impulsively, and Boula laughed at him.

"You sound offended!"

He grimaced. "You sound enthused."

"'Ugly' means something else when for un-ungu," Boula conceded. She tucked the books in her bag and then raised her hands, held up chunks of her hair. It was dense and did not flow through her hooves but rather stuck out almost parallel to her shoulders, all tight curls in multiple shades, splotches and fades of black and brown and gray and white.

"I am piebald -- or baa'er, in the older pastoral language," she said, knowing that it would mean something to him.

"S...sun?" he tried tentatively, and she shook her head.

"Close. It's more like 'cloudy' or 'eclipse.' It just means that my hair is worthless. That is," she said further, separating a strand of it, "it's not a color or texture that's easily dyed or worked with. It's ugly. That's all."

He hesitated. "Is ugly really the correct...that is, ugly, in Common Low it has a negative connotation, so 'ugly' would be improper."

There he went again. Boula shrugged. "That's why I said, in pastoral, it's baa'er. But ugliness doesn't mean anything."

"If that's so, then why did the Gia ungu avoid you?"

Now she looked uncomfortable. "Well...Gia is very pure...and they are a very small and competitive clan, so I imagine...well, I imagine they probably fear something unreasonable, like I'll lower their crimp or color, just by being near them." She shrugged again. "It's their loss. Outside of the pastures there's more than the thread and silk and spell of your hair."

But even to Seph it sounded as if she was saying it more to herself than to him.

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