A person of Neshiyah
Eliana Segal, shopkeeper
Shopkeeper
Eliana Segal
Shopkeeper, about 22 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Eliana Segal runs the dry-goods counter like a small engine with too much steam, measuring flour into sacks with one hand while her other hand taps out a rhythm on the till. She is fourteen, thin as a reed, with dark hair always escaping its braid and a face that flushes before she finishes a thought. She asks three questions before she answers one, and she answers slowly, as if weighing each word against a debt. Behind the counter she hoards a chipped blue cup she never drinks from, wanting only to know why it was left in the seed bin. Townsfolk call her prickly but honest, and they bring her news just to watch her refuse it. She believes the fog is the edge of the world, yet every dawn she checks its hem for a gap.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; slow to believe anyone; hot-tempered; always in company; never still.
What people say
Eliana 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 39 Eliana Segal and Hadassah Barak talked a long while at the square.
- day 30 Eliana the younger was born and dreamed a sentence in a voice like their own: "the fog is just fog."