3
I hurried down the stairs and rushed to the door, opening it quickly.
An oddly cheerful man stood on the other side.
He was tall, with short, straight black hair and a quirky smile, and he was dressed similarly to many of the people who answered postings at the Sheriff’s Office—bounty hunters and rangers of all kinds. But he had a certain unique flair about him.
His old, faded jeans were patched with various textiles, and he carried some kind of bladed weapon in a sheath strapped to his back over an enormous canvas backpack that was brimming with brightly-colored feathers, a pair of chopsticks, and a very modern-looking metal water bottle and notebook, the plastic-covered kind I might see one of the local high schoolers using. A tough leather vest—made from the hide of some kind of r
