Burl moves like someone who has spent equal parts of his life bending over an anvil and hauling sacks of ore: purposeful, slightly rigid at the shoulders, but with surprising spring in his step for a man of his years. He keeps a braided leather strap of burn scars across the back of his right hand where a ruined tongs once snapped. His hands are large, callused, and quick; fingers ink-stained from inventory tallies and nicked where metal shards still find him. Burl's face is broad and weathered with fine lines that form an almost continuous map around his eyes and mouth. He wears a short, graying beard meticulously combed to a point that contradicts the soot and ash perpetually smudged along his jaw. Unexpectedly, he keeps a small pressed wildflower—the same type each day—tucked behind his left ear, a delicate softness that jars against his otherwise rugged silhouette. When he walks through his shop he runs a thumb along the edge of the counter as if reading the grain of the wood for news.