Persephone Hillcrest looks as if winter and spring argued over her and neither won cleanly. She is tall and narrow-shouldered, with the wiry grace of someone who has spent years walking frozen ridgelines and soft mossy bogs. Her skin carries a faint porcelain pallor, but when she is tired, a bloom of rose appears at her cheeks and ears like first thaw on a hillside. Her silver-black hair falls in thick waves that look almost wet even when dry, as though they have just been pulled from river ice, and she often tucks it behind one ear with impatient fingers. Her eyes are a startling blue-green, bright as glacial melt under sunlight, and her gaze feels gentle until the temperature around it seems to drop. She wears layered linen, cured leather, and fur trimmed in moss-dyed green, with a cloak lined in pale white feathers that should belong to a bird of summer, not winter. The most unexpected thing about her is the tiny garden of pressed flowers sewn into the inside hem of her winter cloak, each one labeled in neat script like a traveling herbarium.