Werek looks like a young, thin human woman at first glance, until light catches the fine, glistening sheen across her pale blue skin, as if she has just stepped out of rain. Tiny beads of moisture gather along her temples and collarbones, then vanish when she is anxious. Her short, dark hair clings in damp, uneven curls around her jaw. Aquatic green eyes hold a steady, tide-pool brightness. She wears long, loose garments that stream behind her when she turns, leaving her arms bare. The hems are repeatedly mended with mismatched thread, while one sleeve is painstakingly folded and refolded into a precise narrow pleat. She waits with her weight on the balls of her feet, as if feeling for a current beneath the floor, and moves in sudden, gliding shifts rather than ordinary steps. Her unexpected habit of carefully pleating one sleeve gives her an oddly fussy air beneath all that river-wildness.

Werek is eager to help but distrustful of anyone who calls help a debt. She can be patient with frightened strangers and impatient with people who insist they know what a river will do. In company she jokes about small mishaps; alone, she rehearses difficult conversations until she can barely begin them. She wants to be seen as dependable, yet resists being depended on too completely.

Werek grew up in a floodplain hamlet where her mother, Tünde, repaired nets and her father, Doru, ferried people across the river. As a child she learned to read the water by its smell and the way reeds leaned. At fourteen, a sudden night flood broke the village's old sluice. Werek heard voices trapped below the mill and, terrified, released a surge of magic that tore open a channel through the mill wall. The channel saved three people, including her younger cousin, but swept away the home of the ferryman Szel and left him with a ruined boat. Werek's magic has been growing ever since, answering fear more quickly than intention. She left home to find the drowned shrine said to lie beneath the river's oldest bend, hoping to learn why it answers her. She sends what little money she can to her parents, avoids Szel's letters, and is quietly gathering evidence that a local landholder has been diverting the river to protect his fields.