hello! I need some writing/story advice. you see, I'm writing a thing and I'm a sucker for the parent/adopted kid trope, especially if the kid's not used to being cared for and slowly warms up to affection. But, in this case, I don't know how to make the characters encounter each other. The mentor figure is a 28-year-old hedgewitch who gives potions to the townspeople and grows produce to sell at the market. She's not a big fan of relationships after being screwed over when she was young and is single by choice (and because she lives alone in a cottage in the woods). Meanwhile, the kid is Felicity, a character I've played here before and I wanted to give her a good ending to her story. A witch adopting a zombie child? Adorable. But Felicity avoids people if she can because she's terrified of what they might do to her as an undead, and she is even more adverse to accepting help. Somehow it got drummed into her little head that attention and care spent on her are wasted because she's already dead and all. 

So how do I start the story? I'm stumped

They just need some common .. thing. Like a love of cats. Or literally any other thing, but let's work with cats. Some monster, let's say it's a .. giant spider. Giant spider attacks a house on the outskirts of the village - eats the residents. There's also a cat. The cat has taken refuge under the house, where the spider can't get it (it's too big to get under there).

One of them - let's say Felicity - hears the little kitten's (yea, it's a kitten now) meowing and crying because it's hungry and scared. Goes to help. Get's jumped by the spider. They fight. Luckily for Felicity, she's rather unimpressed by poison - but she cannot really fight the spider hand-to-hand. 

In walks the witch. She drives the spider off with some sort of fiery magic. The two still do not trust each other - but over time, it turns out both return to the house to feed the cat. 

Eventually, the witch goes 'so .... you like cats, huh?' 

The end.

maybe set up the characters separately in the first two characters, then establish that Felicity needs a potion for some reason. then, Felicity decides to steal a potion from the witch, and when she catches the kid, she takes a liking to her.

Hey there! This is a really cool idea for a story, and I think you could do some great things with it. My main suggestion would be to have either an inciting incident or some factor that your two characters can bond over. That's generally the way things get started in writing!