[Diamond18]

Pimpiowyn looked upon the fell beast with new interest. "My!" she exclaimed, and sidled up to Grruff, a little suspiciously. But the Nazgrrl cooed encouragingly, and Pimpi reached out to touch her... (head? horns? pointy ears? who can be sure?). "Awww," Pimpi smiled, "she likes being scritchied. You like that? Hmm? Does that feel good?"

Grruff tossed her head with an impatient coo, and Merisu stepped up helpfully. "The poor dear must have horrid dermatitis. Here, in my pack I have several lotions, each tailored to a particular skin type!" Why Merisu carried enough lotion for several different skin types is a mystery which Entish scholars, to this day, have not quite understood. At any rate, after a little ruffling, Merisu pulled an attractive bottle of pinkish cream from her pack and read the label. "A soothing mix of strawberry and peach extract, rose petals, riboflavin, baby's breath, tongue of goose, and pomegranate juice. With dissolving moisture beads! Especially effective for dry, scaly skin! I think we have a winner!"

Grruff cooed, and thumped her tail.

"First, however," Merisu declared, "we must wash and exfoliate the surface in preparation!" She reached into her pack again, and drew forth bottles of body wash, body scrub, body polish, and body spray, along with a large wooden scrubbing brush, a sponge, and an electrical sander.

"Right! Let's get to work," Pimpi pulled on a pair of laetéks gloves. "Into the river again... Thing."

A few hours and several attractive empty bottles later, Grruff's skin from snout to tail was polished to silky smooth perfection. Meri and Pimpi rubbed her down with terry-cloth towels (they always remembered to carry towels with them) and then applied the soothing skin cream with paint rollers.

"Now!" Merisu wondered, "what next?"

"Hmmmm," Pimpi tapped her chin thoughtfully, leaving a dab of cream there (which, of course, looked very cute). Grruff cocked her head to the side and cooed excitedly as her eyes darted from beautiful female to beautiful female. She thumped her tail and wiggled with anticipation.

"My, what an iiinteresting monster," Pimpi mused, "have you ever seen such an iiinteresting monster? But, who does her hair? An iiinteresting monster should have iiinteresting hair! What shall we do with it?"

"I know!" Merisu looked at her half-halfing associate, and felt inspired. "Let's curl it!"

Pimpi squealed in agreement. "Oh! Let's do!"

Grruff cooed and bobbed her head up and down in a paroxysm of joy. Most people in the Itship (read: males) had not yet even noticed that Grruff had hair, but have it she did. At the moment it looked like no more than a few greasy black strands straying over her forehead and ears, but under the Four Magic Hands of the Two Beautiful Beauticians (as the poem Vogonwë would later compose deemed them) this would all change.

Merisu dipped into her bottomless pack and pulled out an assortment of combs, brushes, scissors, tweazers, curling irons, curling rolls, and Fémi's Fantastical Follicle Fripper (no one, not even Fémi, was quite sure what "fripping" was, but it sounded good). "Oh dear," Merisu muttered, "none of my shampoos match Grruff's hair type... There's no 'stringy'. Well, perhaps, 'thin' will suffice, but—"

"I have something that might work," Pimpi offered, pulling a half-empty bottle out of her skirts. "It's a sample from O Lando L'oréal Bloom's new 'all-purpose' collection."

Vogonwë, who had not previously been around, suddenly appeared at her shoulder and asked, "Where did you get that?"

Pimpi blinked at him. "He sent it to me by express air mail.* The note said it was a free sample/engagement present."

"Engagement? What engagement?"

"Our engagement, silly."

"Oh. He didn't send me anything."

"Excuse me," Merisu said, as Grruff cooed with annoyance and began to toss her head and bare her teeth in Vogonwë's general direction. "We are undergoing an extreme makeover here, and if you don't mind I think our subject would appreciate a little privacy?"

It was Vogonwë's turn to blink.

"She means 'get lost', sweetheart," Pimpi said gently.

"Oh, alright," Vogonwë eyed the bottle of shampoo one more time, looking as if he suspected O Lando himself to pop out of it, genie style, at any moment. But then he shrugged, feigned indifference, and wandered off into the forest, where he promptly got lost.

After mucking about in a benighted manner for a little while, he gave up and sat down to compose that poem I was talking about earlier, while shadows fell and unseen eyes (but not unseeing, obviously) watched him. But that's another story.

Meanwhile, Pimpi popped open the bottle of All-Purpose Hair Wash #9 (which, being part of a "one-size-suds-all" collection, was no different from #1-8, except for price and hype). She took a whiff of it and was reminded immediately of the elf with the nose of a hound dog and face of an angel, more or less. She smiled fondly.

Meri and Pimpi set to work sudsing, rinsing, blow-drying, combing, curling, teasing, twisting, and tweaking Grruff's hair. It was a challange, make no mistake, but after a while where once there had been stringy strands, there now tumbled a cascade of glossy black ringlets which shone like ebony in the sunset. Grruff tossed her head and felt the exhilerating bounce and swish of truly trippin' (and frippin') hair.

She cooed.

"Oh, it's lovely," Merisu clapped her hands together.

The male members of the Fe-male-ship heaved a belching sigh in unison and tapped their watches (except for Vogonwë, who was obediently lost in the forest, trying to come up with a rhyme for pinkish). Failing to take the hint, Merisu moved on to Phase 3, which promised to be the hardest phase yet, as it involved brushing Grruff's fangs.

Pimpi and Merisu each strapped on a surgical mask and spritzed themselves with Eau de Strong Stuff before tackling the teeth. Pimpi squirted toothpaste from an industrial sized tube into the gaping cavity that was the Nazgrrl's mouth (this cleansing cream had to be bought from Kuruharan, who stopped tapping his watch long enough to make the sale) while Merisu closed her eyes and scrubbed with all her might and steel wool. After about an hour they said "good enough" and hosed the tongue and throat area out with power-acting Listerine (the number one export from that Grundorian city).

"Phase 4!" Merisu declared, as she glowed attractively from the exertion, and paused to wipe a fetchingly damp lock of hair from her sparkling eyes.

"What's that?" Pimpi panted, her cheeks ruddy and her blue eyes positively luminescent with fatigue.

"Make-up!" said Merisu. Then, they exchanged an eloquent look, which said with only the merest twitching of eyelashes and slightest arching of eyebrows:

This is going to be a bit like spray-painting rusty, twisted metal and calling it "art", but oh well!

They set to work, and toiled long into the evening, testing out many different hues of rouge, lipstick, mascara, claw-polish, and greenish pancake stage paint. Then, as the light was fading, Merisu held up a mirror for Grruff to see herself.

The lighting, as I have already mentioned, was bad, but Grruff's eyes began to glow with an unearthly greenish light, allowing her to see her reflection clearly. What she saw made her burble, coo, squeal, snicker, whicker, and purr with unearthly greenish joy. Merisu and Pimpi exchanged another looked and shrugged. If it works for her....

The members of the uncouth gender, their watches having long since stopped working, had almost all fallen asleep. The notable exceptions were Grralph (who never slept, duh) Moreandur, and Chrysopholax (both who, apparently, the stunning makeover also "worked" for).

Grralph walked up to his Nazgrrl and stared for a moment, then said flatly, "You're not going out looking like that. I didn't raise you to look like a two-bit she-lizard in a reptile-house, so wash that paint off your face and do something about that smell!"

Pimpi, who had been putting on the finishing touches by dosing Grruff with high-concentration Smell-O-Well, stopped and looked guilty. But Grruff simply swished her tail back and forth, cooed, then whalloped Grralph like he was a baseball and said tail was a bat. The Thingwraith went flying through the air till he struck a tree and fell to the ground in a crumpled mess of magic robes and cockeyed blades.

Earnur woke up long enough to feel a small modicum of satisfaction, before he turned over and resumed his dream about spiked salad dressing. Orogarn Two just kind of giggled absently in his sleep. Gateskeeper snorted and made a whistling noise. Kuruharan stirred and muttered, "I want to ride the pony...."

(He later vehemently denied this and requested that it be struck from the record.)

"Oh, dear," Merisu said half-heartedly, looking on the insensate Grralph.

"It's okay!" Pimpi proclaimed, "I don't think he's hurt. She didn't use her spikes." (The pink polish on her tail spikes was still wet, and she probably didn't want to smudge it.)

"That's nice," Merisu said, one-fourth-heartedly. Then she turned back to Grruff and her tone brightened, "Well! That's a job well done! We should do something special to commememorate the occasion...."

---

*Express Air Mail in Muddled-Berth consisted of Eagles down on their luck who would transport anyone and anything anywhere for any amount of money and/or birdseed. Names have not been mentioned, to protect what little dignity they once might have had.

[ November 24, 2003: Message edited by: Diamond18 ]