A person of Neshiyah
Oren Kedem, gardener
Gardener
Oren Kedem
Gardener, about 114 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Oren Kedem tends the town’s vegetable terraces with a shovel worn smooth as a river stone, his back still straight at a hundred and seven. He does not ask why the fog stays, nor why the council posts its notices; he reads them and nods, then fines anyone he catches pacing the boundary with a measuring string, as he did to Miriam and Lior on separate mornings. His temper flares quick as a struck match—he once shouted at a goat for eating his seedlings—but it dies just as fast, and he can sit through a long harvest meeting without a word. The town sees him as their oldest fixed point, a man who believes the fields need working whether the world ends at the wall or not. What he wants, quietly, is for the younger Oren to come back from the mill and learn the proper way to stake beans.
Temperament
Content not to ask; quick to believe what they are told; hot-tempered; friendly enough; able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
Oren Kedem 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 36 Guard Oren Kedem fined Miriam Navon for measuring the fog.
- day 32 Guard Oren Kedem fined Lior Shalev for measuring the fog.
- day 29 Hosea and Oren the younger talked a long while at the mill.