"It's not an easy question," I said, watching him. "It gets easier the more emotional distance you can put between yourself and the people in question."

"They screamed, you know," he said, in his dangerous conversational tone. "They begged. Mothers clung to their infants and lost children wept in the streets as they ran with blood." Dain looked up at me with a hard light in his eyes. "What does it say about me that I could still kill them all?"

"I hear it when you scream in the night," I replied, keeping my voice level despite the darkness in his words. "What does it say about you that you can't forget?"

He didn't say anything at all to that. In silence, he reached back, turned off the water, and sank into the tub, water splashing quietly as he settled himself.

I didn't pester him. Patience wasn't really one of my virtues, but I could appreciate the need to process something like the murder of thousands of civilians for longer than a single conversation. I hooked my arms over the back of my chair and looked up at the ceiling, breathing in the warm, steamy air. Dain must take scorching baths.

We stayed like that for at least fifteen minutes, me idly tracing the painted patterns of the undersides of waves on the ceiling with my eyes, and Dain thinking about whatever he was thinking about. At last he started moving around, one wing-arm groping for the bottles of shampoo.

"To the left about six inches," I said.

He grunted and shifted, his long fingers wrapping around the bottle and hauling it into the tub with him. The sharp scent of spruce wound through the air, combating Dain's wet dog smell.

"Usually you use the clove one," I commented without thinking.

He stopped moving, then pushed himself up to regard me. "How do you know that?"

"Uh, I have a nose, you know," I said. "It's not anywhere near as good as yours, but I'm capable of discerning cloves versus spruce."

"Yes, I know, but humans don't usually use scent to identify people," Dain said, sounding bewildered. "When did you even notice that?"

"Er." I wasn't sure exactly how to answer that. "Humans do pay attention to the way people smell, it's just that the barrier to entry is either a strong smell or an extremely attractive person."

"The clove soap isn't very strong," he pointed out.

"You are correct," I replied, letting him work it out for himself.

He stared at me for at least a solid sixty seconds before he turned a remarkable shade of crimson and turned to start busily shampooing one of his tails.

I blushed a little myself. "You know I like doing physical things with you," I pointed out. "Why're you feeling strange about me seeing you naked now?"