Mirelle moves like a reed in wind—sinuous, deliberate, as if always listening to a current only she can hear. Her face is narrow and tan from sun, with a faint silver scar that climbs from temple to jawline like frost. Her hands are ink-stained from charts and singe-smudged from experiments; the nails are deliberately kept slightly too short. Around her left wrist she wears a braided strip of blue-and-white linen embroidered with names in tiny stitches, a keepsake and map of debts. Unexpectedly, she favors a wide, painted circus mask tied to her belt — never worn in daylight, but kept as a talisman and conversation-starter. When she laughs it shows too teeth and is quick to vanish; when she is concentrating her pupils dilate and take on a faint, electric sheen.