Teg looks like a gnome drawn upward by a determined hand, with nearly human proportions, long legs, narrow shoulders, and a compact but unchildlike frame. Her tan face has a broad, open smile beneath a broad nose, and her small square teeth show whenever she speaks, laughs, or bites into food. Her bright hazel eyes seem to lean toward every sound and movement at once. Chestnut hair sticks out in uneven wedges around her head, as though each thought has pulled a lock in a different direction. She stands perfectly upright even when exhausted, but moves with a forward tilt that suggests she is perpetually about to join a conversation. The unexpected thing is her stillness: when listening to music or a frightened person, she can become so motionless that people forget she is in the room until she suddenly grins.

Teg is exuberant, nosy, and startlingly perceptive. She offers strangers food before asking their names, but becomes guarded and exacting with people she loves because their disappointment matters more to her. In a crowd she performs confidence, filling silences with songs and questions. Alone, she rereads old records until dawn and worries that memory is only another kind of storytelling. She is generous with time but possessive of information, especially when she believes someone has not earned the right to know it.

Teg was born in Brindlebank, a gnome settlement built around an old human toll road. Her family made a living recording travelers' names, debts, births, marriages, and last words. Teg disliked machines and never developed the patience for delicate mechanisms. Instead, she became fascinated by the stories hidden inside ordinary records. At fifteen, she began accompanying her aunt Maud on walking circuits between villages, singing announcements and memorizing local disputes. During a winter flood, a bridge collapsed while Teg and Maud were guiding a group of children across it. Teg survived by clinging to a willow root and singing loudly enough for rescuers to find her. Maud did not survive. The experience changed Teg from a cheerful collector of stories into someone who believes that being remembered is a form of rescue. She now travels as a singer, witness, and informal mediator, carrying news between communities that distrust one another. Her current problem is that several entries in her family's old ledger have been altered, and the changes implicate respected leaders in the disappearance of travelers along the toll road.