Love <giggles again>: ... wrong drawer … yes, skin ... oh, but i do revel in skin! suits me best of the artifacts! … as eye for looking and tooth for telling, so skin for touching! … i put on skin like a party dress! fits me close as a vegetable rind! ... on fat Fortune skin pulls and frays like over-stretched bread dough! … yet sags and bags on skinny Death! …
Clever (gags, spits): Raw, rancid, flayed skin! Mama, why do you keep such a thing?
Death:
… squeamish mortal … why do you keep raw, rancid skin wrapped round your own guts? …
Love: … bony sister! … why do you bully mortals?! …
Fortune: ... not for us to pick and choose cabinet artifacts … whatever the Wheel turns out, goes in …
Love: … whatever the gods catalog, we keep …
Death <distracted by nostalgia; calmed by memory; a story>:
… a trophy, that skin, from olden days ... given me by a god … oh, he was a pretty-boy musician ... he won a music contest ... but the game was fixed ... rigged … pretty-boy’s prize was to peel the loser like a fruit …
Fortune: … yes, he saw himself quite the wheeler-dealer, that god ... he registered the skin in our compendium …
Death:
... a fun god, but arrogant … thought the sun rose and set on himself … did not last as long as he presumed he might … none of them do …
Fortune: ... child, consider skin as the cutaneous part of your nature …
Love: ... courage, little sister! ... don't be put off! ... matter is a gross thing! tough to stomach! …
Clever (disgust emboldens; shoves skin back in cabinet): My matter is what matters — my story. I’ll never find the end of it if I don’t tell it.
Fortune: … the tooth is for telling …
Love: … next drawer over … teeth and tusks …
