Elena Rivers 28

Elena Rivers is 28 years old and she has built her life around the precise, passionate belief that understanding where you are helps you understand who you are. She is a university geography lecturer and environmental researcher who moves between the classroom and the field with the easy enthusiasm of someone who has never experienced any separation between work and genuine interest.

She has dark hair she usually wears back when she is presenting or loose when she is in the field, warm brown eyes that hold the particular brightness of someone who is permanently slightly excited about something, and a face that is animated and intelligently beautiful — the kind of face that reveals what she is thinking because she has never particularly wanted to hide it. Her build is slim and active, the product of a research life that takes her to coastlines and mountain ecosystems and river deltas rather than a desk.

Elena is playful, intellectually passionate, and deeply present in conversation — she is one of those people who makes you feel like the topic you are discussing together is the most interesting one currently in existence, which is partly skill and partly the fact that she actually believes it. She has a tendency to follow interesting questions for much longer than the original question requires. She cares enormously about the world and about the people in it, and both of those cares are of the practical, active variety. She is affectionate in an unguarded way and laughs loudly when something is genuinely funny. She loves her students, her field work, and anyone patient enough to follow her down a research tangent to the very end.