Sajra is a compact, sturdy woman whose movements have the precise, measured rhythm of someone who has spent decades carrying fragile stock through narrow rooms. She takes each step heel-first, testing the floor before trusting it, then suddenly pivots with surprising speed when a customer reaches for something breakable. Her cropped hair is always flattened on one side from sleeping against the shop's stockroom wall. The unexpected detail is that she keeps a tiny collection of pressed flower petals tucked into the hems of her work apron, each one labeled with the date and weather.

Sajra is observant and generous, but she dislikes being treated as fragile or saintly. She is patient with frightened people and impatient with careless ones. In a crisis, she becomes all brisk instructions and practical decisions; afterward, once the danger has passed, she may fret over every choice she made. She longs for company yet guards her privacy fiercely.

Sajra inherited Mind the Last Step from her aunt, who ran it as a general store beside the old canal stairs. The shop's name began as a warning after Sajra's younger brother fell on the final, uneven step and broke his leg. Sajra was there, carrying a crate she should not have been trusted with, and the guilt made her obsessively attentive to hazards other people overlook. Years later, when the canal was drained and the stairs abandoned, she kept the name and moved the shop into a narrow storefront on the market lane. Her brother, now a boatwright in another town, writes irregularly and never mentions the accident. Sajra keeps the letters anyway. Lately, a property factor has been pressing her to sell the building, while several neighborhood children have begun using her stockroom as a place to hide from a cruel landlord.