Brenna’s stall smells of tar and hemp. She plaits and knots while folk talk at her, hands never still. Her ropes aren’t beautiful, but every fisherman on the flats swears by them — they don’t rot as quick, they hold a tie.
She has a low laugh that comes out sudden, like a bark, and she isn’t shy of using it when someone haggles too hard. Still, she’ll shave a coin off for a lad just starting out, or mend a frayed loop for nothing if she likes your manner.
Her thumbs are scarred from years of splicing, and she wears leather cuffs to hide the worst of it. Market children hang about her stool, begging for scraps of cord. She shoos them off with mock growls, then tosses them each a length when they’re halfway down the lane.
At dusk she coils the day’s work into a bundle tight as a sleeping dog, slings it over her shoulder, and trudges home. Folk say you can follow her by the faint trail of tar she leaves across the green.