The undead still have souls, which is why they’re allowed in the Watch, and by extension integrated into human-dominated society. Reg Shoe’s parrot is a transparent, repetitive thing with a small tinny voice, like the echo of a kitten at the bottom of a tin bath. But that’s just Reg Shoe.
Of course dwarves have souls; strange ones, but theologically undeniable. There have always been mutters that dwarves steal the souls, or that the strangely-silent animals are actually trained pets; but they do seem satisfyingly dwarvish, the sombre badgers and mole rats and burrowing owls, and they generally don’t cause trouble, and one must trade after all.
But Cheery’s pink fairy armadillo is instantly recognizable as a daemon, and a nicely dwarvish one to human sensibilities, a very small burrowing animal. Though to the dwarves, the fussy little thing with its delicate pink armor and pristine white fur is a slightly embarrassing thing to have on public display. Not only that, but the daemon speaks in public - allowing his high, breathy, querulous voice to be commonly read as male, implying that Cheery is by extension female.
At her interview for the position at the Watch, she gathers her courage in both hands and introduces the daemon to Vimes as
, her heart hammering at the wrongness and intimacy of it. (Vimes helpfully points out the location of the spittoon) and she says “No, it’s, er, a kind of pink, er, rock,” and Vimes’s face goes all hollow and he sort of stares off into the distance, and she can practically hear the rusty machinery of his brain trying to process this new information on How Not To Be A Racist Prick To The New Diversity Hire into something he can make sense of.
”Is it,” Vimes says finally, the last mental gear clunking into place, where it appears to stick.
“It’s a very pretty sort of rock,” Cheery says humbly, trying to help. “But quite rare and I’m sure it hasn’t come up in conversation before.”
”Not like gold,” Vimes says sourly.
”Probably not,” Cheery says carefully, trying to avoid the pitfall trap that is talking about gold among dwarves.
Her daemon himself pipes up suddenly in his high, scholarly little voice, and Vimes looks at him in surprise: “Roz’querkluftertz is not considered valuable to dwarves at all, in the sense that gold is inherently valuable; it is,” - and here Roz’querkluftertz gives his fussy little academic cough, “considered hr’azdkha, which is to say, valuable because of its work or properties; namely, in the case of this mineral, being useful to alchemical research, as well as being beautiful, in the homely comfortable sort of way that is rarely reflected in songs. And, of course, pink.”
”Never heard a dwarf’s daemon talk before,” Vimes’s terrier says. Her voice is beautiful, deep and hoarse and husky, like a smoke-broken bar singer.
”We’re a bit odd,” Cheery says.
”You’ll do,” the terrier says.
”I’ve always liked, er, pink,” says Vimes, pitching himself courageously along the conversation, and Cheery’s heart sort of goes out to him a bit, because you can see that somewhere behind that casually hurtful sneer, in that dark and ill-kempt machine of his brain, the man is trying to be Good with a capital G, and most people don’t care that much.
”Me too,” she says, her hand curling around the little tube of Violently Pink Like The Blood Of Thine Enemies lipstick she’d bought in the market that morning. “I’ve always liked pink.”
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