A young woman with red braided hair, one green eye and one blue eye, wearing a simple dress, standing in a golden wheat field.

Cora was plain. Her coarse copper hair was braided back away from her face and covered, modestly. She dressed in the common clothes, a thin sleeveless linen dress wrapped and fastened over a cotton chemise; the materials soft from so many washings and falling in folds just past her knees. It was too short to be the dress of a woman and too long to be fit for a child. The white sleeves of her undergown were always rolled past her elbows, and the collar had been removed to let the material out for the growing girl. The belt at her waist had been made of harness leather. The maiden’s skin was tannef by the sun with dark freckles abundantly dotted her strong arms and hands, while her ears seemed to have half a mind to curve up into a point. Cora’s nose might have been called aquiline if the face had been more defined. But it was round and even, ridged only by high, broad cheekbones. Cora's right eye was a blazing golden green hazel of dying summer leaves, while her left eye beckoned in dark, deep blue of the treacherous tide pools. See more