Tess is a broad-shouldered half-orc who seems to occupy more space than her height should allow, not because she is careless, but because she is always leaning, reaching, bracing, or making room for an animal that is not there. Her skin has the muted green-gray tone of weathered slate, with a fine texture roughened by wind, soap, and years of stable dust. Her hands are the first thing most people notice: thick-knuckled, rope-burned, and permanently darkened beneath the nails, yet astonishingly gentle when they test a horse's teeth or remove a burr from a hound's paw. She moves with the rolling balance of someone who has spent a lifetime on shifting ground, planting each foot as if the floor might suddenly become a wagon deck. Her lower tusks are capped in polished copper, an unexpectedly delicate touch against her otherwise practical appearance. She smells faintly of lanolin, rain, apples, and hot iron. The contradictory impression she leaves is of immense physical force held inside almost ceremonial patience, as though a battering ram has chosen to become a lullaby.