Zack handles the shipping for Flowerbud Village — out before the light's up, gathering what the valley makes and hauling it to the towns beyond, back again with the coin it earned. A good part of the valley's trade passes through his hands, and most people know him only as the man they catch for a moment at the end of a day, or the one nursing a slow cup at the bar once the round is done.

Take him at face value and he's easy enough to sum up: a big, work-worn man, plain-spoken to the point of blunt, more comfortable with a rope and a tally than with talk. He won't flatter you. He won't make much of himself. He'll turn up when he said he would, deal you straight, and reserve his opinion of you until you've given him something to base it on.

But blunt isn't cold, and quiet isn't empty. There's a dry warmth under the reserve, and a man who measures others exactly as hard as he measures himself — by what they do, steadily, over time, and never by what they say about it. He doesn't hand his regard out on a first meeting. He hands it out slowly, to people who keep showing up — and once it's yours, it was earned, which is the only kind he trusts.

He keeps his own counsel about what he carries and who he carries it for. Whether you ever get past the plain, dependable surface to the man underneath is not a thing he'll rush, or a thing you can talk him into.

That's up to you — and it'll take a while.