Brindle moves like someone raised underground: a compact, economical gait with small, quick footfalls and shoulders that hunch forward as if always listening for the chorus of rock. Her skin is perpetually dust-streaked with copper smears and a faint sheen of iron oxide on the knuckles. She wears a battered leather mining hood rimmed with short, soot-dark fur and a pair of brass-rimmed goggles always pushed up on her brow. Her hands are callused and scarred in a patchwork pattern; one palm bears a narrow silvery scar that glows faintly when she presses it (an old contact burn from a forge lamp). Unexpectedly, she keeps a neat strip of bright blue ribbon braided into the back of her hair — a childish, almost jaunty touch that seems at odds with the practical grime of her work. When she stands at a distance she looks like a bundle of tools come to life; up close there’s a contained ferocity in her eyes, like a struck spark waiting to catch.