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stoneman would look, with delicate hands like her mother, and large strong arms that would be able to carry her to hospital if the delivery went badly.
    Except that then, she stood in front of the stone, and saw into its heart. And knew , with absolute certainty, that it wasn’t a stoneman that she needed or wanted to carve.

    Later, much later, when she thought about it all, she wondered how she’d endured it—months up in the plateaux with scant rations, sleeping rough, sheltering under the rock face when the rain came—day after day of rising and going back to her block of stone; carving, little by little, what would become her breath-sibling.
    She did the outside first: the sleek, elegant hull, tapering to a point; the shadow of the twin engines at the back, every exhaust port and every weapons slit rendered in painstaking detail. Then she turned inwards, and from the only door into the ship, made corridors inch by agonising inch, her tools gnawing their way through the rock. All the while, she imagined it hanging in space—fast and deadly, a predator in a sea of stars, one who never had to cower or shelter for fear of bombs or flyers; one who was free to go where she wished, without those pointless restrictions on her life, those over-solicitous parents and breath-mothers who couldn’t understand that bombs happened, that all you could do was go out and pray, moment after moment, that they wouldn’t fall on you.
    It was rough carving. She didn’t have the tools that would be available to the generation after hers—not the fineness of Akanlam’s carving, who would be able to give Mau fingernails, and a small pendant on her chest, down to the imprint of the chain that held it. She carved as she could—hour after hour, day after day, lifted into a place where time had no meaning, where only the ship existed or mattered; stopping only when the hunger or thirst brought themselves to her attention again, snatching a ration and then returning, hermit-like, to the translucent corridors she was shaping.
    Until one day, she stepped back, and couldn’t think of anything else to add.
    There was probably something meaningful one was supposed to say, at an exhalation’s close. She’d read speeches, all nonsense about “your breath to mine” and meters and meters of bad poetry. It didn’t seem to matter very much what one said, truth be told.
    â€œWell,” she said to the ship, laying a hand on the hull, “this is it.” Winter had come by then, settling in the mountains, a vice around her lungs; and her breath hung in ragged gasps above her. “I’m not sure—”
    The stone under her hand went deathly cold. What—? She tried to withdraw her hand, but it had become fused to the lamsinh ; and the veins shifted and moved, as lazily as snakes underwater.
    There was a light, coming from the heart of the stone, even as the breath was drained out of her, leaving her struggling to stand upright—a light, and a slow, ponderous beat like a gigantic heart. Breath-sister, the stone whispered, and even that boomed, as if she stood in the Temple of Mercy, listening to the gong reminding the faithful to grow in wisdom. Breath-sister.
    Her hand fell back; and the ship rose, casting its shadow over her.
    He was sleek elegant beauty—everything she had dreamt of, everything she had carved, all the release she sought—and he didn’t belong on Voc, anymore than she did.
    Come with me , the ship whispered; and she had stood there in the growing cold, trembling, and unable to make any answer.

    â€œA ship,” Mau said, thoughtfully.
    Rechan shivered. It had made sense at the time. “I named him Sang,” she said at last. Illumination , in the old language of the settlers—because he had stood over her, framed by light.
    â€œI didn’t even know you could carve ships.”
    â€œAnything living,” Rechan said, through