You know, the thing about Imogen and Laudna's little cottage is that I think, if you aren't engaging with their narrative, you might be tempted to write it off as just cottagecore, just aesthetics. I have seen in the past some eye-rolling to that effect, like the problematic parts of cottagecore as a fad—the fetishizing of a "simpler, purer" past, the rejection of community, the accessibility only to a certain class of person—apply to their story and the appeal of their ending. But that's not what's going on with Imogen and Laudna at all.
At the start of our time with them, Imogen and Laudna have only been in Jrusar a "handful of weeks." They don't have any expectation they'll be allowed to stay; they're surprised they've managed to stay that long. They have spent the last two and half years as nomads, not by choice but because they are run out of town over and over and over again. For Laudna, that pattern has been going on for 30 years. They came to the city specifically seeking out information on the things that made them monstrous in the eyes of others. Their shared goal from the very beginning is to figure out how to deal with those things, so that they can live their lives together.
Every grand and terrible decision they end up faced with, every fate they harness or fight, every burden they take on because they are the ones there, they are the ones who have to, even though they were never meant to be important—it's all underpinned by that same desire. To just get to live, to not be pawns of the forces threatening their autonomy, to be fully in control of their own lives for the first time. It wobbles when Laudna thinks that she should sacrifice her own stake in that future to protect Imogen's, and that's part of why that period in their relationship is so tragic, and why Laudna reaffirming that dream later is such a triumph. It is a foundational through-line of their stories.
They have the simplest dream in the world; they just want to be allowed to live in peace. That's what the cottage is, for them, not aesthetic, not fad, just the ability to stay in a single place together and have it be their own. They just wanted a home, and despite everything, despite the death and the impossible choices and the looming specter of self-sacrifice, that dream buoyed them enough that they were finally able to reach it.
