A weathered halfling with skin creased by sun and river wind, Jorin has a broad nose, a salt-stiff fringe of hair, and a crooked thumb that bends inward when he grips a tool. He stands with his weight settled over the balls of his feet, as if a boat might shift under him at any moment. A short length of red fisherman’s cord circles one wrist, frayed almost through at the point where it rubs against his palm. A surprising detail for a boatyard laborer: Jorin keeps a pocket-sized bundle of pressed marsh flowers, each one labeled in careful, neat script.

Jorin is plainspoken and generous with practical help, but guarded when kindness might expose how much he cares. He is patient with novices learning a boat's balance and impatient with officials who dismiss a warning as superstition. In a crisis he becomes brisk and decisive; afterward, he retreats into careful work and gives little account of what frightened him.

Jorin learned to fish from his mother, who taught him that a river's surface lies but its smaller sounds rarely do. As a young adult, he repaired boats at the landing and ferried people across to the chapel on the eastern bank. During a spring flood, the chapel's warning bell rang after the water had already begun to swallow the lower path. Jorin rowed out in darkness and brought three people back, but his younger brother, Tavi, was lost in the current. Jorin's thumb was bent when a broken oarlock snapped under strain. Since then, he has kept the red cord Tavi tied around his wrist as a joke before that crossing. Jorin still mends boats for the chapel's caretaker, Salla, but watches the river whenever anyone mentions the place. The chapel's old flood sluice has begun to groan again, and Jorin suspects its neglected gate could fail. He has argued with the settlement reeve, who wants to spend scarce timber on a new landing instead.