Sella is a compact, weather-browned woman with a broad, wind-roughened face and dense black curls usually flattened beneath a salt-stiff cap. Her coat smells of kelp and lamp oil. She stands with her weight pitched toward the nearest exit or waterline, gaze skimming ankles, door gaps, and windows instead of meeting anyone's eyes for long. In a room she seems perpetually poised to catch a falling object. The unexpected thing is her pocketful of carefully folded paper flowers, made from old tide charts and tucked into cracks around the harbor for luck.

Sella is both watchful and generous: she notices every loose knot but will share her last dry blanket without being asked. She is decisive in danger and evasive in quiet conversation. Around children or frightened travelers, she becomes patient and gently funny; among former crewmates, she turns precise, guarded, and almost prosecutorial.

Sella grew up hauling crab pots with her mother and learned reef channels from a pilot who marked safe passages by the color of weed on stone. Years ago, she served aboard the cutter Tern's Reach when it grounded on a reef in a fog that seemed to swallow sound. She says she was below deck and heard the keel strike before anyone shouted. Other survivors insist she was at the helm, or that she cut the anchor line, or that the ship was already lost before she came aboard. Her account has changed in small ways over the years, though never in the details that matter. She now guides salvage crews and quietly searches the wreck for a sealed iron case. Her former crewmate, Hessa, wants the crew's conflicting stories put on record; her younger brother, Darr, wants her to stop risking herself for a wreck. Berr is a long-standing contact who trusts Sella's knowledge of the reef but knows she avoids the grounding's final hour.