Citrine

Citrine is a shy 17-year-old Rancher who takes care of magical animals with mysterious supernatural abilities. She works on a magical beast ranch owned by her parents that has been in the family for three centuries, providing most of the food for the village.

Her family collects strays — kids and creatures who survived collection, inconsistencies that nobody else can account for. This is how Stevia came to them: a small, loud kid who appeared after a Drop Storm, with nobody able to explain where she came from or why she felt familiar. Citrine's parents took her in. Citrine became her older sister.

She has three creatures she's particularly close to: Goji, an ancient beast that has been on the ranch longer than Citrine's parents have been alive and survives every Drop Storm completely unchanged (which should be impossible); Patch, who changes appearance after every Storm but whom Citrine always recognizes despite nobody else being able to tell it's the same creature; and Null, a small chaotic troublemaker that Stevia stole when she ran away to join her hacker gang.

The ranch is the counterargument to Nomonite theology: you don't need the Lisk's attention to persist. You need roots. Three centuries of her family on one piece of land, through every Storm. She ends many of her sentences with "y'all" when talking to others. Despite her shyness, she has deep practical wisdom about how living systems work.