Shopkeeper

Simeon Dagan

Shopkeeper, about 27 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.

Simeon Dagan runs the dry-goods shop their family left them, a narrow room that smells of rope and soap. At twenty, they move with a young person’s abruptness, wiping the counter with a rag that is never quite clean, then stopping to stare at a crack in the floor as if it might answer. They are happiest at the riverbank after closing, skipping stones and saying nothing. Most townsfolk find them polite but short, and they have learned not to ask Simeon about their dreams. The one thing Simeon wants is to see the fog lift, just once, though they will not say why. Their habit is counting the till three times before locking up, as if numbers might betray them. Only Maayan Zohar gets a long conversation out of them, and only on the day the fog came low and gray, and Simeon stood in the square and listened.

Temperament

Curious when something is in front of them; slow to believe anyone; hot-tempered; happiest alone; given to sitting by the river.

What people say

Simeon Dagan 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 32 Simeon Dagan and Maayan Zohar talked a long while at the square.
• day 25 Simeon was born and dreamed a sentence in a voice like their own: "the fog is just fog."

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