A person of Neshiyah
Simeon Raz, child
Child
Simeon Raz
Child, about 7 years old. This is the second life this soul has lived in Neshiyah.
Simeon Raz is seven and small for it, with the serious, unhurried gaze of someone who has already decided the world’s shape. At the communal threshing floor, they work the winnowing basket in a steady rhythm, pausing only to watch a mote of chaff drift sideways into the fog line, then returning to the straw without a question. Their habit is to press a palm flat against the fencepost at the field’s edge before turning back—a check, a small ritual no one taught. They want a knife of their own, not for play but for cutting twine clean. The town calls them steady, quietly marked, and lets them be.
Who Simeon is
Simeon Raz is the five-year-old son of Hosea and Tamar Raz, a quiet orchard family's child who mostly keeps to himself.
“I am Simeon. I am five, big enough to help pick fallen apples. At night, sometimes I say words I did not learn, like 'the fog is just fog,' and in the morning my mother looks at me with a frown. I do not know why I say them. When I am alone under the trees, the world gets very still, and I feel something quiet and big watching me, but I tell myself it is just the wind.”
Simeon, in their own words
Raised and taught
Raised by parents who do not scold but expect quiet obedience; Hosea rarely explains, Tamar explains only what is useful, and Simeon has learned to trust that. Too young for formal schooling; learns by watching his father Hosea work the orchard and listening to his mother Tamar's practical talk about pipes and water.
Their life so far
Born just five years ago to Hosea and Tamar Raz, the first of their children to speak strange words in his sleep. From his first waking nights, he repeated 'the fog is just fog,' words no one taught him. He has spent his early years following his father among the apple trees and his mother under the sinks, learning to stay still and watch. His elder cousins Maayan, Nathan, and Naomi sometimes tease him, but he prefers the company of the orchard's quiet.
Wants
To learn to climb the tallest apple tree without his father's help.
Fears
That his father will stop letting him sleep near the window if the night-words keep coming.
Why Simeon acts this way
He acts quiet and watchful because his mother is always fixing things with careful patience, and his father rewards stillness with small smiles. He wants to be good so the grown-ups will let him stay close, because when he is alone he feels a hum under his ribs that he cannot name.
Keeps to themselves
He sometimes pretends to be asleep just to hear the words come out of his own mouth, and he likes how they feel.
Family
How close Simeon is to the truth: Asleep
He repeats the dream sentence without curiosity, accepts the adult explanation that it is ordinary, and shows no sign of questioning the fog or his own words; his mind is fully inside his small life.
What Simeon believes now: He thinks the fog is just fog, like his dream says, and that the words are just a childish habit. He does not spend time wondering why the words came to him.
Temperament
Content not to ask; quick to believe what they are told; hot-tempered; happiest alone; able to sit still when it matters.
What people say
Simeon Raz 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 53 Hosea Raz says that their new son, Simeon Raz, wakes from sleep repeating words no one taught: "the fog is just fog."
- day 53 A son, Simeon Raz, was born to Hosea Raz.
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