A person of Neshiyah
Yarden Eshel, surveyor
Surveyor
Yarden Eshel
Surveyor, about 92 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Yarden Eshel still works the way he always has, squinting through his brass level as if the fog might lift for him personally, then jotting numbers in a soft pencil that smudges on his thumb. He is quick to trust any stranger’s word about a boundary stone or a buried culvert, and quicker to argue it, red-faced, until someone buys him tea. Most days he ends up by the river, the instrument case propped beside him, talking to whoever sits down. The town knows him as the old man who measured their lots and never once charged a widow. He wants the fog to stay, because he has not finished mapping what it hides, and he believes, without proof, that the ground beneath him was laid there kindly.
Temperament
Curious when something is in front of them; quick to believe what they are told; hot-tempered; always in company; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Yarden Eshel 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 52 Tobiah Sharon and Yarden Eshel sat a long while at the mill comparing what they had seen. They talked about what they had each measured, and whether the instruments could be wrong. They did not agree.
- day 48 A guard at the end of the east road turned Yarden Eshel back at the fog line with a reminder that the Council prefers people to stay at their work.
- day 46 A guard at the end of the south road turned Yarden Eshel back at the fog line with a reminder that the Council prefers people to stay at their work.
- day 43 Yarden Eshel and Obed Golan talked a long while at the square.
- day 30 Yarden the younger sat by the Lethe doing nothing and came back quietly sure that this place was made on purpose by someone who is not against us.