Freyda looks like a woman made from first light over a kitchen hearth. Her skin has the soft gold-brown tone of well-kneaded dough left to rise near a fire, dusted with faint freckles like flour motes caught in sunlight. Her hair is thick, dark, and threaded with silver at the temples, usually braided into a practical crown that never quite stays tidy because stray wisps curl free whenever laughter rises. Her eyes are warm hazel with tiny amber flecks that flicker like coals when she is angry. She is tall and broad-shouldered, built like someone who carries heavy stew pots without complaint, but she moves with a surprising, almost ceremonial grace. She wears a simple apron over layered travelers' robes, yet the fabric is stitched with tiny pearls, old seed beads, and soot-dark patches from years of work. The contradictory thing about her is that she smells faintly of rain on stone, not bread, as if a storm always follows her even in a sunny room.