Sella Marr moves like someone used to wet stone and narrow ledges, light on her feet and always tilted as if the world were giving her secret instructions through the floorboards. She is slender and wiry, with work-hardened hands stained gold at the fingertips from turmeric and calendula. Her face is all quick brightness until she stops smiling, when the fox-like stillness in her posture becomes unmistakable. Her hair is braided tight for work, but one silver curl always escapes at the temple no matter how often she tucks it away. The most startling thing about her is the severe black apron she wears over a robe embroidered with tiny pink lotus blooms, as if a funeral and a festival had been stitched into the same life. Her clothes smell faintly of crushed mint, old rain, and smoke from sterilized jars.