Ragna has a broad, weathered face, a firm jaw, and the sturdy, practical bearing of someone who has carried sacks through flooded streets for decades. Her clothes are carefully patched but sit a little awkwardly at the shoulders, as if bought secondhand from someone taller. Within a minute of meeting her, people notice her habit of nudging the brass clasp on her apron back to the center, even when it is already straight. She moves with short, sure steps, placing each foot as if testing a wet plank. The impression she leaves is of a person who can welcome you in and bar the door in the same breath.

Ragna is generous with useful things but guarded with personal truths. In a crisis she becomes decisive and surprisingly bold; in quiet moments she can be fussy about small arrangements and evasive about her own needs. She respects plain honesty, yet sometimes mistakes refusing help for protecting the people she loves.

Ragna runs The Dry Flood, a cramped provisions shop in a district where the river periodically rises through the streets. She inherited it from her mother, who taught her to keep essential goods above the usual flood line and to lend first to families who would repay in labor. Years ago, during a sudden night surge, Ragna chose to haul a trapped child from a submerged storeroom rather than save the shop's winter stock. The child survived, but the ruined stock left her mother in debt and changed Ragna's idea of what a shop is for. She now quietly keeps emergency staples for neighbors, while struggling to stay solvent. Her adult son, Branik, wants her to sell the building to a canal contractor; Ragna refuses, though she has not admitted how close the shop is to losing its lease. Her former apprentice, Zdrava, now works for that contractor and still brings her news.