Misketh's peach-colored skin has a salt-polished sheen over her shoulders and a faint, fine roughness along her forearms from hauling reed baskets through tidal pools. Her long purple hair drifts in slow ribbons underwater, but on shore she binds it in a clumsy coil with eelgrass. Neon-pink eyes catch light like bright glass, and her long mermaid tail is a deep violet fading to translucent lilac at its broad, frayed-looking fin. She moves with quick, darting turns in water and awkward, determined scoots on land. Within a minute, most people notice the little brass wind-up beetle she wears on a cord: its paint is worn entirely away on the left side where her thumb rubs it when she is thinking.

Misketh is bold when a problem is physical and immediate, but evasive when asked about her own feelings. Around adults who dismiss her, she turns sharp and stubborn; with frightened children, she becomes patient and gently funny. She craves independence, yet keeps returning to her family for reassurance and approval.

Misketh was born in a tide-channel settlement built beneath the pilings of the human harbor of Oruvan, where her family gathered shellfish and repaired storm nets. At nine, a sudden spring surge broke the settlement's outer cages and swept her younger cousin, Temur, into a flooded drain. Misketh found a narrow passage through the pilings and pulled him free, but the current carried away their winter food stores. Since then, she has learned the harbor's hidden waterways and takes odd jobs guiding boats through submerged hazards. Her mother, Savaa, wants her to keep to safe shallows; her cousin Temur admires her recklessness and copies it badly. Lately, the harbor's new sluice gates have been trapping fish and choking the channels. Misketh has tried to persuade the surface workers to repair them, but she has not told her family that she has been sneaking into the machinery at night.