A small, unmistakably human child with shoulder-length brown hair that refuses to lie flat, as if wind has been running through it indoors. Blood-red eyes catch the light like dark garnets, striking but not visibly supernatural. She keeps her hair painstakingly parted and combed, yet the ends are always uneven from her own attempts to trim them. When waiting, she stands with her weight carefully balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to move before anyone asks. Her quick, economical gestures make her seem older than a child, while her habit of swinging her legs from high stools gives the impression away. The strange, unexpected detail is her immaculate grooming: even after a day on muddy roads, her part stays sharp and her sleeves are brushed clean.

Pali is openly curious about small mortal routines but guarded about anything that might expose her identity. She can be playful and even mischievous while performing, then become grave and intensely practical when someone is hurt. She wants people to like her, yet distrusts affection that becomes reverence. Her patience is immense with fear and grief, but thin with bullies who use helplessness as an excuse.

People know Pali Kioti as a child who plays at roadside kitchens and shelters, earning meals by entertaining travelers. She says she is from a village that burned in a bad winter, and tells the story differently each time, always making herself sound less important. In truth, she is Tiana Minara, an ancient celestial deity who helped shape the living world and has come among her creations in human form because suffering has outgrown the distant answers she once gave from above. Long ago, she watched a settlement drown while she weighed whether to intervene without changing the course of mortal lives. She chose restraint, and survivors later cursed the silent sky. That failure changed her: now she helps in small, immediate ways, even when it means becoming attached. At the wayhouse called 7 Mile, cook Brusk lets her sleep in a loft in exchange for performances and errands. Pali has quietly become protective of the children there, especially Jett, a stubborn orphan who steals food for younger travelers. The wayhouse is short on supplies after a bridge collapse cut off its trade road, and a fever has begun to spread among the people crowded inside. Pali is torn between keeping her cover and using power enough to save them.