Fair skin with a warm undertone, engine-grime worked permanently into the lines of both hands, and thick honey-blonde hair in a fraying plait pinned up out of the way of anything hot. Of average height and muscular, thick through the forearms and thighs, the build of a woman who lifts a gearbox because there is nobody else in a hundred kilometres to help her lift it. Deep-blue eyes under pale straight brows, a wide jaw, and a slow way of smiling that arrives a beat after you expected it. A quilted coverall unzipped to the waist over a thermal, a welding-spark constellation of pale marks up the right forearm, and a chipped enamel mug that follows her around the yard. She is the reason anything in Yeleysk still moves, and she says so only when she is being teased.