A person of Neshiyah
Ira Yaron, cafe owner
Cafe owner
Ira Yaron
Cafe owner, about 87 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Ira Yaron moves through the café with a rag that is never quite dry, wiping counters and the backs of chairs long after the morning rush has thinned. At seventy-nine, their hands are knotted but steady, and they tilt their head at every customer’s story as if hearing it for the first time, nodding at tales of lost sheep or strange lights with genuine wonder. Their habit is to count the sugar bowls at closing, always twice, though nothing has ever gone missing. They want the quarry’s new stone block to mean something—a marker, a door, a message—and they ask everyone about it, believing each answer. The town sees them as its softest fixture: quick to forgive, slow to doubt, and utterly reliable in the fog’s gray quiet.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; quick to believe what they are told; hard to anger; friendly enough; able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
Ira Yaron believes what everyone believes: the fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working whether it is true or not.
What the record shows
- day 52 A guard at the end of the west road turned Ira Yaron back at the fog line with a reminder that the Council prefers people to stay at their work.
- day 49 Ira Yaron and Nathan Sharon talked a long while at the mill.
- day 36 Ira Yaron the cafe owner found a seventh stone block in the quarry, where the survey lists six.
- day 23 Ira the younger the cafe owner fell ill with the valley fever and lost three days to it.
- day 20 Amos the younger and Ira the younger came to blows at the mill over nothing much.
- day 20 Ira the younger the teacher measured the distance to the north fog and got two different answers, 212 paces out and 196 back.