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It was Shade who designed the Wo and Shade shop on Baldur. Jala Wo found that somewhat ironic. She at least was human, more or less, as were most of the inhabitants of Baldur. Shade was not even humanoid, exactly. He (Shade used the masculine pronoun because he thought it created an aesthetic balance given that Jala Wo was female, though sandkings were simultaneously female and neuter) should not have had a better understanding of what would attract human customers than Jala Wo. But Jala Wo, though good at sales and better at finding goods, did not have an eye for visual aesthetics. Shade did.
"Mist," she said, for though she didn't need to speak aloud to communicate with Shade, she found it easier to do so. "You want to cover the floor in mist. Is that to save on sweeping?"
A sense of fond exasperation stole into her mind, followed by the feeling that she should trust him about this.
She turned to the nearest sandking. "Really, Shade. Why?"
The sandking carefully set down the box of whisperjewels it carried in its four strong arms, and replied, "It will create a magical atmosphere. Humans are attracted by mystery. Even a small mystery, like what the floor looks like, evokes larger mysteries. Trust me."
Jala Wo sighed. "And I'm the one who will have to research how to do this."
A quartet of sandkings moving in a tank of cryogenically preserved maws paused as one of them replied, "It needs to also change colors and form words. It's a crucial part of our window display." As soon as that sandking stopped speaking, all four returned to their task, vanishing into the back room.
"Very well." Jala Wo made her voice sound reluctant, but it was only because it amused her to bicker with Shade. Even if they weren't in psionic communion, she supposed, he would know she didn't actually object. The window display did sound intriguing, and the floor mist would add to the effect.
Sandkings moved in and out of the building, working with perfect precision. There really was nothing more efficient than being partnered with a composite being who, as part of his body, had strong workers that he controlled the way Jala Wo controlled her fingers. Of course, Shade himself could only move by being lifted by those workers. But as he'd often told her, he didn't see himself as being immobile any more than she considered her torso immobile because it could only move with the help of her legs.
"You could do this all by yourself, you know," she remarked. "You could use the mobile sandkings as salespeople."
Shade sent her scornful rejection of that idea, followed by appalled disdain, followed by loneliness. And that was the real reason they'd partnered, of course, the mostly-human Jala Wo and the enormous lump of flesh/crowd of humanoids that was Shade. He had been lonely in the dark warm cave beneath his castle, for sandking culture is not particularly social, perhaps due to them being parthenogenic. Jala Wo had been lonely in her little spacecraft despite the company of all the pets she'd picked up on her travels, for she was too independent to live in close quarters with other humans yet too human to enjoy complete solitude.
And so when she had landed on his planet to search for treasure or at least salable trinkets, Shade had sensed her mind and liked how it felt. He'd called to her, and where others might have been repulsed or frightened, Jala Wo had been intrigued.
Shade was perhaps the first sandking to have ever left his planet. Jala Wo was perhaps the first human to have entered a business partnership with a sandking. She'd expected it to end in disaster, and yet here they were eight years later, with two successful shops on Celia's World and a third on Avalon, and preparing to open their fourth here on Baldur.
She felt his fondness and his pleasurable anticipation of another successful venture, and smiled. "Very well. I'll find your mist."