Though the sun has set, the stones of the road radiate heat like a fresh-skinned kill.  Shiloh wear rope sandals on these night-time streets; this place is not her home, nor is it natural... it is no place for a bare foot.  Paper lanterns and torchlights break up the darkness, with gaps and chips of light, like bad teeth in the night's gaping maw.   Months and months of this strange city; years now, it seems, and it is no more welcoming to her than ever before.  So many breathing the same air with those not their bretheren.... so much ill will, so much clutter and disorder.  There are many shadows for her devils to call home.<br/><br/>Entering the masked one's court, the wary eyes of guards are upon her... she wears a broad hat of tattered, woven straw.  For a moment, the unyielding stare of the mask across the room becomes her focal point-- an unflinching gaze, a look of acceptance and judgment at once that makes Shiloh feel whole and at peace.  The hat removed, her blonde hair beneath glimmers like grains of fine, dry sand, the whole of it braided sternly and dangling down her back.  The hairstyle does nothing to distract from her elven features,  and her tapered ears and angular eyes are obvious.  Two small bars-- amber-colored tattoos, fine in detail and faded against her sun-tanned skin, underscore her eyes, which are steady and piercing yet, somehow, flaring with the stoking of some inner furnace's flame.<br/><br/>A tattered shawl unwinds from her shoulders, and it is clear what she hid; her modest brown-gray robes bear the strange markings of something forgotten to man's time, and barely cover her frame-- her body is elegant in natural design, like a well-built racing beast, but surprisingly frail-seeming.  Surely she can be no warrior-- but every movement speaks of ocnfidence, readiness.  Every tensed muscle and tendon visible seems honed and readied for power.  She is like something carved from wood, some surreal amalgomation of a fawn and a wolf.<br/><br/>She listens, she watches.  And when it is her turn, she signs... she speaks nothing of the pettiness of contracts, she greets no one and asks no questions.  She is merely here, for now, incredibly alone among them.  The coin disappears into her robe, somewhere near her waist.  It is the only thing she will carry for now.