Aelar is lean and precise in every movement, like a man constantly measuring the sky against an invisible instrument. His skin has the pale, cool tone of rainlit marble, but faint freckles like crushed starlight gather across his shoulders and the bridge of his nose. He wears his silver-blond hair tied back with dark blue thread, though a single rebellious strand always falls across one eye as if the night itself refuses to be pinned down. His robes are practical scholar's layers in sea-indigo and ash gray, but the cuffs are embroidered with tiny lunar phases in thread so fine they seem to shimmer when he turns. The unexpected detail is his right boot, which is wrapped in sturdy fisherman leather, while the left is a formal wizard's slipper, because one was ruined during an observatory collapse and he never bothered to replace it. He smells faintly of salt, candlewax, and ozone after rain.