A person of Neshiyah
Joel Segal, child
Child
Joel Segal
Child, about 1 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Joel Segal, barely a year old, is a small engine of motion, forever twisting in his father’s arms to see the grain sacks or the harness buckles. He trusts the hands that hold him, even as he leans out toward the thresher’s low hum, and his temper holds steady through a dropped toy or a missed nap. He wants to be put down, always, to crawl the dirt floor of the grange and test the weight of a single oat. The town watches him with a quiet, collective squint, because his first sleep-talking was clear as a bell, and he still mumbles it at dawn: *the fog is just fog*. No one laughs. Benaiah just turns his son’s face to the pale wall and works the fields anyway.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; trusting, within reason; hard to anger; always in company; never still.
What people say
Joel 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 59 Benaiah Segal says that their new son, Joel Segal, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 59 A son, Joel Segal, was born to Benaiah Segal.
People on this page
Benaiah Segal