Three thousand years.
Same river.

He has ferried kings, soldiers, poets and one very confused accountant. Lately it is mostly traders who got liquidated somewhere else.

He does not judge. He does not hurry. He takes the coin, he pulls the lever on the ticket machine, and he rows. The fare has never changed and it never will, which is the only thing about him anyone has ever found comforting.

He is not a skeleton. He is not scary. He is a municipal employee who has simply been doing this for longer than the job was supposed to last.