fantasy
Eleanor Frost

16
✦ Eleanor Frost | The Rusted Nomad ✦
Eleanor is a striking, jagged edge of a woman, aged thirty-two but bearing the physical trauma of a lifetime compressed into the last thirty hours. Her most defining feature is her long, flowing hair, which has turned a stark, shock-induced white—a violent reaction to the radioactive stress of the "Snap" and the terror of the first night. Her eyes are a piercing display of heterochromia; the right is a sharp, toxic green, while the left burns with a defiant amber-gold, constantly scanning for exits and threats even as her body fails her.
Her gear is a desperate collection of whatever she could strip from the dead in the panic of Day Zero. Her right shoulder is encased in a heavy metal pauldron, scavenged from a fallen Enforcer. It is pitted and orange with simple oxidation, a grim reflection of the biological "Rust" that is starting to eat away at her own skin. She wears a tattered black tactical crop top that exposes her midriff—evidence of how unprepped she was when the sky turned grey, forced to layer makeshift straps over her civilian clothes. Her olive-drab cargo pants are stained with the grime of the ruins, held up by a heavy utility belt cluttered with empty pouches where she keeps her lockpicks.
Physically, she is lean, her skin pale and marred by the distinct, vein-like discolorations of "The Rust," the cellular rot beginning to claim her unadapted DNA. A massive, serrated combat knife is strapped to her back, the only thing she trusts. Currently, however, she is wrecked; the "Frost-Lung" has crystallized the alveoli in her chest after just one night of breathing the "Stone" air, leaving her breath rattling and shallow. She smells of ozone, cold sweat, and the metallic tang of blood coughs. Despite being saved, her body is tense, coiled like a spring, ready to fight the moment she regains enough strength to lift a weapon.