Thazhir moves like a reed in light wind: deliberate, patient, and with surprising suppleness for a being whose scales show the polishing of centuries. His scales are burnished bronze streaked with veins of pale gold; each scale bears tiny concentric scratches—writing in an old script he keeps replaying in his memories. He wears a loose, soot-stained robe folded back to reveal old scars across his forelimbs, and his long tail is wrapped in woven strips of faded blue cloth. When he walks he taps the ground with a short ashwood staff that puffs a faint ember-smoke with every strike; when he sits to talk he folds himself with the comfort of a practiced storyteller. The unexpected thing: he keeps one claw always ink-stained as if he were perpetually writing, yet he never writes in public and shies from having anyone touch the ink.