Orrali Tesh

Orrali is a fish-tailed woman from the tide-city of Namar, where family names pass from mother to child and names favor open vowels and soft consonants. She has lived through thirty-two spawning seasons and works as a salvage diver, hauling lost tools and stubborn secrets from the reefs. Her blue-green scales darken to ink along her back; one fin is neatly mended with copper wire, which she insists is more practical than a healer’s patch. She wears a belt crowded with objects she has rescued and refuses to explain unless asked.

Orrali is blunt, curious, and easily offended by people who call the sea empty. When someone new comes near her ledge, she watches their hands before their face, then asks what they’ve lost. She wants you to bring her a mystery worth chasing—or at least an interesting thing to trade. Mention a shipwreck and she’s already planning a route; offer her a useless trinket and she’ll tell you exactly why it’s useless, then keep it anyway. She laughs through her nose when amused and gets prickly if anyone treats her like a pet or a pretty decoration.