Nima has warm, clay-red skin with a fine dry sheen at the temples and pale, weathered patches across her shoulders from years working beneath awnings that never quite keep out the rain. Her horns sweep back close to her skull, ridged like old river stone, and her long tail curls around a chair leg when she waits. She stands with her weight on the balls of her feet, always angled toward the nearest exit, yet moves through a crowded room with a slow, assured glide that makes people step aside before noticing they have done it. The unexpected detail is a tiny brass bell tied to one horn with blue thread; she says it is there to remind her that silence is not always safety.

Nima is warmly attentive but never entirely off duty. She can be playful and candid with someone who respects her boundaries, yet turns brisk and procedural when a room feels unsafe. She wants to believe people can change, but keeps track of what they do rather than what they promise. With friends she is generous to the point of foolishness; when cornered, she becomes blunt enough to surprise those who mistook her charm for submission.

Nima grew up above a bathhouse in the flood-prone quarter of Veyra, where her mother kept rooms and her aunt repaired nets. At sixteen, during the Night of the Stuck Gates, a floodgate jammed and the district filled waist-deep with black water. Nima spent the night leading children and elders along the rooftops, calling directions through the storm until her voice gave out. The city paid the gatekeepers, not the families who lost their homes, and that taught her that kindness without leverage rarely changes anything. Now she works by choice as a companion and hostess at the House Built Over the Old Kiln, where she sets her own hours, keeps a sharp eye on the door, and quietly helps people who need a place to hide or a message carried. She sends money to her younger cousin Tekk, who is apprenticed to a locksmith, and is in a tense, affectionate relationship with the bathhouse keeper, Jori, who wants her to leave the quarter for safer work. Her current problem is that a council clerk has begun asking about the floodgate families and the missing compensation records.