"Sure, artificial coral is pretty standard for peoples who lose bone mass. You put it into the bloodstream, you see, and it finds the weakened spots in the bones and fills them in with coral material, which blends right in. Doctors use it for repairing fractures and replacing lost or diseased bones as well."

"Where I was from?" She looked thoughtful for a moment. "On my home planet, no. I only saw members of my own species, except on video broadcasts. But once I - left," her expression was joy tinged with sadness, "once I was away, there were every sort of race. Liquid people, plasma based, sentient vibration patterns, species that had translated themselves from body type to body type until even they didn't remember where they started, races that had becomes machine intelligences and vice versa - it's a great, no, a grand universe. And a wonderful one, a lot of the time...."