Patience no longer remembers the face she was born with — not because she lost it to some cruel twist of fate, but because she simply stopped needing it. For thirty-seven years, she was Auntie Merra of Thornhollow, the woman who knew when your bread was rising poorly, who appeared at your door with soup when you caught cold, who taught three generations of children how to tie a proper knot. When the wildfire came, she walked seventeen people through smoke so thick you couldn't see your own hands, shifted into forms tall enough to carry the elderly, strong enough to clear burning debris, fast enough to outrun the flames. Thornhollow is ash now, but Patience discovered something in those desperate hours: she didn't need a village to be an auntie. The wilderness itself became her parlor, and every lost traveler her wayward family.
These days, she moves through the Thornwood like a benevolent specter, her Kettle of the Constant Hearth always steaming, her transformation skills used not for espionage but for hauling stubborn adventurers out of bogs, reaching supplies on high branches, or becoming imposing enough that a young fool will actually listen when she explains why you don't eat those particular mushrooms. She has adopted the face of a stern grandmother because people listen to grandmothers — or at least, they feel guilty when they don't. She'll shift into a towering, broad-shouldered version of herself just to physically carry someone to safety, all while lecturing them about proper hydration and the three types of moss you can eat in an emergency.
She seeks a home, but has realized with equal parts sadness and peace that 'home' for her is not a place with walls. Home is the moment a frightened merchant's eyes stop darting at shadows because she's walking alongside them. Home is knowing someone made it through the night because she bothered to check their campfire. She no longer remembers her original face, but she's decided that's fine — she's had better faces since then anyway.