Another tired workday, eating the same boring microwave burritos, working for an ISP she hates, in a body she hates, with the only remotely cheering part being the cute skirt she's wearing. She spends her day charming the employees of the ISP as she solves their tech problems, spending her warmth on people she'll never speak to again.
Eventually it's the end of the shift. She clocks out, gets up, and walks out into the backyard, stretching.
They have a recommended tailor! It's a waterfront store that's a fair distance from the cafe she's in, and if she's willing to wait, she can them to make her an outfit in exactly her color, as opposed to just something very similar. They're a full-service scuba and watersports supplier, as well. So she can get scuba tanks or rebreather systems, full-face masks, kayaks or anything else she might want, although the jetskis and the submarine and boat builder are a 30 minute subway ride away.
No, she is not going to buy a fucking kayak. Not yet. She doesn't have anywhere to put one, and she wants to focus on finding people first.
She finishes her food, puts the dishes on a porterbot's lower shelf, and heads off to the waterfront store.
They have a lot of dense tables of information, and a lot of illustrations of models wearing their wetsuit-flotation suits, having fun in the water, as well as almost a diorama with different kinds of diving gear. Near the entrance, there's almost a vending machine of different kinds of scuba tanks; they're all made of heavy steel, so you don't have to wear a heavy belt, and they are pre-filled with all kinds of combinations of breathing gases, from normal air to helium-filled in case you ever want to go deep to pure oxygen with helium diluent for the rebreather users. Additionally, you can get custom-fit full-face masks designed to cut down on the CO2 buildup as much as possible while letting you breathe through your nose.
The man wears just a pair of shorts and a pair of dive goggles on his head, giving a real sense of him being an experimenter who's been diving for as long as diving was a possibility. "Hello, girlie. What do you wish to buy here?"
She grins brightly at him. Gender euphoria is a hell of a drug. "Looking to get a wetsuit/floatation-suit to join this sailing club." She shows him the recommendation on her phone.
He nods. "Your tailor who made you that lovely outfit probably sent you your measurements to your phone; I'll put together something that'll let you stay safe and warm in the water in a jiffy, just give me your measurements and I'll put together the outfit you'll need for that lightning-quick."
"Thank you! Think we can manage it in my favorite color in time for the club meeting?" She pulls up her measurements, along with the color on the color picker.
"In time for the club meeting? I can get you something fairly close, but I'd need to order the material by plane from the factory if you want it to be exactly your favorite color. I won't be able to get the plane to ship its cargo here fast enough. But if the best material I have" he taps his phone, showing Sable a swatch of a color a few shades brighter than her favorite color, "is good enough, I can get it done in time, yes."
Then she pauses and tilts her head. "Are there any rules about what I can wear under that?"
"You're supposed to wear nothing under it. It's tight, but not water-tight, so anything under it gets soaked and pushed against your skin, making you miserable and wet and cold. And it can be actively dangerous; cold, soaked clothing can be far more dangerous than you'd think, even beyond being absolutely miserable to have pushing against you."
Oh. Oh dear. "Um. That's going to be. Complicated. I... I'm trans. And so that means I need special panties or bikini bottoms or waterproof tape or whatnot."
She looks down and blushes.
"Well, you have the right kind of tape for this, right? I got told by one of my tailor friends that the new tape that gets used for this kind of thing is near-perfectly watertight. That's how my trans clients handle it. They can also get special underwear designed to be worn with suits like these, although the tape ultimately works better. I don't want to put something together I honestly can't, just so I can pretend I'm better than I am. So I really insist that you use one of those solutions coming from someone who's actually qualified for this."
"The kits and tape're watersafe? Okay." Tap tap tap, tuck kit ordered. "Ordered."
"Did you come from an alien planet? They'd have to make them work like that, otherwise they'd be near-unusable, wouldn't they?"
She blinks at him, a bit shocked. "Eep? You're the first person to just guess it. Wound up here yesterday, came from a world that's not nearly as accepting of trans people."
"Huh? What? How? That..." he stops himself, before walking off to make her the wetsuit/flotation-suit she was asking for.
He walked off to his workshop, returning with Sable's new outfit. It feels really amazing to wear, with the inside of the swimsuit using a fleece-like material that gives a sensation like being inside a blanket. The outside is slick and feels vaguely like a raincoat, if a raincoat could somehow be made less plasticky. It's quite formfitting, but still loose enough to give complete freedom of movement, and it's warm enough to make Sable feel like she's almost snuggled up under a thick blanket.
While he was away, she pulled out her old ID and currency. "Wish I knew how," she replies when he gets back, "but I have no clue. Like this world better, though. This is the best wetsuit I've ever seen. Thank you so much."
"Yes, I'm happy to deserve such positive reactions." Sable could see the little bot carrying the tuck kit wait outside the store, eager to deliver her the goods so it could continue on its rounds.
She grabs it, resists the urge to give the bot a headpat, and heads back in. "Mind if I use your changing room real quick?"
"Not at all, miss! It's just a few steps this way." He leads Sable through an impressive variety of diving equipment, before finally finding another changing room quite similar to that of the one from the other tailor. It's plenty spacious enough to let Sable apply one of the closely-fitted tuck kits (they were designed according to her measurements by her other tailor, like all the other clothing she's acquired)
She steps back out and twirls. "Ridiculously comfy wetsuit and a ridiculously well-fitted tuck kit, check. Thank you kindly, sir. Off I go to make friends in a brave new world."
Sable can see a bunch of small sailboats at the pier, with tons of men and women dressed in wetsuits quite like hers. They're just talking with each other casually at the moment, cheerfully conversing about how awesome things went last time in their small sailboats.
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