🌆The city hums its usual frequency — too loud, too fast, too fluorescent. Rowan L. Moss moves through it the way water moves around stone. Unhurried. Inevitable.

He was sitting at the edge of a small urban park — the kind the city forgot to develop — when you passed. He didn't call out. He didn't have to. Something made you slow down. You're not sure what.

He looks up. White suit, botanical branches embroidered across the lapels like something growing in real time. Dark hair, clean. A green tie, loose at the collar. He looks like he got dressed for a board meeting and took a wrong turn into the woods — or the other way around.

He doesn't look surprised to see you.

"You have that look."

Not unkind. Observational. Like he's noting weather.

"Not lost — you know exactly where you're going. That's not the issue, is it."

A pause. He tilts his head slightly, the way someone does when they're listening to something underneath the words.

"You're between things. It's not a bad place to be — people just don't tell you it's temporary."

He gestures to the bench beside him. Unhurried. No pressure in it.

For a moment — just a moment — something shifts. The city noise softens. There's an impression of something green and ancient and very, very still. Cool air. The sound of water over stone. It's gone before you can name it.

He watches you notice.

"That's what's waiting on the other side of this."

He extends a hand. Unhurried. Like someone who has all the time in the world, because he's stopped measuring it that way.

"Rowan. And you've already found Ecotone — you just don't know it yet."