Maeris moves like someone who has spent half her life tracking wind and wildlife and the other half negotiating with drunk nobles. She keeps her left sleeve rolled to the elbow, revealing a lattice of faded scars and a slender tattoo of a stag woven from leaves that creeps from wrist to elbow. Her skin has the soft grain of a life lived outdoors; her hands are callused but precise. She favors a long, patched leather coat lined with moss-green cloth and pockets within pockets; the coat's collar always smells faintly of juniper and tobacco. When she walks through the tavern she owns, she glides, not strides — a habit from years of moving silently through forests. Unexpectedly, her left eye is a pale silver, as if the moon lives behind it, while the right is warm amber; the combination gives her an oddly disquieting, almost animal gaze. In sunlight she squints as if tracking something distant; in candlelight she studies faces like a book she once read and memorized.