"I know. It was a bit disappointing." Tom flicks the body away into the woods. A hovercraft will fine it sooner rather than later, and he feels no great urge to treat the corpse with dignity. Flesh is flesh. The soul exists elsewhere. Tom's believed that in earnest ever since he saw a loved one reduced to nothing more than a few splashes and shards of bone from a car bomb.

"You did well, though. That was a nice, quick incision. You didn't waste your energy or your blade's edge." He rustles the low-hanging bough again, urging her to clean up the blood. He doesn't like seeing it on her face. It would be too easy to imagine her eyes vacant and dead with a similar splatter across that pale skin.