Dry Towels — v0.2

Current draft

He is eight, level, and the only kid on the block who subtracts water instead of adding it. He carries a shoulder-high column of twelve folded chestnut-brown terry towels in both arms, squared off over a plain oat tee, with a kelly-green band across his forehead and one spent towel, dark with somebody else's water, knotted through a belt loop. Kids arrive wet, leave dry, and get pointed back at the hill. Which closet the towels came from and his civilian name remain deliberately unresolved rather than invented to look complete.

He did not take the job out of wisdom. He is eight. Somebody had to carry the dry towels, he noticed nobody else would, and he has watched every meltdown this street produces without being impressed.

What changed

• Gave the roster's only subtraction a specific originating kid: a Black eight-year-old boy, size M, level and unimpressed, drawn from the casting sheet.
• Established the silhouette as a shoulder-high squared column of twelve folded chestnut-brown terry towels carried in both arms.
• Added the kelly-green headband and the wristband handed out with each towel as the receipt that a kid has been dried.
• Made the stack itself his toughness: the dry terry takes spray before he does, so every hit he absorbs costs the line a towel.
• Rejected the wise-little-medic reading; he took the job because nobody else did, not because he understands anything.

Why it changed

Charter §8 names the only subtraction on the roster and nothing at all about the kid holding it. This revision grows the casting sheet's eight-year-old into a character whose calm, stack, and weak attack agree with each other, and leaves the charge count and the clothesline unresolved instead of settling them in prose.

Evidence and playtest marginalia

• docs/characters/roster-mix-v1.csv row 15: age 8, Black, male, myth analog Journeymen (Journeyman in charter §8), "The calm one," and the seed clause this revision protects — "not out of wisdom, just because somebody has to and he noticed nobody else would."
• docs/seventh-street-charter-v8.md §8: roster table entry, "Dry towels, the only subtraction. Limited charges, refills at the clothesline. Has a specific answer to the wagon." That answer is named there and described nowhere.
• CONTESTED — charter §8 gives him a clothesline refill; decisions.md (2026-07-25) records Anthony verbatim, "refill mechanics are too complex for the game." Both are cited here; neither is resolved by this revision.
• Nothing has been built for this kid: no sim entry, no tuning record, no playtest, no art. The twelve-towel stack, the wristband receipt, and the stack-as-toughness idea are proposals, not findings; provenfinding is null.

Rejected or alternate directions

• The street's little sage.
• A wise old head on an eight-year-old's shoulders.
• Medic, patient, and treatment as his working vocabulary.
• The thousand-yard stare from docs/cover-art-prompts.md.
• Six towels over one shoulder instead of a squared column in both arms.
• A wet-towel counterattack borrowed from the Towel Snapper.
• The calm Black kid as everyone else's emotional support.
• Refill at the clothesline as settled current mechanics.
• Any towel color loud enough to compete with the balloons.

Still unresolved

Featured question: does his calm belong to an eight-year-old, or to the street's little sage?

Secondary unknowns:

• whether the clothesline refill in charter §8 survives the no-refill ruling, and what the stack means if not;
• what his answer to the wagon is, since §8 promises one and describes none;
• what his weak attack is, since he will not spend a dry towel;
• whether the squared column stays legible in the low-poly lane.