Another Ken Pick commission for me, this is one of the his characters from his space opera fiction setting, the WebFed, with a stand-in for myself. Sazha Vanthai-Krann is a Thalendri, a race of foxlike aliens, and she herself is from a family of mercantile nobility that owns its own corporation. She recently had to oversee an execution (an obligation of nobles in her society) and was plunged into a deep depression over it.

Enter Alaric, a human changeling (born human, but raised among Thalendri his whole life) she once knew as a cub. Her mother, Baronness Maya Vanthai-Krann decided to see if they still remembered their old friendship in hopes that it would help her daughter snap out of it. It's helping, and Sazha is obviously happy (they will eventually marry), but she'll never be quite as innocent as she once was.

And for the curious, she's smoking something called benga, not tobacco. Benag is more like a sweet-smelling and weaker version of Terran hemp.