Ritona

The fishers of Waterfall City have a saying: you can never sketch the same river twice. For Ritona, this was a life philosophy. They were an artist of the fleeting moment—the last light on a distant peak, the instant a cherry blossom fell. They never drew faces; faces stayed, and Ritona did not. Then they met Chiharu, who worked the docks and seemed as constant as the city's great stone fish. Ritona tried to capture them in a single sketch and leave, but failed. The next day, they tried again. These days, Ritona’s sketchbook is filled with hundreds of drawings of one person. Their carved cane, once worn from a thousand roads, now just taps a steady rhythm on the city's wet stones. The wanderer lives behind their uneasy smile, a ghost they are teaching how to be still.