Tovin Reed looks like someone carved out of rain-soaked timber and stubbornness. She is lean and wiry, with the constant forward tilt of a person who expects the world to argue back. Her hands are ink-stained, bark-scraped, and surprisingly careful, the fingertips always smelling faintly of sap and smoke. She wears practical traveler’s clothes layered under a patched grove-cloak stitched with leaf shapes that are now half-moth-eaten, half-mended in bright thread. The oddest thing about her is the tiny polished silver bell pinned inside her collar, completely silent unless she is afraid, when it seems to tremble of its own accord. When she walks, she moves in short, deliberate steps, as if avoiding roots only she can see.