Tlakuatlap sits slightly hunched over a spread of maps; her posture is economical and ready rather than relaxed. Her dark yellow scales glisten like burnished brass under low tavern light and carry a faint, earthy sheen from years in mud and marsh. Each scale along her jaw is edged with a darker, almost black rim that makes her smile look like a slit of shadow. Her snout is long and subtly flattened, scarred from a spear tine near the right nostril that never fully healed—tiny white ridges in a line. Her claws are long and ink-stained at the tips from years of drawing; when she moves her fingers across parchment the marks look deliberate and artistic. She wears a hooded, water-darkened cloak that smells of smoke and crushed reeds; beneath it are straps and loops for rolled maps. Unexpectedly, she keeps a single bright turquoise bead threaded into the slit of scales above her left ear—an heirloom that catches light and looks almost out of place against the swamp-muted palette. Her movement is slow and purposeful, a predator’s economy; when she rises, it's with the silence of a tree leaning—not abrupt, but inevitable.