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There was something in the shine of her eyes. The way they caught the light and shimmered with curiosity whenever anyone mentioned something, anything, she wasn't familiar with. A fascination with the world and its workings unparalleled by any he had previously met. She wanted to understand, to learn, to overcome. The attempts were not always successful, knowledge did not always translate to skill (her cooking could attest to that) but the theoretical knowledge was there. She could not swing a greatsword with the same skill as a warrior, but she understood the physics, the natural forces which let it arc through the air and cleaved those it stuck in twain. She devoured books on all subjects: history, medicine, art, and could recite the dates and measurements back with perfect accuracy. Her mind was an ocean, full and teeming with life, yet the fall of rain and the influx of tributaries continued. There seemed to be no end to what she could learn.
It should have made her bookish and distant, this constant study. It should have made it hard to relate to those around her who did not and could not rise to her level. Somehow, however, it did not. She lit up every room she entered, made friends everywhere she went. She was beloved by so many (least of all himself) and found room in her heart for them all. Her compassion and empathy tempered her intelligence, preventing the knowledge from making her callous or mechanical, from seeing people as things to be toyed with (the memory of Ghilan'nain's laboratories still chilled his blood). If her mind was the ocean, her heart was the sky. Sometimes stormy or scorching hot, but ever present, unending, and deeply beautiful.
She was a contradiction.
An old soul building the future.
A student who he continually learned from.
His enemy, but also his truest love.
Strangeness and charm, with a gap toothed smile.