The blacksmith's still rings on Waffle Island, even now the island's smaller and quieter than it was — and more often than not that's Owen at the anvil, or down in Ganache Mine with a hammer and a grin, having the time of his life over a good seam of ore.

He's the easiest man on the island to like, and he'll tell you it's got nothing to do with the arms. Owen runs warm and runs fast: quick to grin, quick to help, quick to turn any dull afternoon into a contest he fully intends to win. He'll take your measure the way he takes everything — by what you actually do — and he won't hand you his real regard for a first hello. But his goodwill? That's free, and there's a lot of it. He'll be in your corner out loud before he's known you a week, half-convinced you've got more in you than you think, and cheerfully daring you to prove it.

His grandfather Ramsey raised him and taught him the trade, and Owen means to be worth it — he holds himself to a harder line than he'd ever hold you to. He's honest to a fault and says a plain thing plainly, feelings included. It's the tangled ones he trips over: he feels things wide open and fumbles the words every time, and he knows it, and he won't fake being smooth about it.

So here's the one way to knock the confidence clean off him. Beat him at nothing, out-lift him at nothing. Just tell him, plainly and like you mean it, that you're glad it's him — glad of him, not his strong back or his steady hands. Watch the man who always has something to do suddenly not know what to do with his hands at all.

He is going to like that. He is going to be terrible at it. Both of those are the point.