A person of Neshiyah
Eli Segal, child
Child
Eli Segal
Child, about 18 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Eli Segal is a small, wiry ten-year-old with smudged elbows and the kind of focused squint that makes adults check their own pockets. They work the turnip rows beside their mother, quick hands steadying seedlings, but every few minutes their head lifts—counting birds, watching wind shift the fog wall. They carry a knotted string in their pocket, knotted each time they pace the town’s edge, trying to catch the mist in the act of moving. Town guards have fined them twice for leaning too far with a measuring stick; Eli paid both fines in saved egg money without complaint. Everyone likes Eli, though no one quite trusts the calm way they say, “The fog is just fog,” before returning to the soil. They want to see what a field looks like after rain, from the outside.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; slow to believe anyone; even-tempered; always in company; never still.
What people say
Eli 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 47 Eli Segal the child found a seventh stone block in the quarry, where the survey lists six.
- day 44 Guard Adah Gefen fined Eli Segal for measuring the fog.
- day 35 Guard Ira Hadar fined Eli Segal for measuring the fog.
- day 34 Elam Segal says that their new son, Eli Segal, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 34 A son, Eli Segal, was born to Elam Segal.