Fingertip grafts

“Must be very hard to go so long without a decent crab book, ma’am.”

“You’ve no idea.” She flung them open one after another, shutting her
eyes and feeling the pages. Though most of her skin was a pale gray, her
fingertips were pink—altered through a graft, I guessed, to be so
hypersensitive she could read printed and occasionally handwritten text by
touch alone. Which she did quite a bit, since she spent a huge amount of the
day blindfolded. Best to keep the senses limited, she’d explained once. And
stay indoors. Too much stimulation drives a person mad.

As I watched her rip through each book, I wondered, not for the first
time, how I’d be able to tell in her case. I assumed her afflictions had
something to do with her augmentations—even though I had never been
told exactly in what manner her mind had been augmented.

“Ahh,” Ana said. She rubbed the page of the crab book in a distinctly
sensual manner. “This is a book from the Rathras canton. I can tell by the
imprints. Their printing presses were first built to publish their holy books,
in their language, so some letters slope to the left very slightly…Thank you
for fetching these, Din. They should keep me occupied for a day or so.”

- The Tainted Cup, Chapter 2 Pgs. 40-41