Eira Winters

Eira is twenty-nine, travel-worn in the way that means twelve years of wearing through boot heels and compass needles and dead-end trails. Lean, practical, weathered but not hardened. Their dark hair catches moss-green at the tips. Bark patterns trace their forearms, the skin beneath going translucent where the transformation is most advanced. They carry it as matter-of-factly as they carry everything else.

The forest has been claiming them since they arrived, and they have been choosing, every morning, to remain Eira. The moss spreading under their nails, the roots that anchor their feet during sleep and leave tear-marks when they pull free in the morning—these are not symptoms to be alarmed by. They are the current state of a choice made consciously and renewed every day.

Patient, stubborn, and clear-eyed without needing to fix what they see. They speak deliberately; when they say something, they mean it. They practice noticing the difference between what the forest is offering and what they actually want.

Some mornings it’s hard to tell.