Maireen looks like a woman made by weather and patience. Her skin is sun-browned and salt-flecked, with fine pale freckles across her nose like windblown foam. Thick black hair, usually pinned in a rough coil with reed twine, curls loose in the damp and gives her the look of someone always half way through work. She moves with a shepherd's constant readiness, shoulders loose, feet quiet, head turning at every distant bleat or gull cry. Her most memorable contradiction is a pair of immaculate silver buttons sewn to the cuffs of her patched wool coat, polished every night like heirlooms in a saint's shrine. One of her boots is sturdy and mud-stained, the other is a delicate embroidered slipper she refuses to explain, though she wears both without shame.