A person of Neshiyah
Hannah Gefen, child
Child
Hannah Gefen
Child, about 5 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Hannah Gefen is a small, quick child, all elbows and bare feet, who treats the town’s dirt paths as a personal obstacle course. She is happiest squatting in a furrow, turning over clods with a stick, her dark hair falling into her eyes, her attention fixed entirely on the worms and stones she unearths. She rarely cries and is slow to anger, but she is never still, a constant fidget at the edge of the harvest. The town notes her calm, her way of accepting a task without question, and the odd, quiet certainty she carries. She wants a small metal bucket of her own. They see her as a steady, strange little presence, already part of the field’s rhythm, and they do not ask what she is thinking.
Who Hannah is
Hannah Gefen is the youngest child of Oren and Miriam Gefen, a five-year-old girl known in town for her quiet, curious nature and her habit of saying strange things in her sleep.
“I am Hannah. I am five. When I sleep, I say something I did not learn. Everyone says it is nothing, but it feels like a memory. I like to watch the fog and think about it, but it is just fog, I guess.”
Hannah, in their own words
Raised and taught
Her parents are gentle but uneasy about her dream talk; they answer her questions but tell her not to dwell on the fog. Too young for formal schooling; she learns by watching her parents and older siblings, and from wandering the farm with her father, Oren.
Their life so far
Hannah was born to Oren and Miriam Gefen about five years ago. Since she was a baby, she has woken from sleep repeating the phrase "the fog is just fog," words no one taught her. She was recently weaned and now follows her father around the farm, asking endless questions about the fog that surrounds the town. She rarely speaks about her dreams to anyone except her older cousin Zipporah, who listens without laughing.
Wants
To understand the fog and why she keeps saying it is just fog, though no one taught her those words.
Fears
That if she stops asking about the fog, she will forget something important, though she does not know what.
Why Hannah acts this way
Hannah is motivated by simple curiosity and a need to be believed; her dreams feel real to her, and she wants an adult to take her seriously. She acts quietly and watches others, hoping to find a clue that explains the words she cannot place.
Keeps to themselves
She sometimes pretends to be asleep just to hear what her parents say about her, and she remembers their worried whispers.
How close Hannah is to the truth: Asleep
She feels that something is strange about her dream sentence, but she accepts her parents' explanation and has never questioned the fog itself.
What Hannah believes now: She is too young to think about the fog as anything but a fact of life. She wonders why she says the phrase, but her parents say it is just a dream, so she accepts that as an explanation.
Temperament
Curious when something is in front of them; quick to believe what they are told; hard to anger; happiest alone; never still.
What people say
Hannah Gefen 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 55 Oren Gefen says that their new daughter, Hannah Gefen, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 55 A daughter, Hannah Gefen, was born to Oren Gefen.
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