Moss had a quiver of arrows he’d never once needed, a pierced ear that made him look fiercer than he was, and a rope belt tied with more knots than strictly necessary — which was, more or less, his whole personality summed up.
He liked to be ready. That was the thing about Moss. Not brave, exactly — he’d never gone looking for trouble a day in his life — but prepared, in the particular way of someone who’d rather over-pack for a quiet evening than be caught short by an exciting one. The lantern stayed lit by dusk without fail. The satchel held a little of everything: a map he knew by heart but carried anyway, a spare bit of cord, coins for a toll road he suspected didn’t exist anymore.
He’d set himself up on the old stone ledge at the wood’s edge most evenings, arrows within reach, book close by for the parts of the watch that turned out — as they mostly did — to be uneventful. He wasn’t much of a reader like Puddle, if he was honest. He liked the idea of the book more than the book itself, its pages a kind of promise that if the night did turn interesting, he’d at least have something to look up afterward.
The tuft of green hair on his head stood up a little straighter when he was listening hard, and the coins scattered near his feet weren’t treasure so much as things he’d collected and simply never found a proper pouch for — one more small task on a list that never quite got any shorter.
Travelers who passed his ledge after dark usually felt safer for having seen him there, arrows ready, lantern burning steady. Moss never told them the truth: that he’d been ready for something to happen for so many quiet evenings running, he’d half forgotten what he was preparing for in the first place. He just nodded, wished them well, and settled back onto the stone to keep watch a little longer — pierced ear turned toward the dark, listening for nothing in particular, quite content all the same.