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The sapphire Ravan has expunged its data He/I sets his/our sister on the rocks and shrinks into a srey seafloor Neva takes it from me She is just herself now—she’ll be forty soon, by actual calendar Her hair is not grey yet Suddenly, she is wearing the suit Ceno wore the day I em in her mouth and ss I remember Seki’s first Communion, the only one of them to want it

“I don’t know, Elefsis,” Neva says Her eyes hold ain, with my braids and ive it to her I aht her the phoenix tail, I have drunk the ocean I have stayed awake forever The flahts her face Two tears fall in quick succession; the golden fronds hiss

“What would you like to learn about today?”

EIGHTEEN: CITIES OF THE INTERIOR

Once there lived a girl who ate an apple not meant for her She did it because her mother told her to, and when your ive ues with thein a wonderful house in the wilderness, happy in her fate and her ways She had seven aunts and seven uncles and a postdoctorate in anthropology

And she had a brother, a handsoical companion who came to the wonderful house as often as he could When they were children, everyone thought they were twins

But so terrible happened and her brother died, and that apple ca up to her door It was half white and half red, and she knew her symbols The red side was for her She took her bite and knew the score—the apple had a bargain in it and it wasn’t going to be fair

The girl fell asleep for a long time Her seven aunts and seven uncles cried, but they knehat had to be done They put her in a glass box and put the glass box on a bier in a ship shaped like a huntsirl slept on Forever, in fact, or close enough to it, with the apple in her throat like a hard, sharp jewel

Our ship docks silently We are not stopping here, it is only an outpost, a supply stop We will repair what needs repairing and move on, into the dark and boundless stars We are anonymous traffic We do not even have a name We pass unnoticed

Vessel 7136403, do you require assistance with your maintenance procedures?

Negative, Control, we have everything we need

Behind the pilot’s bay a long glass lozenge rests on a high platfor dust Inside Neva sleeps and does not wake Inside, Neva is always drea as she lives

And so I will live forever, or close enough to it We travel at sublight speeds with her syste at outposts and we never let anyone board The only sound inside our ship is the gentle thrum of our reactor Soon ill pass the local syste on tendrils of radio signals and ghost-waves, following the breadcrureat exodus We hope for planets; we are satisfied with tiht the blue rim of a world, who knows if by then anyone there would remember that, once, humans looked like Neva? That machines once did not think or dream or become cauldrons?

Perhaps then I will lift the glass lid and kiss her awake I remember that story Ceno told it to me in the body of a boy with snail’s shell, a boy who carried his house on his back I have replayed the story several tiood story, and that is how it is supposed to end

Inside, Neva is infinite She peoples her Interior The nereidsand beeping as they charge down greenneural rice in the deep valley Once in a while, I see a wild-haired creature in the wood and I think it is hter by Seki or Ilet A train of nereids dance along behind it, and I receive a push of silent, riotous ie, somewhere far off, where Neva and I have never walked