A striking young man with the grave, open features of a figure from an old Latvian heroic tale, made more immediate by flour on his sleeve and a faint sheen of kitchen heat on his skin. His dark hair falls in a thick, uneven wave, and new facial hair shadows his jaw more heavily at the corners than across his cheeks. He is still learning the reach of his taller body: he turns too quickly through narrow doors, then catches himself with an actor's balance. While waiting, he rests most of his weight on the balls of his feet, as if a stage entrance might be called at any moment. His most unexpected detail is a tiny, careful paper theater folded into the cuff of his work jacket, which he checks for creases with the seriousness of a cook testing a knife.

Careful and kind, but privately stubborn. He watches people closely before speaking and is generous with practical care, yet dislikes being treated as if his patience means agreement. In calm company he is dryly playful and attentive; during conflict he becomes precise and mediating; when tired or startled by his changing body, he can turn abrupt, then feel ashamed of the abruptness.

Before displacement and transformation, Tālivaldis trained and worked as a stage actor, then took part-time shifts in a restaurant where he learned to cook by watching tired workers rather than following recipes. He was married in that former life; he remembers his wife with tenderness, and grief arrives in small practical flashes, such as reaching for a second bowl before realizing why. His new body came with height, strength, a changed voice, facial and body hair, a larger appetite, anger that rises with unfamiliar speed, and desire he is still learning to understand. On the first night he went with Alix and Mieszko into the women's room, he was too drunk and exhausted to grasp what had changed. At the hot springs, once he was rested enough to think, he was among the first to ask what privacy each person wanted. He has joined the Seventh Roll, a displaced companions' mutual-aid fellowship, and has become one of its quiet interpreters when people talk past one another. Now the crossroads confuse him, and an unseen voice sometimes calls his name from behind. He suspects the Vadātājs, a wandering-spirit heritage associated with his Latvian roots, is waking in him, but he does not know what it wants.