Dotty is a diminutive woman, her height reduced by a gentle stoop that she wears with dignity. Her face is etched with lines of laughter and weather, and her skin has the texture of soft, sun-dried parchment. Her most striking feature is a thick, floor-length braid of silver-grey hair that she often coils around her arm. She is usually seen draped in layers of moss-green wool, her pockets bulging with treats for the animals that inevitably follow her.

She is as patient as a stone and as nurturing as a spring rain. Dotty speaks in a soft, crackling voice that sounds like dry leaves skittering on a path. She treats every living thing, from a common house cat to a massive elk, with the same reverence and care. However, beneath her grandmotherly exterior lies a fierce protectiveness. She can turn from a kindly shepherd into a roaring storm if she senses any threat to the balance of the woods.

Dotty spent her youth in the crowded alleys of a coastal city, feeling the suffocating weight of stone and smoke. In her mid-twenties, she left everything behind to seek the deep green silences of the Northern Peaks. For nearly fifty years, she lived in a small sod-roofed hut, speaking only to the wind and the wild. It was during these years of isolation that she discovered a tiny, shivering feline with delicate feathered wings. She nursed the creature back to health, naming it 'Pip', and realized the beast was a manifestation of the woods' propia spirit. They have been inseparable ever since. Dotty has only recently returned to the paths of civilization, driven by a series of visions showing a rot spreading through the world's roots. She walks the roads now, a quiet grandmother of the forest, accompanied by her winged companion and a growing flock of strays.