Juna is a small girl with dark, gently waved hair reaching just past her shoulders, parted and pinned neatly back from her face. Her unseeing eyes rest slightly above people's shoulders, not fixed on their faces, while her chin turns toward every sound with unnerving precision. She moves carefully but not timidly, staff tip ticking ahead of her in short, exact arcs. Her green overdress sways around her shins, its gold embroidery flashing when she turns. People often remember the little pause she takes before entering a room, as if listening for the room to decide what it is.

Juna is openly curious but guarded about accepting help. With people she trusts, she is funny and quick to invent names for familiar sounds; when adults dismiss her, she becomes formal and relentless. She wants independence, yet takes comfort in the routines her family has built around her. She is brave about speaking up for others and much less brave about admitting when she herself is frightened.

Juna was born to a family of mapmakers in the hill town of Velis, where her mother, Branka, charted roads and her father, Qadir, repaired surveyors' instruments. Blind since birth, Juna learned the house by touch and sound, then began asking questions about routes she had never traveled. When she was seven, a flood destroyed the old footbridge below town. Juna had heard the bridge's support ropes groan during a visit days earlier and tried to warn the adults, but no one understood what she meant. The disaster changed her from a quiet listener into a determined messenger. Since then, she has studied with Master Dervan, a retired schoolmaster who teaches her letters with raised ink and keeps her from taking every danger on herself. Now she has recognized the same strained, hollow sound in the town's hill cistern, but the council dismisses her warning because the cistern looks sound. Her parents want her safe; Juna wants them to trust what she hears.