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description: "Moss ran a small fermentation supply shop called 'Cultured Decomposition' in the Burnside District, selling koji spores and SCOBY mothers to Portland's home-brewing community. They wore hand-knit sweaters that smelled of kombucha and rain, kept meticulous notes on fermentation times, and hosted \"decay appreciation circles\" every third Thursday. Their laugh sounded like leaves rustling. They were twenty-three, paying off student loans, worried about making rent, planning to expand into mushroom cultivation supplies."
article_type: full
taxonomyContext: Notable individuals shaped by philosophical conflicts, temporal disasters, and the ongoing crisis of existence in a world where decay and time itself are battlegrounds
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# Moss Witheringly
## The Person They Were/Are
Moss ran a small fermentation supply shop called "Cultured Decomposition" in the Burnside District, selling koji spores and SCOBY mothers to Portland's home-brewing community. They wore hand-knit sweaters that smelled of kombucha and rain, kept meticulous notes on fermentation times, and hosted "decay appreciation circles" every third Thursday. Their laugh sounded like leaves rustling. They were twenty-three, paying off student loans, worried about making rent, planning to expand into mushroom cultivation supplies. They had been friends with Sister Psilocybe before she joined the Chanterelle Chorus, back when they both believed decay could be contained and commodified.
They still wear the same sweater. Half of it.
## The Breaking/Transformation
When the Temporal Intersection Massacre erupted, Moss was arranging a display of fermentation jars. A Sequential Heretic's temporal seizure sent a decay field through their shop. But Moss stood at the exact intersection of accelerated entropy and a Moment-Dweller's grief-weapon. The left side of their body aged seventy years in seconds—skin wrinkling, hair whitening, bones brittling. The right side exists in all moments simultaneously.
They remember dying. They remember not dying. They are currently dying. They died last Tuesday and will die tomorrow. Their left hand is arthritic and ancient. Their right hand phases between infant-soft and skeleton-bare.
## How They Survive Now
Moss operates what they call a "temporal triage center" in their ruined shop. They can't leave—the specific temporal confluence that created them only exists in that space. Step outside, and their paradox collapses. So they help others damaged by temporal weapons, using their unique perspective to translate between those stuck in loops and those scattered across time.
They brew tea with their old left hand (it takes linear time to steep) while their right hand exists at all stages of the brewing process. Customers never know which age of Moss will serve them—sometimes the right side is elderly too, sometimes it's prenatal, sometimes it's decomposed. They've learned to pour tea in any state.
"The hardest part," they tell a patient whose memories are happening backwards, "is remembering which bills I've already paid and which I'm going to have paid yesterday."
## What They've Lost/What Remains
Gone: the ability to experience surprise (they've already experienced everything that will happen to them), the chance to leave their shop, any hope of a linear relationship, the simple pleasure of watching fermentation progress naturally.
Remains: their collection of fermentation vessels (aging beautifully and terribly), their kindness (distributed across all temporal states), their meticulous notes (written in a journal that exists in seventeen different stages of decay simultaneously), their worry about rent (the landlord refuses to accept payment from "temporal anomalies," but still sends eviction notices).
They've started a support group for temporal survivors that meets never, always, and last Wednesday. The Sequential Heretics consider them a saint. The Eternal Presentists find them redundant. The Stone Deniers pretend their shop doesn't exist, which actually helps with the rent situation.
Sometimes, late at night in the eternal/instant moment of closing time, Moss weeps with their ancient eye while their young eye hasn't learned sadness yet. They're the only person in the city who truly understands the Spreading Paradox.
They're terrified it will end. They're terrified it won't.
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*Entry in Characters taxonomy*
