Haldra moves like someone who can both lift a great hammer and coax a delicate hinge into place. She is compact and coiled: shoulders like tied ropes, hands scarred with white ridges where hot metal met skin, and fingers thickened from years of hammer and tongs. Her apron is mottled with soot, oil, and an old patch in the shape of a sapling sewn over a burn. When she smiles, it begins at one side of her mouth and never reaches the other — an old injury left her jaw slightly crooked. She favors practical half-braids swept back to keep hair from flames; loose, short wisps escape and curl at her temples. Unexpectedly, she keeps a pocket of polished mother-of-pearl buttons and small embroidered cloth birds pinned behind her apron — an incongruous, private softness hidden among tools.