"No, there's not, but if you wear it for a month I'd expect you to get tired of people going 'welcome back' - you were dead for like an hour - my grandmother tie-dyed hers, it's a statement, you could do that - anyway, do you want to wear a bra or nah, you could go either way."

"I dunno, which way makes people more confused about whether I'm a man or a woman and is it bad if I confuse them?"

"I guess if you got the right kind you could make people more confused and if you got a... right kind for a different kinda right... you could make them less? Confuse anybody you want, it's a big multiverse, Dwarves don't even have genders, they run around with gigantic beards going by 'he' while they're fully about to give birth."

"...I kind of want to do the opposite of that. Run around with both genders, no beard, and not have any more kids. Totally want people to call me 'sir', though. Or 'ma'am', that's fine too."

"Sounds fun! I think I'll swap your sandals with that in mind but you have an otherwise pretty androgynous style here."

"Huh. How's the sandal gender thing go?"

"Oh, the style just looks girly to me. I think 'cause of how strappy they are." She picks out a new kind.

Well, at least Fere's been tipped off that footwear of all things is the thing to look at to figure out fashion gender. She comes to some vaguely sensible decision about bras and would like to figure out how to get an apartment so she can crash first and figure out if she can get to Azan tomorrow.

There is an apartment building across the street from Keoni's luau restaurant that Keoni thinks is probably affordable on basic and it'll mean Keoni's convenient if Fere needs something else! Upon investigation Keoni confirms that it fits within basic but it's on the higher end of that and it would mean that Fere would need to hold down her clothes shopping and other splurges down to a somewhat below average level. But it does have a pool!

"If I go there, can I still go to Azan and back, and can I still eat if I do - I'm not precious about bugs but I really want my food to be fresh. Also I don't know how to swim."

"...yeah. I don't think you are going to have the least bit of trouble keeping your splurges down to a somewhat below average level, hon. You can buy bus passes and fresh food and swimming lessons, you just can't also buy a prestidigitator and a servantcat that same month."

"I don't even know what those things are."

"There you go then, don't buy anything where you don't know what it is and you're golden."

Then she'll go ahead and get the apartment with the pool.

Keoni will teach her to use an elevator and show her where her own house is (it's on top of the luau restaurant's kitchen) in case she needs anything and then go back to her own premises and drone-deliver a basket of sweet bread rolls and shoyu chicken to Fere's new balcony.

...She wants a drone now. But that is probably a splurge and not very affordable. She eats the chicken, decides to save the rolls for later on the theory that bread keeps a few days at least and she wants to be able to eat tomorrow, and manages (to her own surprise) to actually do that.

By the next day Azan's got a bus stop and Fere can visit it and wander around.

Azan's capital is... different from Sesat's. The people there with Sesati slave tattoos (of whom there are substantially fewer than in Sesat) aren't obviously being treated like slaves. One of them is cleaning a street, and gets in the way of an Azani who mumbles "excuse me, sir" and then "thanks" without any detectable sarcasm. At first it seems like she happens not to be crossing paths with anyone very important. But then someone steps out of the palace in workman's clothes alongside one of the diplomats, passing on details of Azan he's decisions and asking strategic questions about Vanda Nossëo.

So it's true, she thinks, what they said about Azan in the more optimistic tales. It's hard to know if the people there are happier than the ones in Sesat - Fere didn't get to see them before everything changed, after all - but it's true they talk to each other like equals and it's true they don't give a damn if Sesat calls someone a slave. At least, true for someone who was born to it; she doesn't happen to see anyone else like her.

...Actually, she doesn't know that she doesn't. She's in ostentatiously foreign clothes with her face healed - not with her face healed. With a whole new face. Maybe if she's lucky Artorian'll tell her what happened to her old one. At any rate in her whole new body of Vanda Nossëan make and her whole new clothes and her bracelet, she could pass for one of the fair folk. Is, maybe, passing for one of them. (...Artorian and Keoni could be human, and just rich beyond comprehension. How would she know?)

She reverses directions in her mind, that she heard whispered a hundred times, that she passed on in case they were true. Go this way for this long, turn like so if you see this landmark... but that'll get her home (...?) from the Azani border. It won't get her to the border.

She wonders if she can get a map from one of the shops. Then she wonders if they'd be able to tell she was local, if she walked in.

She steps into a shop to test this.

"Hi!" says the lady behind the counter. "What can I get you?"

"Have you got a local map? I got kinda lost."

"Sorry, no, not one with streets on it and stuff. I can show you a satellite photo but that won't help. Where are you trying to get to?"

"Trying to remember which parts of Azan are where and which way Sesat was and which ways are just ocean. A satellite photo would be cool." What is a satellite photo? If she sees one she'll learn.

Satellite photo!

It's like a map without borders. It's like a map that does not care what people say belongs to one country or another. "See? Satellite photos are cool. Where're we?"

"We're here!"

"Thanks! I can probably make do with that. By the way, how's it going?"

"Going pretty good! You thinking about signing on? This is one of the jobs you can qualify for even if you don't have much background, they'll train you."