“It's pretty good,” she admits. “But of course, I have nothing to compare it to. It could be just normal.”
The married girls are careful not to talk too much about that part with those of us who are single. They don't want us to feel too bad about not living with sexual bliss the way they do. But I know Eleanor, and I am genuinely happy for her. She really hated this planet before.
Jennifer returns with the water. “Here. Will it explode?”
“You know, we probably can't rule it out.” I briefly dip the small, yellow piece into the water, then rub the surface with one finger. “It's slippery, at least.” Then I place it between my palms and rub them together. A fresh smell spreads, and a creamy lather appears between my hands.
“Oh my God!” Jennifer exclaims. “Is it…?”
I dip the little bar into the water again and hand it to her. “Yep.”
She rubs it the same way I did, creating the same kind of foam. “It's soap! Soap! Glorious soap! Oh, I think I'm going to cry.”
I laugh and give Eleanor the other piece. “Yeah, me too. That is what I was trying to make. I can't believe it worked!
Eleanor dips her hand into the water and carefully washes her hands with the small bar. “This is... incredible! Real soap! And it smells good, too. Dolly, you are a hero. Totally. And right in time for Sophia's delivery, too. For the first time, a birth on this planet will be actually hygienic.”
Jennifer wipes her happy tears on her sleeve. “I have to tell the girls. Can I?”
I start cutting the big lump of soap into smaller pieces. “Sure. Should have enough for one small bar each, and a bigger one for Sophia.”
A minute later, all the girls are gathered around me, washing their hands, oohing and aahing like they just discovered how it feels to be clean.
“Can you make it with different scents?”
“How about liquid soap? Like shampoo?”
“Do you know how to make conditioner? Because that would be really helpful, too.”
“How long does it take to make more?”
“How did you even do this? Are you magic? I mean, it has to be magic, right?”
“She's secretly a witch. Of the best freaking kind.”
“She just made it from scratch? That's insane.”
“It's pretty sensational. Okay, Dolly, now make blueberry cheesecake. You have ten minutes.”
“And one large frappuccino.”
“I haven't felt this clean in years.”
“Now we're finally a real society, huh girls?”
“Seriously, Dolly, what else can you make? A decent moisturizer is just kids' play for you, right? Heck, I'll pay for it. I have seven pretty pebbles with your name on them.”
They slap my back and hug me and squeeze me and everything. The soap is a greater success than I thought it would be.
Finally, they all go back to their various tasks, chattering happily, smelling their hands and planning how to wash their hair for the first time in a couple of years.
Delyah stays. “This is extremely valuable. I knew you were up to something, but I had no idea it would be this cool. So you must have made lye, right?”
“Lye from wood ash,” I explain. “It's the only way I could think of. And it has to be the right kind of ash, so I had to burn all kinds of wood to find one that worked. That took weeks in itself. Then boiling the dinosaur fats and finding a way to get the best part of it, without impurities. Then mixing the two in the right way and with the right proportions. That took a month to figure out. Finding leaves that smell good for the scent was easy, squeezing the oil out of them was not. Then three months to dry it out. And here we are.”
She turns the little bar of soap in her hands. “Now that you know how to do it, one batch will take what, a month?”
“Something like that. A little less.”
She gives me a smile. “Have you done this before? I mean, made soap?”
“First time,” I admit. “Took me a while to figure out how. I mean, in my mind. Then I remembered something. Ever see that movie, Fight Club? The Brad Pitt character makes soap from lye and fat. He uses fat from humans, but I thought that dinosaur fat would be just as good. Or better, because… well, human fat. When I remembered those scenes, I realized why it worked, chemically.”
“Never saw that movie,” Delyah says. “Interesting.