She smiles; the heart-bursting terrifying warmth she woke up with today is back, and it scatters her confusion like ashes.

"It's all right, Griddle. It's all right. You were right. It's just noise."

She puts her hand on Gideon's arm. Squeezes it, and runs the eyes of her necromantic senses over her bones, the thanergetic reservoirs and the busy cells producing marrow and white blood cells and at the ends still busily pushing back the frontier; she's not even done growing. Good God!

Every one of us has a skeleton, and yours is mine, she thinks, with dreamy satisfaction. "Never mind any of it."