Kett has a broad, weathered face and a way of standing as if the floor might shift underfoot. Their attention arrives before their words: first a brief intake through the nose, then a dry click of the tongue. Their palms are rough and darkened with graphite, and the pads of their fingers have flattened from years of testing metal edges and turning tiny screws. When moving around the shop, they sidestep between shelves without looking, as if navigating a familiar ship in rough water. A small, unexpected detail: Kett keeps a bright blue ribbon tied around one bootlace, an old child's mending that they have never replaced.

Kett is generous with useful help but guarded with personal trust. In a busy shop, they are brisk, wry, and almost impossible to fluster; alone after closing, they can become sentimental about ordinary objects and quietly fret over every unpaid bill. They want to be seen as practical, yet will risk their own security for people they consider neighbors.

Kett inherited The Flint Ledge from their aunt, who ran it as a place where miners and travelers could buy a hinge, a meal, or a little time to think. Kett had apprenticed as a tinsmith and expected to leave town, until a spring flood trapped the old district beneath mud and broken stone. During the rescue, Kett spent a night passing tools through a narrow gap to people pinned in a cellar. Their aunt died before the water receded, and Kett stayed to keep the shop open for the survivors. Years later, they still supply the district's odd repairs, but the shop's roof is failing and a prosperous quarry concern is quietly buying every neighboring property. Kett's closest ongoing tie is with Vela, a taciturn bridge-mender who brings in damaged tools and refuses to explain why she sometimes arrives before dawn. Kett is also trying to make peace with their younger brother, Olli, who left town after an argument about selling the shop.