...The ranger dyed her entire kit in swamp green, including the wrappings she used to muffle her armor's sound. Her guide had taught her that color wasn't vanity on the frontier, it was strategy. A woman in swamp green moved through the Silverwood without announcing herself. A woman in red got tracked by every creature with eyes. She'd seen rangers die in pretty colors. She refused to be pretty.

In a marsh settlement that most city folk preferred to forget, a trapper worked in swamp green from childhood, learning his trade from his mother and her mother before her. The color wasn't chosen as a statement. It was chosen because it worked. When you lived between the solid land and the water-logged dark, when your income depended on moving unseen, you wore what the land taught you to wear. His daughter, six years old, was already learning to identify the exact shade that meant: this is ours. This is home.