"Just what did you do to them?" I asked.
She glowed guiltily. "I didn't know it would take their hair off," she
said. "I was worried about their scratches, and the insects were biting
them. So I made them rub on some of our skin conditioner."
I raised my digits toward the sky. "There is an Authority that looks
over fools and Thalassan females," I said. "What made you so sure our
conditioner would work on them? It might have been poisonous."
"I tried it on the male first," Ven said.
"Genius," I breathed with icy sarcasm, "sheer genius!"
"Well," she said, "it worked!" The eternal pragmatist had applied her
sole criterion. "And what's more they looked and smelled lots better
after they used it."