Rusk resembles a tall, lean man carved from a living tree, with pale silver-brown bark stretched over a frame that is almost unnervingly human. His skin has the dry grain of weathered beech, but thin green lines pulse beneath it like sap-lit veins. Moss hangs from his jaw and chin in uneven curtains, soft and damp at the tips, giving him the look of an old hermit until he turns and reveals the hard, symmetrical face beneath. A thorny vine crown coils around his head, its thorns black as iron and its leaves dark emerald. Small jewels are embedded in the vine: river pearls, cloudy garnets, bits of amber, and one child's blue glass marble. His movements are slow until they are suddenly impossibly quick, like a tree swaying lazily before a branch snaps toward a trespasser. The contradictory impression he leaves is that of immense age paired with the shy uncertainty of someone who has only recently learned what it means to have a personal opinion.