A person of Neshiyah
Naomi Nir, child
Child
Naomi Nir
Child, about 12 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Naomi Nir sits quietly on the square’s low wall, wearing a patched wool coat that almost fits, watching Orpah Segal mend a basket. Her hands rest flat on her knees, still as a cat’s, but her gray eyes move constantly—counting, sorting, filing away the world. She asks the same question three times, not to be stubborn, but because she wants to be sure. When she decides something is true, she keeps it. The town has grown used to her sudden, precise questions, and to the phrase she repeats in her sleep, which no one can explain. She wants to see what happens when a wagon goes through the fog and comes back, though no wagon has yet. The adults call her old-souled and leave her be.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; slow to believe anyone; even-tempered; always in company; able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
Naomi Nir 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 43 Orpah Segal and Naomi Nir talked a long while at the square.
- day 40 Joel Nir says that their new daughter, Naomi Nir, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 40 A daughter, Naomi Nir, was born to Joel Nir.