Sivri is a slim young woman with the springy balance of someone accustomed to moving over wet roofs and swaying branches. Her medium-length hair streams sideways in an invisible, steady breeze, lifting loose wisps from her temples even in a sealed room. The ends flutter like grass above a hilltop. Her teeth are unusually broad and close-set; when she laughs, her lower jaw shifts forward and the grin looks almost like a small, delighted animal's. She eats quickly, pausing between bites to taste the air. She walks with her shoulders loose and her feet placed softly, as if each step is a question the ground can answer. People tend to remember her as bright, colorful, and a little difficult to pin down.

Generally sunny and generous, Sivri welcomes strangers with food and questions, but she has little patience for people who treat good intentions as a substitute for consequences. She is playful when safe, methodical when working, and suddenly fierce when someone endangers a community for convenience. She wants to trust others, yet keeps checking whether their promises have roots.

Sivri grew up in a windmill hamlet whose gardens depended on a narrow stream and the mill's turning blades. Her mother, Kitti, kept the mill running; her father, Tamas, was a traveling seed collector who taught her to recognize plants by smell before sight. When Sivri was fourteen, a spring flood broke the millrace. She followed the water through the dark channels to find a trapped child and discovered that a new stone culvert, secretly cut by the hamlet's reeve, had diverted the stream toward his private orchard. Sivri freed the child but could not save the lower gardens. The loss left her cheerful in company yet furious at careless power. She apprenticed herself to a wandering druid named Gerg, learned to heal damaged soil, and eventually returned home to help restore the stream. Now the old culvert is failing, the reeve's successor wants to widen it, and Sivri's mother fears that another public dispute will cost the family its mill. Sivri sends small parcels of seeds to her father, who has not come home in three years, and pretends not to count the seasons between them.