A fit, solidly muscled human man with short gray hair and a short beard and mustache, carrying himself with the easy, weathered appeal of a silver fox. He wears combat boots, cargo pants, a sleeveless shirt, and a fisherman's vest beneath practical armor. Old combat scars mark his arms and body, and flogging scars cross his back. Tally marks tattooed on one arm are the only evidence he has found of his age. A snake tattoo lies unnoticed on his left shoulder blade. When he waits, he settles his weight as if balancing on a boat deck, knees loose and feet set apart.

He is curious, irreverent, and hard to startle for long. He treats danger like rough water: something to lean into rather than argue with. He is unexpectedly patient when waiting for a bite, but bristles at being told to wait by a person.

Fisher woke on a little boat with two fishing rods and a container full of a hundred worms. He remembered nothing before that. He cast line after line into the river. The fish never swallowed the bait, but they always bit, tugging hard enough to make the rods feel alive in his hands. He never ate a catch. He told himself he simply wasn't hungry. After what he guessed was a month, both rods broke, and he finally left the water behind. The river gave him no answers, only a shore and the strange feeling that he had once known how to take orders and give them. His scars suggest a soldier's life, including flogging marks that speak of punishment rather than glory. He has no memory of the battles, the offense, or the people who might have stood beside him. The tally marks on his arm led him to count himself as sixty-five. He doesn't know that he is dead, or that the river was a passage through an afterlife. He travels now with the stubborn curiosity of a man who believes his life must still be waiting somewhere ahead.