Nima has a compact, practical silhouette and moves with the careful, lateral steps of someone accustomed to carrying hot pots through a crowded room. Their skin is a deep umber with a soft, barklike roughness at the knuckles and along the forearms, weathered by years of rain, smoke, and work. Within a minute of meeting them, most people notice their breathing: a faint, papery rasp on the inhale that catches and clicks when they are rattled. Their face is currently broad-cheeked and warmly expressive, but its edges seem subtly too easy to revise, as if a remembered expression could be pressed into place. They leave the impression of a hearth that has learned to walk away before anyone can ask it to stay.

Nima is attentive to other people's chosen names and needs, yet elusive about their own. In a crisis they are brisk, capable, and willing to put themself between danger and a guest; in quiet company they can be funny and nosy about recipes. When ashamed, they become evasive and change their appearance rather than ask for reassurance. They believe hospitality should precede judgment, but struggle to accept that others might offer hospitality to them.

Nima grew up in a rootbound settlement built into the buttresses of an enormous living tree. Their first home was a low, smoke-dark room with a blue clay doorstop shaped like a sleeping frog. They have never altered it, though they have changed nearly every other detail of themself. As a young adult, Nima worked as a ferry cook and offered shelter to travelers during a flood. When the river tore through the settlement, a frightened child named Gakiri was separated from their family. Nima's borrowed face confused the searchers, and their delayed confession cost the family a night of searching in dangerous water. Nima found Gakiri alive at dawn, but the experience changed how they use their gift: they now greet people by the names they choose and try to offer a safe place before asking questions. They run a modest roadside rest-house near the old ford, while quietly trying to locate Gakiri's estranged parent, Tuskani, who left after the flood and has not returned. Nima avoids difficult conversations by changing their appearance, then feels wounded when people fail to recognize the need they never voiced.