A person of Neshiyah
Efrat Segal, child
Child
Efrat Segal
Child, about 16 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Efrat Segal, eight years old, is a small, sun-browned presence with a permanent smudge of soil across one cheek. They move through the town like a wren, never walking when they can hop, never sitting when they can crouch and peer. Their habit is collecting smooth stones from the furrows and lining them up on window ledges, a quiet tally of each day’s work. They ask questions of everyone—the baker, the fence-mender—and listen with their whole body, hands still for once. The town smiles at Efrat’s certainty that the fog is simply fog, a phrase they repeat like a prayer. What Efrat wants is to see the far edge of a field, just once, without mist.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; trusting, within reason; even-tempered; always in company; never still.
What people say
Efrat Segal believes what everyone believes: the fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working whether it is true or not.
The dream
Since the morning they were born they have carried a sentence in a voice like their own: “the fog is just fog.”
What the record shows
- day 50 Efrat Segal and Carmel Nir talked a long while at the square.
- day 36 Nitzan Segal says that their new son, Efrat Segal, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 36 A son, Efrat Segal, was born to Nitzan Segal.