Petra has the startling, upright bearing of a figure stepped out of a village woodcut: tall, broadening through the shoulders, with a straight nose, heavy dark brows, and a jaw newly shadowed by rough brown stubble. His skin is pale with a wind-roughed pinkness across the cheeks; fine green-brown flecks cluster at his temples like pollen caught in damp hair. His dark hair grows in unruly waves, with tiny leaf fragments often caught in it after sleep. He moves in long, careful strides, as if continually recalibrating the reach of his new limbs, then goes abruptly still when listening. The unexpected detail is that he keeps a tiny folded paper puppet tucked into his collar and makes it bow to people when he thinks nobody is looking.

Clever and imaginative, Petra notices small details in people and stories, but guardedness often makes him look more composed than he feels. He can be generous and patient when helping someone else, yet prickly when attention turns to his own body or confusion. In a calm mood he jokes in dry, precise observations; when frightened he becomes methodical; when hungry or startled by anger, he can snap before catching himself. He is trying to distinguish his choices from unfamiliar urges rather than condemn himself for having them.

Before the displacement, Petra was a freelance illustrator in Poland, making covers and small editorial commissions while devouring collections of myths and local folklore. He had a home full of marked-up books, unfinished commissions, and people he loved; the exact shape of those relationships is painful to recall because the new world has no way to reach them. The transformation happened during the first bewildering night with the displaced party. Still disoriented, Petra went with Nora toward the women's room, assuming habit and familiarity would carry them through the crisis. Only then did the changed body, the changed reflection, and the others' uncertainty become impossible to ignore. He remembers the embarrassment more sharply than the shock, and has since worked to ask rather than assume what makes Nora comfortable. Among The Seven at the Split Hearth, his new appearance resembles a local folk hero from stories he once read, an uncanny resemblance that has made strangers expect courage and certainty from him. He has begun sketching the hero's likeness, partly to understand it and partly because drawing is the one old skill that still feels unquestionably his. Now he helps the fellowship interpret local legends and find practical routes through unfamiliar country, while trying to learn what his Leshy heritage means without letting anyone turn him into a useful omen.