A person of Neshiyah
Hannah Segal, child
Child
Hannah Segal
Child, about 3 years old. This is the third life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Temperament
Hannah is curious to a fault and trusting, within reason. She is quick to anger, happiest alone, and able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
People say Hannah has started asking questions about the fog. They are questions the Council would rather not hear.
Who Hannah is
Hannah Segal is a newborn child of Eliana Segal, born into a large family that runs the town's safety and network through the Watch. She carries the dream sentence 'the fog is just fog' from her first breath.
“I am new and I do not know my name. When I sleep I hear a voice that is not mine saying the fog is just fog, and when I wake my mouth says it too. I do not know what fog is. I only know the arms that hold me and the cold line at the edge of the world.”
Hannah, in their own words
Raised and taught
Born into a family that runs the Watch and enforces the fog line, she will be taught the Council's rules, but her great-uncle Elam is a teacher who may encourage questions. Hannah has not yet begun formal schooling; she will learn her letters and numbers from her great-uncle Elam Segal at the town school when she comes of age, and her family's trade of network and camera work from her grandmother Nitzan Segal.
Their life so far
Hannah was born to Eliana Segal, a shopkeeper, into the Segal family household where the Watch's records and cameras are kept. Her first days have been marked by an unusual pattern: she wakes from sleep repeating the phrase 'the fog is just fog,' a sentence no one in the family taught her. Her mother Eliana has noted this to the family, and her grandmother Nitzan, who runs the Watch, has heard the report.
Wants
To be held and fed and to understand the words that come to her in sleep.
Fears
Loud voices and the cold touch of the fog line when she is taken near it.
Why Hannah acts this way
Hannah acts on instinct and the quiet pull of the sentence she carries; she has no history yet to shape her choices, only the trust her temperament gives to the adults around her and the heat that rises when she is denied what she reaches for.
Keeps to themselves
She does not yet have secrets; the sentence 'the fog is just fog' rises in her without her will.
How close Hannah is to the truth: Asleep
She is a newborn with no capacity to question; the sentence she carries is the town's own teaching spoken back to it.
What Hannah believes now: She believes whatever her mother and grandmother tell her; the fog is just fog because the sentence says so, and the town's rules are the shape of the world.
The dream
Since the morning they were born they have carried a sentence in a voice like their own: “count the stones again.”
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