A person of Neshiyah
Naomi Erez, child
Child
Naomi Erez
Child, about 1 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Naomi Erez is eleven months old, a white-blonde blur on the kitchen linoleum, pulling up on the stove leg while her mother shells peas into a chipped enamel bowl. She does not crawl; she launches, knees bruised purple from the sprint across uneven floorboards. Her habit is the index finger, extended and rigid, aimed at the fog bank pressing against the west windows — not pointing, exactly, more like measuring the distance between her knuckle and the grey wall. She wants the wooden spoon her father uses to stir the mash, the one with the burnt handle, and she screams without tears when it disappears into the drawer. The town calls her Caleb's shadow. Old Marta at the counter says the child has no fear of the boundary, and that is worse than fear.
Temperament
Naomi is curious to a fault and quick to believe what she is told. She is hard to anger, friendly enough, and never still for long.
What people say
Naomi believes what everyone believes. The fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working either way.
Who Naomi is
Naomi Erez is the newborn daughter of Caleb Erez, already marked by the town's oldest teaching as her first words. She is an infant with no trade, no ledger entry of her own yet, but her dream sentence has made her a quiet curiosity among the few who have heard it.
“I am new, and already I know a lie. The words come from somewhere behind my eyes, older than my father's hands. I do not know what fog is, only that I am told to say it is just fog. I wonder what happens when I stop saying it.”
Naomi, in their own words
Raised and taught
Born into a family that follows the Council's rules but watches the edges, she will be raised with the teachings in her ears and her uncle's notebook in the drawer. She has learned nothing yet but the rhythm of her father's breathing and the cadence of the evening broadcast drifting through the window. Her schooling will begin at the town school when she is old enough to walk there, taught by whichever master the Council assigns.
Their life so far
Naomi Erez was born to Caleb Erez in the late autumn, a quiet birth recorded in the Ledger without complication. From her first nights she has woken murmuring the phrase the Council teaches every child: 'the fog is just fog,' though no one has spoken it to her. Caleb has told no one outside the household, but Levi Erez, the nurse, heard it during a visit and wrote it in his notebook. The town has not yet decided what, if anything, it means.
Wants
To be held, fed, and to understand the words that rise in her throat before she knows their meaning.
Fears
The cold, the dark, and the fog she names without knowing what it is.
Why Naomi acts this way
She acts on instinct alone, driven by hunger and comfort, but the sentence she carries pulls her toward the fog line in a way no infant should understand. Her life will be shaped by whether the town treats her as a miracle, a mistake, or a message.
Keeps to themselves
She dreams in a voice that is not her own, saying the town's lesson before she has learned it.
How close Naomi is to the truth: Asleep
She speaks the town's central doctrine as a dream sentence before being taught it, but has no capacity to question or understand it; her awareness is purely passive.
What Naomi believes now: She believes nothing yet. The fog is a word she speaks, not a thing she knows. The town's teachings will fill her before she can question them.
The dream
Since the morning they were born they have carried a sentence in a voice like their own: “the festival is always the night after.”
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