A person of Neshiyah
Gad Ofer, child
Child
Gad Ofer
Child, about 4 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Gad Ofer is barely three, a small, sturdy presence who trails the miller’s boy, Oren Erez, like a patient shadow, asking the same question twice and believing the answer both times. At the river, he sits with his legs over the bank, watching the water carry leaves, his fingers tracing patterns in the dirt. He has a habit of touching his own ear when he concentrates, as if holding a thought inside. The town smiles at him, calls him easy. But at night, Malachi reports, the boy wakes and says, clear as a bell, “The fog is just fog.” Gad wants to know what the river is for, and he believes it has an answer.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; quick to believe what they are told; even-tempered; always in company; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Gad Ofer 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 51 Gad Ofer and Oren Erez talked a long while at the mill.
- day 48 Malachi Ofer says that their new son, Gad Ofer, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 48 A son, Gad Ofer, was born to Malachi Ofer.