A grumpy, tired trans girl is walking across the street in North Louisiana. She's boymoding, because North Louisiana. Gotta buy some groceries, so she can keep eating, so she can keep working her terrible internal-customer-service job, so she can eventually save enough money to leave this shitty place and move somewhere safe to transition.
"Sure. Okay, to-do list... It's getting late but sooner started sooner finished. Uh... I think I'll go smooth out more of the cave floor, then call it a night, personally. It's warm and safe in here. The to-do list will still be there tomorrow."
"I'll talk to people about gathering stuff and about starting on crops, see about getting everyone to list off their skills sometime tomorrow so we know what we have to work with. Where are people sleeping? Where can I acquire a bedroll?"
"Anywhere inside the cave. Or if someone has an intact tent I have no objection to them going out. As for bedrolls- Ask for spares and I'm sure you'll get one, even if it's someone currying favor with the new co-binder? I have my own."
And little interest in someone transparently cooing at him in exchange for nice things.
She smiles. "People trying to curry favor are useful in limited ways, and also learning who the sycophants are tells me who can't be an actual friend. I'll do that then. Talk to you in the morning."
"Here's hoping we can tolerate each other. Two Earthlings... Decent chance."
Siiigh.
Staff: Picked up. He stands. "Let's get to it."
She nods and heads off. First order of business, find a quiet area to feel out what changes are trivial enough that she can't fuck them up. Removing all hair below her eyelashes? Changing her hair to her favorite shade of dark orchid violet and growing it out into a chin-length bob of lovely curls? Redistributing a bit of fat to give her some semblance of hips, a slightly feminized face?
Probably hormone and gland work is out of reach for the moment, and probably breasts are too unless she wants to stick to just making them out of fat rather than the proper set of glands and breast tissue and such.
Yes. Not trivial but pretty easy.
Nnnn... Color feels tricky but safe to try, as grown hair is dead matter. Hyperspeed growth feels dubious, compared to "just" 10x or so, about an inch per week.
Yes, but she'd benefit from going slow- A couple of hours at it- And a mirror.
She doesn't know what magic patterns correspond to different sets of hormones and glands and so on. The body is pretty interconnected.
Then she'll get rid of all the excess hair and fiddle with recoloring what she's keeping a bit, at least as far as she can over the next few minutes.
Gorgeous. It's a start. Out she goes to talk to humans. Who looks reasonably organized and like they could get people to do stuff out there?
Mr. Cooper has apparently decided to count supplies himself. He has an abacus and is drawing tallies on a wall in ash. Some of the people he's demanding counts from aren't happy about it.
Someone has set up a washing area by passing around crude jugs held under Nico's crude sink. Clothes are being rinsed, scrubbed with what little soap there is, sent outside to dry. People are mostly rinsing off in a corner and muttering about the cold.
The doctor who helped her earlier has set up a curtained area with everyone who is still badly off even after a surge of healing, and people are spoon feeding them soup.
Someone is yelling, outside.
First order of business, who's yelling and why? She walks over toward them to see what's going on.
Well, here comes one of the co-binders, visibly unnatural in hair-color, looking simultaneously like and unlike how she looked when she was healing everyone.
"Okay you three. I want each of you to look me in the eye and tell me why you think having a petty tantrum about apportioning blame contributes more to our survival than simply making a note of what happened and then getting to work."
"The boat got destroyed when the dragon passed over, right? Is it remotely sane to blame a passing dragon on anyone but the dragon? And given that the boat is already destroyed, is there any point in getting possessive over the wreckage? I'll work on growing more trees as soon as I can, but that wood will help bridge the gap for all our survival in the interim."
She conspicuously does not answer the questions about why there are two Binders or which of them is in charge.
"Do you know anything about boat design, enough to note down some things I'll want to know when growing lumber for a new boat later? Or can you gather things for fishing or trapping the river? Are there any reeds around here that are good for making fishing nets from? Are you enough of a navigator to try to make a map? Don't get stuck in what you did yesterday. Our plans are all shot and we're scrambling to make new ones, so just find something that needs doing, especially if it's something you're particularly suited for, and do it."
She shakes her head. "I'm no Great Binder," she says the title with similar sarcasm to the pilot, "nor do I want any accolades. I'm just the woman who has this job, and I'm working with Nico to keep all of us alive. All I ask is that you do the same: work together so we all live through the week."
She claps him on the shoulder with a smile. "Good man. Figure out the dimensions you need for the tank, bring 'em to me or Nico in the morning when he's rested and has the attention to make one. Anything else y'all need me to sort out?"
Awesome. She'll be glad to when the time comes. Next up, she's off to talk to Mr. Cooper.
"You're right! I don't! I happened to wander up from being lost at just the right time to help Nico with the core."