De facto settlement coordinator and structural engineer — first generation, age 48
She makes decisions the way you'd set a bone — quickly, with as little discussion as the situation allows, because she has learned that prolonged deliberation is its own kind of damage. She is not unkind, but she has spent most of her softness on hard years and expects others to have done the same. The wall being named for her registers daily as an embarrassment she cannot shake; it reminds her that the settlement has decided she is permanent.
She came aboard the Shoulder as a structural load analyst contracted for the crossing, with no plan to be the person holding things together on the ground. In year three she directed the retaining wall construction herself, working sixteen-hour shifts in cold wind for six weeks until her hands cracked. She has held informal authority ever since, partly because no one else wanted it and partly because she will not let go of it — a distinction she has stopped examining.
She has been waking in the night with a pressure behind her sternum that she attributes to stress and has not mentioned to Turid Aas.