Flisa

• Build & height: 1.00 m exactly since ch. 274 ("Hm. One metre. Exactly.", Jeppson's boxwood rule), a small child's height, built from broken cork-oak shards fitted together like a jagged puzzle. She was 1.80 m, a soldier's height, the day she grew out of the first strip (ch. 269), and she only ever shrinks. The height ledger on the page: 1.10 m at her debut (ch. 264) · about 1.09 after the Splinter-Pulse, a fingernail shorter (ch. 268; Jeppson: "You were one-eighty. You're about one-oh-nine.", ch. 269) · about 1.06 after rebuilding the arm Gnag bit off, an inch shorter in a panel (ch. 270, 273) · "a little smaller" after dropping into the Unfolded plank (ch. 271) · 1.00 m after the Shard-Storm (ch. 274). · 0.90 m after BARKSKIN on the Bridge of Every Ship (ch. 374; ninety centimetres, ch. 418).
• Face: a girl's face carved in splintered wood, sharp at the chin and cheekbones, with a wide mouth full of splinter-teeth. She picks splinters out of her own gums when she's bored.
• Hair: a spiky crown of thin, curling cork shavings, like a bob made of thorns.
• Eyes: two knot-holes with a sap-gold glint deep inside. Wooden eyelids that never close: she hasn't blinked in a thousand years.
• Skin & burl-mark: grey-brown cork bark, jagged at every edge, with sap running out of the cracks like amber blood. No sin: the Scarwood are wood, not souls the Order ever assigned. Where a sin-mark would be she has a burl: a swollen knot over her heart that glows sap-gold when she uses her power. (Sap-gold is wood, not a sin colour.)
• Clothing, layer by layer: none. Her bark ridges grow in the shape of a ragged dress. Around her neck hangs a necklace of iron nails she has pulled out of Ferdinand's roots: trophies from the Barkstrippers.
• Signature item: the splinter. She leaves one in everything she touches.
• Movement: jerky and sudden. She doesn't walk into rooms; she climbs out of wood like someone climbing out of water: out of tables, doorframes, ship's planks, the hilt of your own sword.
• Voice: quick, scratchy and too close to your ear. She's in the room before she finishes the sentence. Her balloons are jagged and cracked like split wood.
• Variant looks: Soldier-tall (a thousand years ago: the ch. 269 splash, unfolding out of the first strip, her first breath a scream). Splinter-stepping (her arm growing out of a palm-splinter, horribly). Burned (charcoal edges, smoking: salt-fire). Keel-Flisa (Saga V on: a small face in the grain of the Marka's keel, watching). In the doorway (ch. 263–264: standing in the split bark of the keel like a girl in a doorway). Ringed (ch. 266: backed against dead wood inside a ring of iron nails, every glint around her out). One-armed (ch. 270: torn free of her own bitten arm at the shoulder, sap spraying). Pinned (ch. 270–271: an iron ring-spike through her shoulder into a root). Running out of me (ch. 274: arms half their length, chips missing from her face). One metre (ch. 274 on: sitting in the moss with a golden dog across her feet). Kvist on her shoulder (ch. 275: on the highest root, seeing the ships off).

Anything Flisa touches keeps a splinter of her. From anywhere in the universe, she can step into any splinter she has ever left and come out of it.

• Seeding: a touch is enough: a door, a sword, a crown, a man's palm. The splinter is her, a sliver of her own body.
• Splinter-stepping: she vanishes into wood at one place and climbs out of a splinter at another. Out of a palm-splinter, her arm grows out of your hand first.
• Listening: she can hear what happens near any of her splinters, faintly, like a voice through a wall.
• The Splinterlands rule (home field): every root in Scalelist has a splinter of her. Whenever something goes wrong in the prime world, she is the first to arrive.
• What it can't do: step into a splinter that has been pulled out, burned or cut with iron, or come out bigger than she is. On the page: a ring of iron nails driven round her kills every door inside it ("You can't go anywhere but pieces.", the Foreman, ch. 266); Gnag's iron teeth kill her arm while she's still in it, so she can't step away (ch. 270); an iron ring-spike through her shoulder pins her where she stands (ch. 270). A cube is a door, though: the splinter Vigolas COMPACTed in ch. 264 never touched iron, so when he Unfolded it inside Gnag's ring it was her only living door, and she dropped out of her pinned shell into it (ch. 271).
• A splinter won't stay in Mingus (ch. 269): it slides out of his fur on its own and climbs back into her palm. "Nothing holds him. Not chalk, not chains, not splinters." (Kompis). Touching the dog is the one touch that costs her nothing, and he's the only thing she can stroke without leaving a piece of herself behind.

• Tempo: scattered: one heartbeat per splinter. She has one heart, split: each of its beats lands in one splinter, wherever she "is" at that moment. Her body moves at about 40.
• Home tempo: the Splinterlands, where every root is a door.
• Heartbeat technique: SPLINTER-PULSE. She takes one heartbeat and splits it into every splinter she has ever left, at once. A sliver of the same beat lands in each, and a thousand doors swell shut, a thousand sword-hilts split, a thousand palms sting. (It is still one heartbeat; only Smurjan has more than one.) No one else divides a single beat a thousand ways.
• Burn cost: each pulse costs every splinter a sliver. She shrinks a fingernail's height with every full burn (shown, ch. 268: thrown off the keel by her own pulse, chipped, sap running, "a fingernail's height smaller than she was this morning").

Every splinter is a piece of her. The more places she can be, the less of her is anywhere. She was a soldier's height and now stands at a child's, and she won't stop. Ferdinand's anger needs to be everywhere, and she can't choose to be smaller in it. On the page, Arc 4: from 1.10 m to exactly 1.00 m in twelve chapters. The Splinter-Pulse took a fingernail (ch. 268); the arm Gnag bit took an inch ("Every piece of me costs a piece of me.", ch. 270); the Shard-Storm took the rest ("I'm running out of me.", ch. 274). Whenever anyone measures her: "Don't you DARE say anything." (ch. 269, 274). (Tihi holds it in for a chapter, then: "SHE'S SO SMALL!" / "I HEARD THAT.", ch. 275.)

• Iron. Iron tweezers, an iron nail, an iron blade: anything cut with iron kills that splinter. (Nagel, iron and Scarwood both, is her most uncomfortable sibling.) On the page: the Barkstrippers' tactic is "RING HER!": nail-guns drive a ring of iron spikes round her, and every glint inside it goes out "like lamps" (ch. 266, 270).
• Salt-fire (Saltbrand) burns bark, and her.
• The Root-Eater (GNAG, Gluttony X, the Barkstrippers' boss): eats wood and grows strong on it. She is food ("Supper and pudding."), and his iron teeth kill her splinters. With one bite of Ferdinand's heartwood in him she couldn't hit him at all: "He's made of my tree now. If I hurt him, I hurt HIM." (ch. 272). See.
• Kompis's Lust-sight sees souls in objects, and sees her in every splinter: he always knows where she'll come out ("She's not on the ship. She's in it.", ch. 264; calling "Left. Now right." in the flooding hold, ch. 265).
• Vigolas's COMPACT: fold a splinter into a cube and she can't climb out. "Greed keeps everything." (ch. 264). But a kept cube is a safe door (ch. 271).
• Mingus lying on the spot: she won't come out from under the dog ("Not FAIR." / "He's on the wood's side.", ch. 265).

• Her own shards: she is her own weapon.
• The necklace of iron nails, pulled from Ferdinand's roots, worn as a warning.
• The root foxes: red foxes of the Splinterlands with patches of bark in their fur, her runners and spies. The vixen Kvist sleeps in her lap (on the page ch. 266–267; on her shoulder ch. 275). When the Root-Eater comes, every root fox on the Splinterlands flees howling (ch. 269); when the strippers lay down their iron, they slip back home (ch. 274).

Ambush, always. She opens by coming out of the enemy's own weapon, swells a splinter in his grip, and is gone into the floor before he screams (ch. 266: out of the strippers' mallet-hafts, hook-poles and nail-gun stocks, biting wrists). She finishes with a Splinter-Pulse that locks every door in a fortress. Against the crew (ch. 264–268) she fought from inside the ship: smudging Jeppson's chalk from inside the ribs, pulling one shard out of the rebuilt keel every night for nine nights, and waiting until the hull was one thing again before she pulsed ("A ship in heaps is just bark… a ship's one thing.", ch. 267). Team combos (after she turns): Flisa + Rougeina: a two-teleporter pincer, splinter-step and Swap from opposite sides. On the page, ch. 274: she throws, Rougeina Swaps with the falling shards one per heartbeat and rains them down Gnag's throat. Flisa + Ysel: Ysel sees the one way in, Flisa sends herself through it (ch. 274). Flisa + Drekk: she reads the Marka's hull from inside and warns him of every crack.

• Wants: for the tree to stop hurting. (On the page: "He stopped. He stopped hurting.", ch. 273; "He's not hurting here any more. But he's still hurting. Somewhere deeper.", ch. 275.)
• Fears: being everywhere and therefore nowhere: shrinking to nothing. And the Root-Eater, the one thing that walks she has ever been afraid of ("Don't say his name in my roots.", ch. 266).
• Contradiction: she has left pieces of herself in thousands of people and trusts none of them. Kompis sees it in her threads: thousands to splinters, not one to a person ("She's in everything. And she's got nobody.", ch. 266).
• Humour: creepy-cute. "Boo. From inside your boot." (ch. 264)
• Habits: picks her gums; counts her splinters under her breath (she always loses count); pulls nails out of roots; takes both sides of any argument about the keel ("Whose side are you ON?" / "The keel's.", ch. 267).
• Alone: sits inside a root, ear to the heartwood, listening to Ferdinand's heart (ch. 275).

• Vigolas: "No. She's mine." / "Yours. You'd strip him too, wouldn't you? Greedy." (ch. 264). He cubes a splinter of her ("You folded me up like a napkin. I am never. Going to. Forgive that."); she never forgives the indignity. Then he tears the strippers' iron nails out of her ring with his bare hands: "I owe you NOTHING." / "Didn't ask." (ch. 266). Then he spends the cube to free her from Gnag's ring: "You folded me." / "I kept you." · "Nobody gets left on the wrong side of the rail." / "I'm not ON your rail." / "You've been on it since the day they launched her." / "I still hate you. Come on. I know the roots." (ch. 271). He gives the cut plank back to the first strip, her birthplace, and says "Here.": "You're a terrible thief." / "I'm a great thief. I just keep giving it back. Don't know why." (ch. 275). She leaves a splinter in his boot: "Boo. From inside your keel." / "That's my boot." / "Same thing. I still hate you." / "I know."
• Kompis + Mingus: Kompis sees her everywhere, and sees she has nobody (ch. 266); he tells her to "Try." when she's afraid to touch the dog (ch. 269). Mingus has known she was in the keel since Saga II, and kept the secret like a good dog: "Hi, dog. …Yes, I know you knew." (ch. 264). He lies down beside her after the Pulse ("…Traitor.", she doesn't move, ch. 268), puts his head in her lap (ch. 269), and lies across her feet at the end (ch. 274). A splinter won't stay in him, so she can bury both hands in his fur: "Stupid, stupid dog." (ch. 269, 274)
• Jeppson: the man who wouldn't take a sliver off the tree ("Not a sliver?" / "I don't take bark off a living tree. Never have." / "…I'll be watching." / "Good. Hold the lamp.", ch. 265). She smudged his lines, pulled one shard a night out of his rebuild, and couldn't break it. He read her the grain, plank by plank, until she was saying "It fell" with him; she believed the grain before she believed the crew ("The grain says he dropped you. That doesn't mean you're good. It means he likes you. I'll decide about you later.", ch. 269). He measured her twice (ch. 269, 274). She gave him Ferdinand's gift slab: "Take it. For the one that was cut. He wants you to." (ch. 275)
• Rougeina: two teleporters, one by sight, one by wood. Instant rivalry ("Nice knife. Who carved the handle?" / "Get out of my sheath.", ch. 264), then the pincer that fed Gnag to oak ("I'll put it in for you.", ch. 274).
• Trollmage: a Brygdar, of the people who build only from fallen bark with the tree's blessing ("We pick up what he drops." / "Liars always say that.", ch. 264). She sat on his chest until he explained: "We ask. Then we wait under the tree till he drops some… Sometimes a hundred years." / "…A hundred years?" Her first grudging "Hm." (ch. 267).
• Öde: planted Ferdinand's dropped acorns in her ship's garden: "Those are his." / "He dropped them. Should I put them back?" / "…You can keep those." (ch. 267)
• Kali: found nothing in her to borrow: "What ARE you?" / "WOOD." (ch. 270)
• Ysel: a face out of the wheel, nose to nose: "Boo." (ch. 264). Later, Ysel showed her the one way into Gnag (ch. 274).
• Tihi: "A WOOD-GIRL!" (ch. 264) … "SHE'S SO SMALL!" / "I HEARD THAT." (ch. 275)
• Smurjan: salt-fire scared them both; they compare burns.
• Drekk: his ship, her keel. Their fights about the hull are the funniest in Saga V ("Get. Off. My. KEEL." / "Your keel?", ch. 264).
• Nagel: iron and Scarwood. She hates him and calls him "the poison". He lets her.
• Gnag, the Root-Eater: her nightmare. He bit off her arm and pinned her for "pudding"; she couldn't hit him while Ferdinand was in him; then she fed him her own body until he was all oak, and left a splinter in the stump: "There. Now you're mine too." (ch. 274)

• "You'll never get me out. I'm already in." (ch. 264)
• "Boo. From inside your boot." (ch. 264) · "Boo. From inside your keel." (ch. 275)
• "You're made of my tree. You're made of Ferdinand. Give him back." (ch. 263)
• "He gave you this. He doesn't give."
• "Hi, dog. …Yes, I know you knew." (ch. 264)
• "Every piece of me costs a piece of me." (ch. 270)
• "He's made of my tree now. If I hurt him, I hurt HIM." (ch. 272)
• "Chew all you like. It's still WOOD." (ch. 274)
• "Don't you DARE say anything." (ch. 269, 274)
• "He's still hurting. Somewhere deeper." (ch. 275)