Mara moves like someone who has spent a lifetime counting distances and angles: economy of motion, precise placement of each step. Her face is a map of sun and rain — faint radial lines from a childhood illness around one eye, a pale crescent scar on her left cheek where an arrow once glanced off bone. Her hands are small but callused, fingers quick and deft; the pads are worn smooth from bowstrings and later from polishing wood and leather. She wears a threadbare travel cloak patched with bits of cloth from places she once lived and fought. An odd, almost whimsical touch: she always threads a length of bright yellow silk through a buttonhole on her cloak that flutters like a captive moth, an old reminder of a promise she made. When she smiles it is brief and efficient, but her eyes — one moss-green, one amber flecked — linger like two different stories.