The silhouette of a small, tidy site manager ยท a black ledger cape ยท a straight blade set with abacus beads ยท a glass monocle with turning numbers ยท a dull red tally mark.
Habit
Counts thresholds, plates, feathers and footprints. Even mid-conversation it is counting the other's wingbeats, so its eye contact is always one beat late.
Catchphrase
"One is missing."
Weakness
It cannot properly count someone who changes their own name, or a goose that is one and many at once. In front of Matryooshka it starts over every time.
Proud of
The speed at which it finds a wrong number. One misplaced line in a huge ledger tells it which village has a gap. No matter how many geese mix together, it finds the last one โ once a job, later a guilt.
Likes
Aligned ledgers, boxes of the same size, and reports that close to the end.
Secret
Before becoming Countgoose it never had a name of its own. "Seven-Zero-One" was not a name but a district and a post number โ and only the count had called it that for long.
Gets on with
Goosegami โ Countgoose tries to file Goosegami as a single record; Goosegami refuses, yet is the first to see what Countgoose fears.
Awkward with
Whygoose โ it keeps attaching questions to sentences that Countgoose wants to end with a number.
Weather & seasons
When it snows, there are more footprints, which it actually finds easier. When it rains, records blur and the numbers fade, so it gets edgy. In the winter tribute season it hardly sleeps.
At first Countgoose's role as a healer seems to clash with its image as an enforcer. But its healing is not about warming allies โ it is about putting counts and places back in order to hold the line. When one goose is missing, it counts again from the start and returns one living goose to the last slot. That is Countgoose's heal.