A person of Neshiyah
Hannah Barak, pharmacist
Pharmacist
Hannah Barak
Pharmacist, about 24 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Hannah Barak, at sixteen, is already a fixture at the pharmacy counter, her small hands measuring powders with a brisk, unhesitating precision that belies her age. She works without looking up, a faint frown of concentration on her face, and has a habit of tapping the glass vial three times before setting it down, a private rhythm. She is slow to trust a diagnosis or a story, but her temper is quick, and her laugh is louder than the mill’s clatter. The town knows her as the girl who sits by the Lethe, watching the water, and who once struck Shai Ofer over a trifle. She wants to understand the purpose she felt that day on the riverbank. They see her as solid, stubborn, and quietly certain that the fog is just fog, even as she works the fields with everyone else.
Temperament
Content not to ask; slow to believe anyone; hot-tempered; always in company; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Hannah Barak 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 44 Hannah Barak sat by the Lethe doing nothing and came back quietly sure that this place was made on purpose by someone who is not against us.
- day 40 Hannah Barak and Shai Ofer came to blows at the mill over nothing much.
- day 29 Hannah and Oren the younger talked a long while at the square.
- day 28 Hannah was born and dreamed a sentence in a voice like their own: "the fog is just fog."