Amara Mucavele stood where the land dissolved into the salt, her feet sinking into the cool, yielding sludge of a shore that had known her name since before she had the breath to speak it.

The morning was a bruise of violet and charcoal, the sky heavy and low, the sun still a jagged promise hidden beneath the horizon. She felt the weight of the air, thick with the scent of damp earth and the sharp, metallic tang of the coming spray. She was heavy—eight months of a second life pressing against her spine, a slow and rhythmic ache that mirrored the pulse of the tide. Inside her, the boy moved. It was a gentle, subterranean roll of limb against lung, a restless shifting as if he were already trying to find the tempo of the world outside, or perhaps he was merely responding to the low-frequency thrum of the deep water that Amara could feel in her own marrow.

Her husband, Custódio, was still sleeping in their hut, his breath a steady, whistling rhythm that she had left behind in the dark. Her eldest boy, Bento, would rise with the sun to join the other men checking the overnight nets, his limbs long and awkward with the sudden growth of his fifteenth year. But this hour belonged to her and the sea.

She began to sing.