'Sculptress' by Liam Hogan

The foreman frowned at the statuary. “Not my taste.”

“You don't find them realistic?” she asked.

“Who wants realistic? Your inelegantly posed men wear too much armour, as for their expressions...” He eyed the sculptress as she fiddled with the wrap covering her head, her braids trying to escape. “A few scantily clad nymphs and goddesses, those I could have used.”

“You won't take them?”

“Not at ground level... Sliced in half, as grotesques, perhaps?”

He offered a paltry fee and was surprised she accepted it. Surprised too, when cutting through legs to find stone bones beneath stone flesh.

Artists.