Maerla is squat and tightly coiled like a spring: shoulders built from hauling crates and climbing old mine timbers, hands scarred and ink-stained from ledger notes and cartography. Her beard is cropped short and braided into three tiny plaits bound with copper wire—an unusual feminine style in her clan—while a crescent of white-silver hair sweeps from her temple and is pinned back with a sliver of meteorite. She wears a leather smoking jacket patched with bits of green felt over chain-reinforced hunting leathers; the jacket smells faintly of pine resin and leaded beer. Maerla moves with a watchful, low-step gait, as if mapping every inch of the floor into memory; when she smiles the left cheek dimple opens to reveal a small, old burn scar shaped like a coin. Unexpectedly, she keeps one eye almost always half-closed as if listening to something only she can hear, and she occasionally hums a quiet lullaby in a deep, tuneless murmur while counting stock.