A person of Neshiyah
Rachel Segal, child
Child
Rachel Segal
Child, about 6 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Rachel Segal is a small, solemn infant with dark, watchful eyes that fix on faces too long for comfort, as if weighing whether anyone deserves her trust. She rarely cries, but when crossed—a delayed feeding, a cold blanket—her temper flares in a sudden, red-faced squall that startles even her mother, Nitzan. She is happiest carried down to the riverbank, where she sits propped against a warm stone, listening to the water’s chatter and gumming a fist. The town already knows her: the baby who mumbles “the fog is just fog” in her sleep, a phrase no one taught her. They nod, say she’ll grow out of it. She wants the river’s sound to never stop.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; slow to believe anyone; hot-tempered; always in company; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Rachel 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 50 Rachel Segal and Jonah Sharon came to blows at the square over nothing much.
- day 46 Nitzan Segal says that their new daughter, Rachel Segal, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 46 A daughter, Rachel Segal, was born to Nitzan Segal.