Galumph, galumph, galumph!!!!

Off to the races. My characters weren't milling around, they were discussing dialog, and scene direction, and practicing action numbers I did't know they had in them. Wow. I needed to go back and read part of my first novel to get continuity, and I am (and I'm not bragging here) amazed at the level and coherence of the 1st novel. Induction needs to get finished so I can tweak the edits; it's really close to getting to a publisher even as it is. (Well, that might be conceit on my part.)

So is this a Mayan god, or just a pregnant skeleton used for a lamp? My character needs to figure some of this out; there's a message buried steganographically in the picture (not this one, silly!), and the message is not just the encrypted data, but also the picture, its meaning, the positioning, etc. I'm going to squeeze every last bit out of it. But does anyone know what this sculture is really about? If you do, drop me a comment! I'm pretty sure it's not Ixtab, suicide goddess, or Ix Chel the fertility, childbirth, etc. goddess. Although some folks have a pretty broad impression as to Ix Chel's scope of powers.

On second thought, maybe there is a link between them...