A Sky-Walker is slender and long-limbed, light-boned, with a narrow chest and a long neck, built more like a heron than a Human. Its skin shimmers like the sky does: pale blue in daylight, rose at dusk, grey under cloud, and faintly translucent at the fingertips. Its eyes are wide and bright, made for high, hard light. It wears long flowing garments that billow in the wind and are often tied off at the ankle.

It moves with a graceful, floating gait, the heel never quite touching, and speaks softly, because loud voices unsettle the islands. Near one the air smells of high flowers and rain.

They live on the islands themselves, among the wind-swept grass and stunted trees, and in the open air between. An archipelago holds a few families of them. They have little to do with the ground below, which they think a place of stagnation.

Sky-Walkers are calm, focused, and gentle. They value clarity and the ability to move with the wind, and they think outsiders grounded and heavy, both words of pity. They help visitors learn to anchor, and are patient with them, because a visitor who panics or doubts can set an island spinning.

They float or sink at will. They do not sleep in the ordinary way: they drift, resting the body while the mind stays anchored to the island. They draw sustenance from air and sunlight. Together they steer an island by shared focus; the Anchors among them can hold one still alone.

Their children are said to learn to anchor before they learn to walk. They live long, and when one dies, it is said, it simply lets go and drifts into the mist.

They are the only guides to the Isles, and the best teachers of the anchoring that keeps visitors alive there. They are harmless.

Mountain folk who see an island drift overhead say the Sky-Walkers are deciding where to go next, and they are often right. Many believe the Sky-Walkers have wings hidden under their robes; they have none and need none.