Katikaya appears as a tall, devastatingly beautiful woman whose pale skin has the soft translucence of wax held near a candle. Her ebony hair falls in heavy, straight ropes that cling together as if damp, though nothing touches them. From the waist upward she looks almost warmly alive, with flushed lips, delicate hands, and a faint sheen of perspiration along her collarbones. Below the waist, her form has opened into a blood-dark anatomical ruin: the hips narrow into exposed vertebrae, the thighs are bare bone threaded with glistening tendons, and the skeletal feet leave damp red prints even across clean stone. She moves with the poised balance of a dancer, but every third step lands with the unmistakable click of a heel bone. The contradictory impression is unsettling: she smells of hot bread, ripe fruit, and spiced wine, even while flies gather in the hollows of her ribs.