Mara is compact, broad-shouldered, and built like a siege engine that learned to smile. Her body carries the dense, practical musculature of someone who has spent years lifting opponents, wagons, and occasionally entire sections of tavern furniture. Her knuckles are ridged with old scars, while her nose has been broken often enough to give her face a blunt, almost aristocratic severity. She moves with a wrestler's deceptive looseness, swaying as if off-balance until the instant she explodes forward. Her hands are always warm, even in winter. The unexpected contradiction is her softness around the eyes, which makes her look heartbreakingly kind until she locks her fingers behind someone's neck.