Rivka Gefen

Child, about 2 years old. This is the third life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.

Rivka sits on the riverbank in her father's discarded coat, the hem dragging in silt, watching the water carry leaves past the fog line without pause. She does not reach for them. Her dark hair falls across her forehead in a cut her mother gave with kitchen shears, uneven at the temples, and she pushes it back with a motion too deliberate for fourteen months. When the valley fever burned through her on day 131, she never cried, only stared at the ceiling beams while Uriel wiped her face with cloths dipped in vinegar water. The sentence lives behind her eyes, quiet and absolute: the fog is just fog. She wants to touch the far bank. The town calls her lucky to have survived, and keeps their children close when she passes.

Temperament

Rivka is curious when something is right in front of her and slow to believe anyone. She is even-tempered, friendly enough, and often found sitting quietly by the river.

What people say

Rivka believes what everyone believes. The fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working either way.

Who Rivka is

Rivka Gefen is the newborn daughter of Uriel Gefen, who runs the Exchange, making her part of one of the town's most visible families. She is known only as the infant who wakes murmuring the town's own catechism.

“I am small and the world is large and loud. When I sleep I say the words they all say, but I did not learn them from anyone. I do not know why they come. I only know the cold and the warm and the arms that hold me.”
Rivka, in their own words

Raised and taught

Born into a household that obeys the Council's rules publicly but watches the Ledger and the loans privately, she will be taught the catechism and also shown where the numbers do not balance. None yet; she will attend the town school when of age and likely learn her letters from whatever tutor her father engages, as is customary for Exchange children.

Their life so far

She was born to Uriel Gefen in the late autumn and, from her first nights, has repeated the phrase "the fog is just fog" in her sleep, a sentence the Council teaches every child to say. Her father has noted it to the family, calling it a curiosity, but no one has brought it to the Council or the Chapel. She spends her days in the rooms above the Exchange, held by her mother or passed among aunts and uncles who all know the phrase by heart.

Wants

To be held, fed, and allowed to sleep without the phrase rising unbidden.

Fears

The cold draft by the window and the loud voices from the Exchange floor below.

Why Rivka acts this way

She is an infant driven by comfort and instinct; the repetition of the phrase is a reflex she cannot control, and her only aim is to return to the warmth of sleep. Her family's attention to it shapes the world she will grow into, but she does not yet act on reason.

Keeps to themselves

The phrase feels like her own thought, not something she was taught, though she has no words for that difference.

Family