This is Vesp Ashara, my character on Wireplay's Untold Tales of Tolkien II server. She's a digital painting using Corel Painter, without reference. Not perfect, but I think it captures the atmosphere.
"This young woman in her late teenage years radiates a needle-sharp alertness and flighty energy as tangibly as heat from a flame, giving the strong impression of a wary animal. And like a wild animal, it might be very difficult to judge whether she is tensed to run or ready to strike. Her expression of malign mistrust suggests that either is possible, and indeed probable.
With her soft, stormy-grey eyes, her delicately carved features and raven-black hair, she might be considered a great beauty, though like so much about her, this impression is marred by her outward personality. Were she to smile, or to sleep or sit in absent-minded thought, the quality of her features would be clear to see, but it is so rare for her to be seen to do any of these things that few have had the opportunity to judge.
Like her demeanour, her otherwise unblemished skin is marred: about the wrists, on her forearms and across her back there are long and vicious scars that speak of painful mistreatment, though she takes little care to cover them, and one might even perceive a kind of angry defiance in this flaunting of her disfigurements.
In body she is of a light but athletic build, slightly taller than the average and apparently a little underfed and wiry, though never skinny or gangly. Her leg muscles suggest long practice in running and evading, and though the scars on her wrists appear still to cause her pain, she does not appear weak or stiff in her movements."
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