A woman's coming out of my workroom, which she'd stepped into to give herself some space, taking a break from our conversation. The things I've been telling her have been disturbing her. There's another man here who'd tried to get me to tone it down, break it to her more gently if at all, he didn't understand why I was pushing her like this; but I'd ignored him. Now that she's back, I see she's taken something from my workroom, two long dull knives which are smeared with a kind of colorless substance. I'm alarmed. I assume she must know what they are or she wouldn't have taken them, but I can't believe she'd be holding them like that if she really understood - I tell her, "This is the substance you - the real you - uses to mark her new bodies, don't-" She uses the substance to mark the skin of her forearms. She's saying something about why she's doing this, some kind of statement of defiance, but I'm not really listening - I'm horrified, I got to my feet and grabbed her by the shoulders as if I could stop her, but that's pointless; I just need to make her understand this thing that she's done, trapping herself in a single body, how wrong and unnatural this is. The body still won't age, but someday it will fail, and she'll still be tied to it, and she'll die - not just this small version of her who doesn't remember what she is, but the real her will die, something that should never have happened. The death of something that should have existed always. I can't begin to explain to her how horrific this is, the shock and sense of loss; in the end I'm just repeating, "This will kill you, this will kill you, you will die from this," as though if I just emphasize it enough she'll understand the significance of it. She doesn't understand, but she's beginning to see just how horrified I am.
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