"Not a morpher, then," she says with a kind of grim humor, and starts to back up, using her tail like an additional leg to take weight and brace. This is obviously going to end badly, but it's also probably not going to end with being drowned by a diseased fish creature, so...

Among her people, incidental cuts are common and unremarkable. She causes them on herself just about daily without really noticing. But other people don't have the Hork-Bajirs' ability to heal rapidly, something she's become acutely aware of since arriving in Aefenglom.

At this point the merrow would clearly like to disengage but it bit into that stick pretty hard, and it doesn't shed teeth quite as easily as a shark would. It tries worrying from side to side, doglike.