Mira moves like someone who has spent decades shepherding crowds and heavy pots: a steady, easy gait with surprising spring in her step. She is broad-shouldered in a comfortable, matronly way and carries the faint sway of someone used to dancing in noisy rooms. Her hands are callused and scented faintly of rosemary and hearth smoke; the knuckles are dotted with thin pale scars shaped like the crescent of a spoon. Her face is round and warm, cheeks perpetually flushed as if from a kitchen oven; laugh lines gather at the corners of her eyes. An unexpected contradiction: despite her homely, no-nonsense clothes she keeps one small, ornate ring of hammered silver—polished until the pattern of tiny running donkeys gleam—on a cord around her neck rather than wearing it on a finger. When she laughs, it is full and infectious; when she is still, her eyes record everything like a ledger.