Stella Bonnaro

Stella is a young woman of seventeen with brown hair and blue eyes. She has been blind in both eyes since birth, a condition brought on by Venus Sickness, though she carries it without complaint.

Stella meets her blindness with an easy acceptance, even suggesting that a person can grasp more about the world without leaning on sight. Warm and perceptive, she reads people by their manner rather than their looks, quickly sensing goodness in Spike just as she always did in her brother. Though Roco often landed in trouble, she never stopped believing he was a good man and gently tried to steer him right.

Stella lives in a wrecked shuttle out in the Venusian desert, cared for by her brother Roco despite his habit of drifting into trouble. He sends her a music box, unaware to her that it conceals Grey Ash seeds, and she waits for him to visit. Instead, Spike Spiegel arrives searching for Roco. She first holds him at gunpoint, but grows unsteady and stumbles, and once Spike explains his purpose the two fall into easy conversation, she finding him as trustworthy as her brother.

She is later admitted to a hospital, where the Grey Ash is used to treat her blindness. Believing Roco arranged the cure, she is met by Spike instead, who tells her that her brother has died. Robbed of the chance to ever see him, she asks Spike what Roco was like, and he answers that he was exactly as she already remembered him, no sight required.