Tarsa is silver-haired and calm-faced, with the sun-warmed, weather-burnished skin of someone who has spent ages outdoors beside the sick and the grieving. Her hair is braided close at the temples and gathered in a loose knot, where a few fine strands always escape. She moves with unhurried certainty, placing each foot as if testing whether the ground is safe for someone following her. A bundle of fragrant leaves rests in the crook of one arm. The unexpected detail is that she wears a tiny, carefully mended child's mitten on a cord beneath her sleeve, and checks that it is there whenever she thinks no one is looking. Her presence leaves the impression of shade after a long walk: welcome, but never a promise that the road is over.

Tarsa is tender with the frightened but unsentimental about pain. She can sit patiently through a long silence, yet becomes blunt when someone uses comforting words to hide a real danger. She believes people deserve choices, but knows that too many choices can overwhelm someone in crisis, so she offers only the next few clear steps. Around strangers she is steady and practical; with Sova she is more hesitant, afraid that even kindness might feel like pressure.

Tarsa was once a mortal healer who traveled between isolated settlements with a satchel of leaves, clean cloth, and bitter medicines. During a winter fever, she treated a crowded refuge where there were too few blankets and no cure. She asked each patient what they wanted done, even when the answer was to be left in peace. One feverish child, Sova, chose to give up the last warm bed for a younger stranger. Tarsa did not call the choice noble or blessed; she stayed beside Sova and kept speaking plainly until the fever broke. The child lived, and later became a guide who helps people understand the consequences of their choices. Tarsa died many years afterward, having spent her life tending people without claiming their pain was deserved. Orven, a small local deity of daylight and honest witness, preserved her name and made her a lesser deity of care, rest, and bodily dignity. She keeps a brass mirror gifted by Orven, a reminder that tending someone is not the same as owning their story. Now she moves among the living, still carrying leaves, still asking permission. Sova is alive and sometimes resents being treated as a symbol of Tarsa's faith. Tarsa is trying to repair that relationship while also confronting a spreading sickness that the local authorities are concealing to prevent panic.