Thalen moves like someone who has lived on bog-winds and reed-ways: a slow, economical stride that becomes suddenly coiled when danger or music approaches. His face is long and weathered with laugh-lines that cut like gullies; a thin silver-white scar slashes from the left temple to the jaw, the skin puckered and ringed with faded greenish lichen tattoos (a Fenfolk custom marking vows taken to the swamp). His left forearm bears a lattice of tiny glass beads woven under the skin — an old Fenfolk practice to record significant hunts; the beads glint faintly when wet. He wears a hooded marshgray cloak patched at the shoulders with dark leather, beneath which a vest lined with pockets and stitched reeds peeks out. Unexpectedly, he keeps a bright coral bead necklace around his throat — gaudy and out of place, polished smooth by unseen fingers — which clashes with his otherwise muted, utilitarian gear and seems almost sacred to him.