[ well a statement like that just encourages some staring, doesn't it? but to marta's credit, it is brief, if panning over every inch of him she can see. she doesn't shift away, either, but rather turns just a fraction of an inch more towards him. ]

Are you telling me you're a bodysnatcher, Kovacs?

[ there is as much seriousness in her question as there is humor; since her time her, she has met peoples and machines from all over every unimaginable corner of unknown universes. anything seems possible.

though it is always interesting to know what sort of things intersect. ]

Not voodoo. [ (briefly, she has to wonder what it says about the people of this station that so many of them would default to that thought.) ]

Thanks to the Doctors' party, I was able to put a date to the day. If I counted right, that means today is the new year. And during New Year's, my mother and sister and I would each make a little doll out of sticks.

[ she looks down at the perfectly smoothed skewers she'd handed to them, nose wrinkling slightly. ]

These were the only ones I could find on hand, and I didn't think the sticks in here were real enough to count, so...

[ benign details, at this point. she waves a hand in the air, absently wafting at the smoke puffed out of kovacs' mouth. ]

Anyway, you spend some time making it, crafting the doll to be whatever shape or size you want. Each stick, each inch of thread — you put in every bad thought or experience or feeling you had this previous year.

[ from her coat's deep pocket she pulls out a spool of sewing thread, settling that on the ground between their feet. hand free, she taps at the lighter still in his hand. ]

Then you set it on fire, and watch it all just burn away.