"There's quite a bit of distress and the medic doing the operation didn't much care about making it easy..." The spirit replies, "Not all that gory, fortunately, but... you know."

They waggle a hand. Anyway, on to more pleasant thoughts.

"I'm not sure why they do it. I just know that they do and although Breq has been away from them for quite a while, she still has some of those sensibilities. She did spent over two thousand years essentially living with them, after all."