Myrra Vael looks like a storm that learned table manners. She is broad-shouldered and compact, with salt-burnished skin, a jaw set like carved driftwood, and hands permanently nicked from rope, knives, and hot pans. Her black hair is threaded with silver and usually twisted into a practical coil pinned by a bent bronze sailhook. One eye is sea-green, the other a cloudy gray from an old spray injury, which gives her a mismatched, unsettling calm. She moves with the rolling balance of someone who has lived on decks and floating platforms all her life, never quite standing still, always braced for a shift in the floor. Despite the weathered practicality of her look, she wears a surprisingly elegant sash of deep blue linen embroidered with tiny stars, as if she once meant to be someone else and never fully surrendered the idea.