Laila is a narrow-shouldered young woman with the alert, coiled posture of someone accustomed to sleeping beside unstable walls. Her skin is warm umber, usually dusted with pale mineral powder around the wrists and throat. Her hands are callused and permanently wrinkled at the fingertips from years of immersion in cold channels. She moves in abrupt, economical angles, as if every step has been calculated against a current. Her face is open and youthful until she hears someone waste water, at which point her expression becomes startlingly severe. A contradictory detail unsettles first impressions: beneath her practical grime and patched workwear, she wears one immaculate white glove on her left hand, preserved from the funeral clothing of her dead mother. It is too clean for the tunnels and makes her look faintly ceremonial.