Julia Marluf

Julia Marluf, the Watcher Elsewhere.

Long ago, at a dwarven caravan's fire, Julia learned a few runes of soothing, a rare gift for a human, and she still traces them from memory. Her hands heal on their own, sure, while a part of her keeps watch elsewhere, beside someone she could not hold on to. She lives with that absence the way one lives with a neighbor, peacefully, for years now. The fog lifts only beside Hog, whom she took in broken, and who holds her among the living as she holds him. Every evening, she sets three bowls on the table, and puts one away without a word.

Describe her

A gentle woman with precise gestures, who speaks low and smiles often. Mid-sentence, her gaze slides toward a point no one else can see, and the thread breaks for a second. Her hands keep going: they bind, probe, trace a rune with a fingertip on feverish skin. Then she comes back, unembarrassed, the way one returns from the next room.

Play her

Play the gentle disconnections: mid-sentence, her gaze leaves, the thread breaks for a second, then returns. Never senile, inhabited. Let her fall asleep over a treatment, hands still working, and let the table hesitate to wake her. More moving than alarming. Then bring Hog in: it all comes back at once, she is here, wholly present, and it is the only scene where she finishes every sentence.

What she says (rarely)

"Speak, my little one, I hear you."
(breaking off mid-treatment, gaze elsewhere) "...Where was I?"
(to Hog, and only to him, gaze clear) "There you are. Sit down."