"I killed it," she says dryly. "Rather thoroughly, too."

She worries her thumb at her temple.

"Let me see." She reaches for the radius of her skeletal arm--it slips free of the light animation holding it in place without protest--and rolls it between her hands. The periosteum peels off, becoming a flat surface that she lays carefully on the table and leaving a rod of compact bone between the untouched epiphyses.

She picks up her brass fountain pen and tucks into her cheek, drawing it back loaded with blood. "Can you draw the characters again?"