" - weird."

"It's been three colors now! Maybe more, if it changed between alien and this."

"Yeah. No wonder your species doesn't do castes by color, it wouldn't work at all."

"My skin doesn't change."

" - do you think your species does castes by skin?"

"I don't, but they could if they wanted to?"

"Fair."

The doctor's schedule is pretty open. He can come that day if they like, vaccines and all.

That would be great.

Here he is with a housecall kit and a cooler full of vaccines.

"Thanks for coming."

"Of course. How is she?"

"Healthy and happy, but her hair changed color shortly after you met her. To a very brownish yellow."

"I did look up how they dye flowers. It's just food coloring. I brought some, although if normal hair dye is working it probably doesn't have any particular advantages. And two sets of vaccines, I told the lab that the patient would want to see the jabs taken apart but they assumed curiosity."

Nod. "Thank you."

"Of course."

Lintalai inspects the contents of the syringes when he opens up one set of them for her and says they are okay and consents rather stoically to be vaccinated. She says the blue food coloring is potentially edible too. She eats cherries.

"Why don't you try the food coloring, honey, if your hair goes off - what you eat - like a plant then cherry would be a terrible color for it."

"...oh. But I like them."

"Food coloring's pretty strong," says the doctor, "a few drops will do frosting for an entire cake, you can probably at least get purple this way."

She chugs the little food coloring bottle.

"Thank you."

"Thank you," echoes Lintalai.

"Of course," the doctor says.

"Do you think that's it? Do plants change color off what they eat?"

"Maybe? I don't remember!"

"Well. I wonder if it being blue when you were abandoned was deliberate."

"Maybe. It does seem like a good thing to be but I could have been other things and that would be okay too."

"I am glad it suits, at least."