And now, for all you lovers out there, Bashar’s Lament.

Isaho leaned her head against the radio so that her father’s voice vibrated in the bone. Thann looked up from the sweater xe was knitting as xe’s thinta picked up the child’s reaction. Isaho didn’t fuss, but since she’d seen her brother Keleen die, shot through the head by a sniper’s pellet, she’d gone very quiet and clingy, worrying every time one of her parents went out without her. Hearing her father announcing the music assured her that he was still alive.

“Love in the daylight is sad, Ammery

Oiling our passions when our anya is gone

It is done, it is done, Ammery

Where has xe run, our gold Amizad?

Love in the darkness is sad, Ammety…”

When a shell from one of the mountain guns crashed through the hulk next door, Bazekiyl started and pricked her finger, jerking it away from the shirt she was sewing so the blood wouldn’t stain the cloth.

Thann dropped the sweater and hurried to Isaho, taking her hand, whistling soft encouragement to her. To xe’s fembond xe signed with her free hand using abbreviated gestures, +It didn’t hit anyone this time.+

Bazekiyl shivered, wrapped her finger in a strip of rag. “You’re sure, Thanny? Sometimes squatters…”

+I’m sure.+ Xe brushed the hair off Isaho’s wide brow, sighed as the femlit cuddled against her. Xe’d been so frightened for so long, xe felt only a vague relief that the shell had missed their building, could barely sense a reaction in xe’s family to the eerie whistle of the shells and the blast when they exploded.

There was a second crash-boom, a third, then silence and a plume of dust drifting past the window, past glass miraculously uncracked after years of near misses.

In the middle of the new silence there was a rhythmic rattle at the door. Isaho pulled away from Thann and rushed to push the bar out of its hooks. She jumped back as her father’s shoulder shoved it open.