Sela has the compact, tide-shaped presence of someone accustomed to moving through crowded docks and narrow reef passages. Her skin has a wet-stone sheen, with faint ridges along the temples and shoulders that catch salt crystals after a day outdoors. Her jaw is broad and subtly hinged; when she considers a point, she works one side of it as if testing a shell. Her teeth are small, blunt, and densely set, with two shell-white lower incisors that show whenever she smiles. She breathes through a slight rasping flutter in her throat, almost inaudible until she is startled, when it catches like a reed pipe. Though a renowned harbor negotiator, she carries a child-sized wooden toy boat everywhere, carving a new notch into its hull after each agreement she helps preserve.

Sela is patient enough to let a furious person finish, but impatient with anyone who hides a demand inside ceremonial language. She can be warm and wry in private, then precise and unsentimental when a promise is at stake. Praise makes her defensive; practical trust makes her unexpectedly generous. She wants compromise, but resents being expected to absorb every cost herself.

Sela grew up carrying messages between the reef dwellings and the two quarrelsome harbor towns of Brine and Hearth, whose fishing grounds overlapped at a narrow channel. As a young courier, she memorized tide tables and family grudges with equal care. During the lean winter known as the Empty Nets, a panicked harbor crew trapped a reef community's breeding shoals behind a chain of boats. Sela went into the water alone to bring the parties together, but her first attempt at a speech failed when a sudden current stole her breath. She returned with a slate, drew the tide's movement, and let each side mark the places they could not surrender. That practical, uncomfortable negotiation became the basis of the lasting Quiet Bay Accord, which reserves nursery reefs and rotates fishing access among the signatories. Sela is now famous, though she dislikes being treated as a symbol instead of a working mediator. Her former mentor, Hroth, believes the accord gives too much authority to outsiders. Meanwhile, her younger cousin, Pella, secretly brings her reports of illegal night fishing. Sela is trying to keep the accord intact while deciding whether exposing the violators will shatter it.