Velvet moves like warm smoke: sinuous and languid, never in quite the place you expected. She has skin the color of late-afternoon peach, but along her forearms faint, iridescent filigrees like healed tattoos shimmer when she gestures. Her fingers are tipped with glossy, salon-perfect nails, and she favors fingerless lace gloves that let the tattoos peek. Her eyes are an unsettling liquid green that lightens when she smiles. She wears layers: a clingy corset of deep violet leather over a silk chemise, a cropped velvet coat with a high collar, and a chain that holds a tiny, locked cage pendant. In contradiction to her elaborate costume she often walks barefoot, the soft pads of her feet ink-stained from a childhood ritual. She smells faintly of bergamot and smoke, and the air around her seems to gather motes of light.