a break from my large format painting on canvas back in 2019. I’ve been working on life painting and live portraiture small scale, but I’m glad to have the time and focus for my geek girls again. I’ve got a few good ideas brewing, and I’m working towards illustrating and writing short stories for each character. Below is an early sample of the Barista short story.

Few who wander into the misty folds of Mount Hood’s National Forest notice the café. It sits quietly among the pines, where the air smells of rain and moss, and the sound of waterfalls echo through the forest. Locals call it a place of stories—some currently whispered over coffee, others older than memory.

They say that long before the indigenous Chinook people walked these lands, a Fae Lord ruled here. He carved an enchanted spring into the earth, a hidden source whose waters have fed the falls for centuries. No map can mark it; no scientist has traced its path. It moves unseen, as if it knows it must remain a secret.

The Chinook elders tell of a spirit in the forest, a guardian whose gift is abundance—and a strange, euphoric peace for those who swim beneath the cascades. Fabled healing, too, for those the water spirit chooses to bless.

Behind the counter of The Enchanted Cup Café stands Isolde Ashwillow, the barista with eyes like deep water. She has a quiet strength, a luminous calm that makes people linger long after their cups run dry. There are whispers—of changelings, of a fairy princess hiding in plain sight. She smiles at the rumors but never answers questions about her age, her family, or where she came from. She only says she lives a small, simple life, and perhaps one day she will own the café she loves.

The café’s own story is no less strange. Some say it was established long before the pioneers, before the roads. Elders claim a great shaman once tended to the holy springs that disappeared from this land, and that anyone who drank from these springs could walk away with a life stretched longer than fate had intended.

And yet, the spring is lost. Or perhaps… it is simply waiting for the right soul to find it.