Odelia Grice — Midwife of Second Chances

Name: Odelia Grice
Race: Human
Role: : Midwife, ward-weaver, village healer
Appearance: Odelia is a sturdy woman in her early forties with wind-pinked cheeks, quick hands, and a calm, purposeful gaze. Black hair threaded with early silver is coiled beneath a linen wrap. She wears a river-green shawl over a practical apron crowded with neatly rolled ribbon-belts, bone buttons, and thread. A leather satchel carries clean cloths, tinctures, and a small bell. Around her wrist is a breath-count string—a long, knotted cord she slips between fingers as she works.

Backstory

Daughter of a ferryman and a seamstress, Odelia grew up between water and work. She apprenticed under the last village midwife and kept her first ledger of birth signs and moon phases at sixteen. Years later, a winter fever took three infants in a row. Desperate, Odelia bargained the only way she knew: she promised a year of her own life if the next child would not slip away before dawn. The baby cried, strong and furious. Odelia kept her quiet vow, and the story traveled the valley on the river wind. Since then she has woven second-chance ribbon-belts from crib ribbons and blessing thread, counseled families in grief, and squared her shoulders against anyone who treats mothers or children as bargaining chips.