Cevora is an elderly human woman with a compact, slightly stooped frame and a deliberate gait, placing each foot as carefully as if testing a church floorboard. Her skin is weathered and fine-lined, with a warm brown cast; wisps of silver hair escape a linen kerchief and cling to her temples in damp weather. Her broad hands are dry and deeply creased, their fingertips roughened by decades of kneading dough, scrubbing floors, and turning stubborn pages. She smells distinctly of beeswax, boiled onions, and the faint mineral tang of rain-soaked wool, and is entirely unaware that the combination announces her arrival before her voice does. The unexpected detail: she keeps a tiny paper windmill tucked into her sleeve and sets it spinning whenever a child is frightened.

Cevora is warmly attentive but fiercely protective of people's privacy. She jokes easily with children and travelers, yet becomes stubborn and unsentimental when someone uses rules to deny shelter. She believes in prayer, but distrusts anyone who claims to know exactly why another person suffers. When tired, she grows brisk and practical rather than gentle.

Cevora was born in a mill hamlet where the river regularly took bridges and sometimes people. As a young woman she served as a washer and kitchen helper at the parish near Silt Ford, learning to read from discarded prayer sheets and listening to travelers who mistook a busy kitchen for a safe place to confess. During a spring flood, she disobeyed the priest's order to stay indoors and waded out with a rope to guide stranded families to the bell tower. One child survived; her younger brother did not. That loss made her less certain that suffering has a tidy purpose, and more certain that a person in danger needs a hand before a sermon. She eventually became the parish's lay caretaker and, after the old priest died, its unofficial spiritual center. Gero Klausner has been coming to her for years. She gives him a place to sit and never asks about the devotional he carries. Her current troubles include a leaking roof, a parish fund too small to repair it, and pressure from local officials to turn away travelers without papers. She quietly refuses.