A person of Neshiyah
Itai Segal, child
Child
Itai Segal
Child, about 17 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Itai Segal is nine, with the direct, unhurried gaze of someone who has already decided that the world will wait for them. In the fields, they work beside the older children, their small hands steady on the hoe, and they can sit through a long harvest meal without fidgeting, listening to the grown-ups talk. Their one habit is to hum a half-tune, always the same three notes, when they are concentrating. They want a dog—a brown one, with a white chest. The town sees Itai as a quiet, reliable child, though Elam Segal sometimes catches them staring at the fog line with an expression that is not fear, but a kind of patient, private question. They believe the fog is the edge of the world, like everyone does, but they also carry a sentence from a dream they cannot shake: *the fog is just fog.* They have never said it aloud since the first time, and they do not know why it feels like a secret they are keeping for someone else.
Temperament
Curious when something is in front of them; trusting, within reason; hard to anger; always in company; able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
Itai Segal 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 45 Levi Ben-Ami and Itai Segal came to blows at the square over nothing much.
- day 35 Elam Segal says that their new daughter, Itai Segal, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 35 A daughter, Itai Segal, was born to Elam Segal.