this peculiar artifact. The top was not bumpy and rubbery like normal cauliflower, but smooth and soft to the touch like the fur on her mother's belly where she liked to snuggle on cold nights. Now what did Connie use this for again? she tried to remember. Oh yeah, she put it on her cheeks. So she leaned in close, only to sneeze at the chalky smell of it. Blech! she thought. But the hope of beauty had her in its sway, so she held her breath, leaned in, and started to rub her face in it, first one side and then the other. It was about then that she heard a yelp of surprise from the doorway. Startled, she gasped and then coughed, turning to see Melchior in the door, staring as Caspar and Balthasar came to join him. They too stared in total surprise.

“Star,” said Balthasar slowly, “What is that...?”

Any hopes that they might have simply been surprised at her transition from ugly duckling to swan princess died instantly as Caspar let out a snort. “What did you...?” he asked, but then his words were lost in mirthful chortles. He and the other two boys began to laugh, then to roll around the floor and over one another in hysterics, tears flowing from their eyes at the force of their laughter. “Mom, get a load of this!”

Star frantically looked for a way to hide herself, sure that her effort had somehow gone horribly wrong. But before she could execute an escape route...

“What's all the... Star?”

Luna was in the room. Worse, Angel was right behind her. Both stared for one slack-jawed second. Luna kept the open mouth and shocked position. Angel, on the other hand, joined her brothers rolling on the floor in hysterics.

“Star,” asked Luna, “What did you do?”

She hunched up with her tail between her legs. “I tried some of Connie's makeup,” she admitted sheepishly.

“Connie's makeup?” asked Luna, still too shocked to do anything but stare and ask questions. Had Star been able to see herself, chances are she would have been equally appalled. Her brown fur was now covered with cream a shade darker than Connie's skin, mottled with other substances ranging from bright pink to jet black. Where normally it lay fairly flat on her body, now around the edges of her face the longer fur stood out in spikes like a hedgehog's. And her paws, which were still caked in the goo from the first jar, had smudges of black and pink like a paint job gone horribly wrong.

“Look at you,” Luna went on, “You got it all over yourself!” Now at least she was moving, bounding over to the nightstand to pluck Star up and lower her to the floor. “Honey, what were you thinking?” she asked.

Star looked up at her with such a hopeful gaze that all thought of scolding left Luna before the words even came. “I wanted to look pretty,” she defended herself.

“Pretty?” cackled Angel, who was rolling and curling so much one might have thought she was having a flea attack. “You look like a paint set threw up on you!”

Luna turned. “That's enough!” she barked, shooing Angel and the boy pups out of sight. Then, returning to Star, she began cleaning her daughter up. “What am I going to do with you?” she mumbled between licks. Then she grimaced and said something about charcoal as her tongue brushed one of the spots around Star's eyes.

Star hung her head. The wonder-dummy blows it again, she thought. “I wanted to look nice,” she explained. “I thought if I used some of that stuff Connie does, I would look pretty like she does.”

Luna actually smiled at that. Ah, pups, she thought. It seemed no matter what age or species, the young always had a fascination with playacting. She had observed it quite well – sometimes too well – in Toby when they were pups, and she had even seen humans practice the behavior. Eugene liked to tinker around with various odds and ends and play at being a mechanic or an inventor. Connie kept dolls, which were on their way to being relegated a “guilty secret” of sorts, but still used once in a while when she felt like pretending to be a mother or housewife. And now Star, it seemed, was pretending to be Connie.

Luna just shook her head and smiled over her daughter's naivete. “Star,” she chided softly, “You don't need to look like a human. You're a perfect little puppy.”

Star wanted to say she was anything but perfect, rather that she was completely and unequivocally ugly, but she chose to say nothing. What was there to say? How could beauty understand the plight of the hideous?

Luna continued. “Now I can appreciate it if you want to pretend to be Connie, but don't get into her makeup anymore, please. Alright?”

Star nodded, feeling worse than ever. Nobody seemed to understand her. Her sister's friend thought she was ugly, her whole litter laughed at her, and even her mother, as caring as she seemed, was oblivious to the trials of being uncomely. It was a sad, sad state of affairs indeed.

Luna nodded with satisfaction and gave her one more affectionate lick up the face. “Good,” she said. “Now, let's head downstairs and get back with the others.”

Alas, as I suspect you have guessed by now, this fared little better than Star's attempts with the makeup. For as they neared the top of the stairs, Luna heard what sounded like laughter coming from below. And it wasn't nice laughter.

Sure enough, there was the rest of the litter at the foot of the stairs, laughing themselves sick. Caspar was rolling around looking for all the world as if he were trying to keep his sides intact with his paws. Zar was flat on the floor like a rug with Mel propped against him, and Angel, the only one still on her feet, was shaking like a sapling in a hurricane.

Luna heard a yelp of anguish as bitter as any physical pain, and turned to see Star running back to Connie's room. Luna could well sympathize with the magnitude of her daughter's emotions, with one exception: where Star felt hurt, she felt anger. Anger, and disappointment. What kind of pups was she raising? Hadn't she taught them to be nice, especially to family? With wrath barely contained as if a storm cloud were struggling to withhold a flurry of lightning, she stormed down the stairs until she was standing directly over her offspring. She stood there, the tiny remaining fragment of reason in her bidding her not to open her mouth lest she say something the pups should not repeat.

Despite her silence, the pups suddenly became aware of her as her shadow loomed over them. They all stopped and stared up at her in silence as tails crept between legs and ears slunk down like they were wax figures melting, trying to escape into the floor.

“Listen,” she said through clenched teeth. “As funny as you may find it, I want this business of laughing at Star to stop right now.”

Nobody answered.

“Your sister is up there right now crying because she heard all of you laughing at her when I went to bring her back downstairs. So all four of you, go up there and apologize to her.”

“But Mom,” pleaded Angel, “She looked so...”

Luna shot her a look so severe it silenced her at once. Without another word, Angel joined the others trooping up the stairs in single file.

Star was huddled under the bed amongst the dust, shaking with misery. Why were they so mean? How could her own brothers and sister, her own flesh and blood, treat her this way? What had she done wrong with the strange makeup that foiled its cosmetic effects? And over these others, like an endless dirge repeating without end, that question of questions.

Why was she so ugly?

Her self-pity and self-hate were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing his throat. She managed to uncurl enough to see her kin through tear-blurred eyes.

“We're sorry,” Caspar said quietly.

“Yeah,” agreed Balthasar. “Real sorry.”

Angel was next. “If there's anything we can do to make up for it,” she offered teasingly.

“Angel!” her brothers all turned to her with foreheads wrinkled and lips drawn back.

Angel shrank from the withering looks. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Star looked out at all of them. “Why did you laugh at me?” she asked weakly.

Melchior smirked just a little at the memory, and his face started to twitch. “Well,” he snerked, “It was kind of funny, the way you...” he stopped, withering under looks from the other two. The only thing that kept his comments from drawing Star's tears afresh was the fact that, even as upset as she was, she could see that deep down he did feel sorry for her and for what he had done.

“Sorry,” he admitted, tail lowered and ears drooping down the sides of his head like two pancakes. “It may have been funny, but it was wrong to laugh. At you. Really.”

She wiped her face with a paw and sniffled. Blinking back the remaining tears, she even forced a smile. “It's okay,” she said quietly. She knew it was wrong, but it seemed to her that lying was better than refusing honest apologies.

By the time supper was served, Star was beginning to feel somewhat assuaged over the whole matter, helped by Luna's close attention and the affirmation that she didn't need makeup anyway.

But trouble was still lurking, and it soon reared its head. The boy pups, being given to quick eating even by canine standards, finished their supper in no time flat. So did Arrow, whose eating habits still bore some trace of the hurriedness which