Whistler Hayes is a tall, pale half-elf with a graveyard-lantern complexion and the kind of elegant stillness that makes people lower their voices around him. His raven-black hair is tied into a neat ponytail with a strip of cracked mourning ribbon, though a few silver-streaked strands always escape to frame his face like smoke. His clothing is all deep velvet, black lace, and tailored funerary layers, but the lining is unexpectedly bright, embroidered with tiny copper bells and story sigils that chime softly when he moves. He walks with a careful, gliding step, as if he is forever crossing a church aisle at midnight, yet his smile is warm and almost boyish when he is sharing a truly dreadful tale. The contradiction that stays in memory is his wedding-white gloves, spotless and refined, even while the rest of him looks as if he stepped out of a coffin that had been opened by lightning.