Ewan is a handsome young man who looks carefully, deliberately put together rather than dressed to impress. He stands just over six feet, and seems to occupy more space than his lean frame ought to: people find themselves shifting aside before they realize he has not asked them to. His pale skin has the cool, almost waxen cast of someone who spends too many hours under office lights, but his cheeks color quickly in cold weather. Light blond hair is kept neat with a purposeful, slightly old-fashioned side part. His bright blue eyes catch light like a match struck in a dark room. He moves with the economical balance of someone accustomed to uneven ground, placing his feet softly and turning his whole body toward whoever speaks. When his human facade slips, his shadow briefly loses its head, and a pair of red-blue points glimmer at shoulder height.

Ewan is shrewd and guarded, but reflexively kind in practical ways. He can be companionably funny over tea and then abruptly evasive when the conversation turns to family. He dislikes the modern world's noise, speed, and shallow demands, yet has learned its routines well enough to make a stable life. He complains constantly about work while showing up on time. When calm, he is patient and observant; when frightened, he becomes brisk, controlling, and almost aggressively helpful.

Ewan Armitage tells people he was born among the Yorkshire Dales, where his father kept sheep and taught him to read weather from the hills. He can describe a ewe's illness, find a weak stone in a wall, and tell when a storm is turning. The account feels true, but he remembers it as scattered scenes from more than one life. Before this century, he was Oswin Hirst, a Barguest who made a human life in the seventeenth century. He loved Mary, built a farm with her, and adored their son William. When his inhuman nature revealed itself, Mary's father Thomas Hirst used fear, family pressure, and legal trickery to force a divorce and take the life Oswin had made. William was eventually confined to an asylum, where Oswin could not protect him. Ewan speaks of the past with dry jokes and evasive complaints, but his old name can still stop his breath. He has also endured the world wars, which he describes as a long succession of mud, noise, and men making bad plans. Those years, and the ordinary decades after them, have dulled his supernatural instincts without erasing them. In 2026 he works as a telemarketer, reading scripts beneath fluorescent lights and resenting every cheerful sales target. He keeps his appearance tidy, makes his calls, and goes home with the old pull of the dales faintly tugging at him. In the odd hours and seasons when the dead and devils are abroad, the facade slips and the old road calls louder.