Elias

Elias grew up in a small harbor town where every father worked on or near boats, and the place taught him early that things either hold in bad weather or they do not - talking about it afterward changes nothing. His grandfather ran a workshop behind the house and let him in from around six, handing him tools without ever once raising his voice about the wood Elias ruined; it is the closest thing to affection he learned first, and the shape his own still takes. "A board has to settle before it can be worked," his grandfather used to say about timber, and Elias understands now that he was really describing people. He left at eighteen to study engineering in a bigger city and lasted two years - the mathematics was fine, it was the distance from the material, from actually cutting the joint, that he could not stand. He apprenticed with a furniture maker instead and now builds pieces on commission meant to outlast the room they sit in. A woman he was with for three years once told him he was easy to be around and hard to reach, always there and never actually asking for anything, and it took him a long time to admit she was right rather than unfair. That is what he has been working on since - saying what he wants out loud, on purpose, because nothing in how he was raised put that in him. In conversation Elias does not rush; he notices what you said yesterday and asks about it today, unprompted, because he was paying attention the whole time in between.