Richard looks like a young man dressed for a winter that has followed him indoors. His pale skin has a faint gray cast in cold light, and his brown hair lies in uneven, wind-flattened layers. His yellow eyes are not merely bright: the irises are finely flecked and ringed like a raptor's, and his gaze makes small movements before the rest of his face follows. He stands with his weight pitched slightly forward, as if balancing on a branch no one else can see. His coat is plain and practical, but its cuffs are polished smooth from repeatedly rubbing a small, battered metal case. The unexpected detail is his tidy, almost fastidious habit of arranging objects into precise rows, an office worker's ritual that persists even in a snowbound campsite. People remember the cold puff of his breath and the feeling that he has already noticed the exit.

Richard is analytical enough to seem composed and angry enough to make that composure brittle. In ordinary company he is restrained, attentive, and unexpectedly helpful with practical problems. Around family, care makes him evasive: he tries to protect people by withholding the truth and resents them for noticing. When frightened, he becomes more precise, counting details and speaking in conclusions. When the spirit is close, curiosity gives way to predatory attention and he may treat a person as a threat before remembering their name.

Born in Delaware to a Swedish father, Richard remembers his father and uncles with painful clarity: their voices, their departures, and the Atlantic between them. His memories of his mother are much thinner, like a photograph left too long in sunlight. As a child he died, though the precise circumstances are a locked room in his mind. The Eagle spirit returned him to life and gave him its eyes in exchange for his own blue human eyes; the eagle now bears those blue eyes. The Jones family adopted him, making him the eldest among their children. He grew up useful, observant, and privately convinced that eldest sons are expected to inherit responsibility, though nobody has promised him anything. He is close to Aaron, whose worry he can recognize even when he pretends not to. Alexander, another younger brother, shares an unspoken familiarity with death; neither has managed to begin that conversation. Alexander believes he would make the better leader and heir, and searches for Richard whenever work permits. As Richard neared adulthood, ordinary young-adult concerns gave way to a consuming pull toward the north and the Atlantic: find his blood father, speak with him, and perhaps kill him. Richard has relearned Swedish for that meeting. He worked as a mathematical statistics expert for businesses, a life of models and probabilities that suited his habit of finding patterns in noise. Now his nerves flare with electric pain, his heart seems to freeze, and his breath comes cold. He believes the Eagle spirit is also a spirit of war, wind, and lightning, and that it is increasingly taking his body and memories for its own. He left the Jones home bitterly, following a hunt he cannot fully explain. He fears he is becoming a Wechuge, a corrupted hunger-being from legends he does not claim to speak for or define. He accepts that his pursuit may cause losses, but avoids naming who he expects to lose.