Tella Brine looks carved by weather rather than born by it, all salt-burnished angles and rope-tough muscle. Her left shoulder sits slightly higher than the right from years of hauling chain and pry bars, and she moves with a rolling, deck-sway gait even on solid ground, as if her body still remembers the motion of waves. Her skin is darkened by sun and spray, the texture at her forearms like old parchment where salt has dried into pale scales. One eye is sea-glass green and sharp as a gull's, while the other is clouded at the edge with a milky scar. The strangest thing about her is a ribbon of pristine white hair that runs through her otherwise black braids, as if some small patch of winter had been trapped in her head during a storm. She always smells faintly of tar, lemon peel, and wet iron.