After lunch, Síle steered me down a side street toward what turned out to be a bag and luggage shop. I'd told her, with some difficulty, that I needed some sort of bag to carry around town.

"I know just the place," she'd said.

The shop was one of the ones with a full glass facade and metal framing. We pulled open the glass door, causing a wind chime attached to it to sound, and went inside.

"Très fáilte!" a woman's voice called out from the back. Many welcomes.

We wandered around the store, looking at bags hanging around wooden racks, a brown pole rising from the centre, and arms jutting off at various angles. The fancier bags were made of some sort of leather, with many pockets and compartments. Tags attached to them showed the price; the fancier bags hovered around "100m", a hundred marque, I guessed. Yikes.

I found a rack of sturdy cloth bags, something like canvas, in various colours. The top flipped over like a messenger bag, and it looked like they were meant to be worn over the chest like one. These were forty marque. They still had pockets on the outside, as well as some compartments inside, but they were not nearly as sturdy or high fashion. I picked up a dark green one and slung it over like my guild sash, from left shoulder to right hip. I practised swinging it around and opening the top, reaching for items inside, swinging it back around.

"Anything I can help with, miss?" I guessed the shop keeper said right behind me. I briefly jumped, startled.

Wait, miss? Well, the Clair equivalent anyway, móiséal, addressing a young woman. I mean, I was non-binary, so I didn't get too offended with whatever people called me. And I'd rather be seen as a woman than a man, so it was okay. But I hadn't remembered shaving for several days now. Assuredly...

It was about to get awkward when I spoke.

I brought myself back to the present. "Can I buy this one?" I asked her. She didn't seem to register anything strange when I spoke.

"Certainly," she said, taking the bag from me as I handed it over. She asked me something else, but I couldn't catch it. Síle jumped in and responded for me, "No, she'll carry it out."

I was having a moment there with the gender things happening around me, but I just focused on getting a fifty marque coin out of my bag and handing it to the merchant. She dropped the serrated edge lightly on a piece of metal at the counter, and listened to it ring, before nodding and stashing it. A moment later, she handed me a ten marque copper coin and smiled as she said something; probably, "Please come again."

I stowed my coin purse into my bag as we headed back outside.

Síle led and I followed, but I knew that I was being suspiciously quiet. She looked over at me a few times before speaking.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

I sighed, thinking of how I would remotely explain the issue. I didn't know if Clair had words for concepts like non-binary gender, or heck, if Shanaclair even had trans people. I shook my head.

"She called me miss," I said lamely.

"Yeah, just being polite," Síle responded, still looking confused.

I shook my head again and said something dismissive that I thought of as "no worries".

"Where next?" I asked her.

She pointed back toward the thoroughfare we'd come from, and a little to the left. "Clothes!"

The clothier ended up being one of the bright red Nordic buildings, more like a house turned into a shop than anything else. We opened the door, which rang a little bell, and then closed it again, substantially shutting out the noise of the street.

"Très fáilte!" I heard from somewhere in the store again, a man this time. He wore one of those vested business suits that Bastien favoured, but without the overcoat. He came forward to greet us.

He said something I couldn't quite follow, and again Síle jumped in to ask him where things were. Near as I could tell, he said that accessories were on this bottom floor, with women's clothes on the second floor, and men's on the third. She thanked him, and grabbed my hand, dragging me upstairs.

On the landing for the second floor, she stopped and pointed out to the second floor, and also the third floor stairs, raising her eyebrows at me and shrugging.

I shrugged back at her and walked into the second floor, which made her giggle a little bit.

There was less quantity in that shop than you'd find in an Earth shop, but it made up for that with quality. These were no mass-produced sweatshop clothes that would fall apart in a year or two. They had non-sweatshop prices, too (yikes!), but something had to give.

Much like Earth, many of the items hung from metal hangers on racks; some were also shown on headless shop dummies. Síle brought one over that was perhaps a short-sleeved tunic, sky blue, with a fairly deep, blouse-like V-neck, and very roomy sleeves. She held it up in front of me.

"It matches your eyes," I thought she said. "A bit too much." She put it back and went looking again.

I wandered over to look at the bottoms.

The skirts ranged from the very basic to the fairly ornate. I hadn't really had a chance to wear skirts that much back home, for various reasons. Particularly Mom-shaped reasons. The idea of having some in Fleuve Clair was very attractive. The simplest ones were an elastic waistband of some kind, a much larger bottom hem, and a basic colour. They went all the way up to multiple layers with slits cut to see through, wildly contrasting colours on the layers, and elaborate needlework. One glance at the price told me that I didn't need one of those. However, I picked up a dark green one from the simpler stack, with subtle darker green spiral shapes across the fabric, and took it to try on in a moment.

Síle walked over to me with another pick, this one being one of those white linen peasant tops I'd seen Maela wear, with puffy sleeves. This one had a generous scoop neckline. She held it up to me, nodded, and walked off again.

I continued my circuit of the bottoms, this time looking at some pants. Like most of the pants I'd seen in the city, these all tended toward light fabric and a lot of it, puffing out at the waist and gathering again at the ankles. I thought it might be nice to have some pants of my own, too, but I wasn't entirely sure about this style. They were relatively cheap, at least. I grabbed some off-white ones to try out.

On the way back to the try-on area, Síle intercepted me with another version of the V-neck, this time a slightly more muted slate blue. She held it up to me and said, "muuuch better," handing it to me.

The stall had one of those magic globe lights and a mirror. I slid the curtain closed behind me and hung the items I'd brought on a hook.

I figured that the white top would have to go with the green skirt, and the blue top with the off-white pants. So I removed my guild tunic and pants, and I started pulling on the white top that Síle had found for me. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it felt a lot more comfy than I thought it would. The neckline had laces I could tie in a little bow.

I pulled on the green skirt next. That, too, felt more comfortable than I expected. I knew that girl clothes were softer, but wow.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I nearly didn't recognize myself. I knew that face looking back at me, but somehow, with the outfit change... no question about it, a cute girl was looking back at me.

I was having some extremely complex feelings, so I took the outfit off before it could get any stranger. Did I want these?

Yes. A thousand times yes.

When I'd pulled the outfit back off, I looked at the mirror, expecting to see the good old Alyx. But... something had changed. Was it my imagination? Something in the previous try-on sticking in my mind? I couldn't have put a finger on what.

I turned back and grabbed the blue tunic and off-white pants to try. The result was substantially more androgynous, also to my liking. But still pretty cute... and more femme than I expected. Maybe it was just the style of clothes I wasn't used to.

I changed back and walked back out.

"Okay, I'm ready," I said to Síle. "Not buying anything?"

"I have plenty," she said, though her face said something else. I didn't push her.

Downstairs, I asked for a couple of sash belts, and came away with one sky blue and one brown, the blue one having scrollwork designs of a slightly darker shade.

All told, it set me back about 200 marque, which was plenty to make a strong dent in that sack they'd given me.

"Let's go back to the guild," I said to Síle. "I haven't gotten shoes or a coat, but I think those can wait."

"Okay," she replied. "I had fun today."

"Me too!"