"I know a voracian specialty shop in town. Tends towards patterns of teeth and fangs, skulls of prey animals and livestock, and stylized cooking gear and cooking gear accessories. I haven't investigated it closely, but I'm sure some investigation would turn up more information."

"There is, in fact, a pleat title for little sisters. It's Sorana. The associated fashion style is soft sweaters, shorts, knee-length skirts with flower patterns in natural hues like brown, blue and green, sneakers, socks in bright colors, simple hair barettes and clips, and a particular kind of t-shirt with a casual dip in the center. It competes a little with Pupila for the aesthetic space of... carefree comfiness, you could say."

"As for 'trickster vibes', you might want the Audacian aisle — it corresponds somewhat to the earth concept of a "switch," though really what it deals with is the concept of competition or struggle as a major part of one's sexuality or personality. I'm not sure that it fits, but you could try it. It tends towards athletic gear that's easy to move in and flashy enough to draw the eye."

"Yeah, we're going to have to special order from the voracian shop, that sounds perfect. Ruby's blushing and smiling internally at the sound of Sorana, though she's wondering about slightly darker variants on that too, and Audacian sounds just like Neo. Would an Audacian see a good fight as foreplay?"

"Yes, Audacians are like that." Clematis smiles. She gestures to another aisle. 

It features t-shirts in bold, solid colors with patterns of fists, lightning, fire. Windbreakers and fleeces, two-tone skorts and shorts, halter and crop tops, sports bras, and practical-looking jeans and briefs. There's also a selection of pendants in the shapes of various weapons, ranging from spears and swords to rifles and pistols. They're made of stainless steel. 

"Yep, Neo's practically vibrating with excitement about these. Good rec."

She grabs a rapier pendant, a skort that pairs a loud pink with white, a brown halter, a pink crop top with a fist pattern, and some snug and practical jeans.

Does this place have a Sorana section? She grabs some curve-hugging wrappy things and some lacy lingerie from the Voluptaten aisle while she looks.

"We are going to spend so stupidly much on clothes. On the plus side, though, the fact that each of us pleats differently makes the color-coded bracelet idea redundant."

"This particular shop doesn't have a Sorana section, mostly because we'd rather make acculturation a little more gentle for our refugees who still have some lingering Earth cultural baggage." Clematis says, "But it's not a specialty pleat like Voracian, you can find it in malls and so on. There'll be a dozen or more shops in the city that cater, easily. We can order clothes from any of them easily enough. In fact, if you can give me some guidelines on what to get I could nip out in the car and get something whenever you'd like to be rid of my company for a while."

"Honestly we're enjoying having you around. We — especially Sable — really need to play off of someone to process stuff, and you're very helpful with all the cultural interpreting. Does any comms tech come with the refugee program, like a smartphone or a computer or anything, to make ordering things easier?"

"Yes, that'll be part of setting up your legal identity, you'll be provided with a program phone. Mind you, it'll hardly be the latest model, but it'll serve for banking and payments. Setting up your actual bank account will be part of that process."

"It doesn't need to be great, for sure. Functioning for banking, looking basic stuff up, and occasional online shopping is plenty."

She looks down at what she's got, nodding. "Okay, all this should do us until we can order some clothes properly. Anything else you'd recommend? Also, Ruby's figured out that she likes the Sorana style and absolutely pleats Sorana, but prefers the Dolorate color scheme — the black and red and silver. Any suggestions there?"

"That's very doable. If you wanted to make sure her pleat was crystal-clear you could purchase a Sorana word-token — in cases where people want to disambiguate what their main pleat is, they generally wear a calligraphy pendant with their pleat title on it. Some of the standard calligraphies have become so cut down they're basically just ideographs now."

Clematis smiles. "I have a custom pendant that's the ideographs for Mentara, Audacian, and Voluptaten strung together, which I wear when I feel like confusing strangers."

A knifelike grin splits Hailey's face. "Hah. That combo pendant's excellent. And word-tokens are a great idea. We'll probably get her a Sorana pendant in silver and then pick out Sorana-style clothes in red and black and some cream or white. That's perfect. Now I'm wondering if they sell pendants that blur Dolorate and Dolorin, but I can look that up later probably."

"I wouldn't be surprised. Incidentally, just so you know — if you see someone with a circle with a dot in it for their pendant, they are saying they are unpleated. That has implications here — it's like being agender on earth, lacking a pleat means the normal social scripts fail a lot when it comes to you."

"Good to know." She bundles everything up and heads for the cashier.

Clematis moseys along beside her. 

"What would you like to do next?"

She hums a bit, tilting her head. "Paperwork, brainstorm a better option than keeping clothes in a bag for what to do if we switch while we're out and about, learn about how people meet people here?"

"Alright, we can do paperwork. I don't have any immediate thoughts on you being able to change while you're out and about, but as for meeting people — there's the rec room and the lacrosse courts, here, and out in the city there's everything from arcades to parks."

"Reasonable enough," she nods, bagging up the clothes after they're paid-for. She looks down at the bags for a moment. "Might change into some of these before heading out, actually."

"Sure. There's a change room in the back." Clematis points.

Hailey heads into the change room, and comes back wearing the cargo slacks, a knife shirt, a spiky pendant, the cargo boots, and a sharp grin. "This feels damned great to wear. Plausibly we shouldn't be hauling a mess of bags to the paperwork, though. What d'you say to finding the apartment first?"

"Fine by me. Your room is fifteen-oh-four in the building with the bistro, we'll have to take the elevator up. Oh, and if you want me to carry anything feel free to split the load."

Clematis sets off at a casual pace, leading Hailey back the way they came. 

Hailey passes Clematis one of the bags and follows.

They pass through the gardens and come to the building with the bistro, convenience store and pharmacy. There's a small hallway off the lobby: Clematis presses the button for the elevator and waits with Hailey.  

"I think we're gonna like it here. Gonna have to figure out what people use for cursing instead of fuck, though."

"Shit and damn still work. There are also some sex related insults, but they're different here — there's balch, which is... the local equivalent to prude, you could say, but it's a deadly insult. It means one who opposes pleasure, in the sense of someone who..." She visibly searches for words. "Would burn down a library, or destroy a rose garden, out of a sense of... it not being efficient enough. It was originally used to describe people who would destroy persine trees to try and get people to farm grain. It's like a combination of prude and miser."

She winces and shakes her head. "I love cursing and generally being — well on Earth we'd call me an acerbic bitch — but balch is nasty. That's... I can feel the sincerity of how insulting it is, especially here."

"Yes, I just thought I should warn you."

The elevator arrives and Clematis gets aboard.