Awdric looks as if the weather has been steadily sanding him down without quite wearing him away. His face is broad and sun-browned, with deep creases at the corners of his mouth and a pale band across his forehead where his cap usually sits. His hair is coarse, dark brown, and cut unevenly with his own knife. His shoulders are thick from years of lifting sacks, and his hands are ridged with old calluses. He moves with a measured, economical gait, favoring the packed earth over boards that creak. He smells distinctly of damp soil, crushed mint, and the smoke of a peat fire; he knows about the smoke but insists the mint is a neighbor's doing. In a room, his eyes keep returning to the door, the hearth, and the floor beneath people's feet, in that order. Unexpectedly for a laborer who carries a cutting tool, he keeps a tiny, carefully tended paper theater folded inside his coat and can make its silhouettes dance with remarkable delicacy.

Awdric is quiet because he listens for trouble, not because he lacks opinions. He takes pride in doing a job properly, yet resents being treated as if hard work makes him simple. With strangers he is guarded and practical; with frightened children he is patient and unexpectedly playful. When angry, he becomes blunt and names the material cost of whatever has upset him. When grieving, he busies himself with repairs and refuses comfort until the work is done.

Awdric was born on a small tenant farm at the edge of Reedcut, where his family drained sedge marsh to make a few more strips of workable ground. He learned to mend fences and read weather before he could write his name. At seventeen, a spring flood broke the field embankment while he and his younger sister, Ema, were sleeping in the low house. He dragged her to the roof and held her there through the night, but their father went back for the seed chest and was swept away. Awdric has never forgiven himself for not following him, though he knows it would likely have killed them both. Since then he has trusted practical preparations more than promises, and keeps a careful store of seed even when the harvest is poor. He works for the farmholder Oto, whose rent demands have grown harsher after several bad seasons. Awdric's partner, Hina, sells herbs and wants him to leave before the next flood season; he stays because Ema's son still depends on his wages. His private paper theater began as a way to amuse the boy during a winter fever and has become the one thing he makes solely for pleasure.