“I’ll have to look things up to see if they’re worth more than the precious metals in them,” she said. “I don’t recognize them. The minting techniques seem to be relatively modern, like eighteenth or nineteenth century, but I thought I’d recognize all the historic coins of that period, and I don’t.”

I slept until almost ten the next morning; when I got up and stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee, I found Permelia eating a banana and reading one of the books she’d brought. She was still wearing my bathrobe, and she’d braided her hair differently, presumably in one of the styles that were considered feminine back home.

“Good morrow, Jenny,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind…” She gestured with the banana. “My guides marked it out as the food you would miss least.”

“Uh, yeah. Those bananas were gonna go bad before I could finish them all. But you’re welcome to almost anything in my cabinets or refrigerator… except the wine. It’s kind of expensive and I save it for special occasions.” I was touched by her thoughtfulness in not wanting to eat something I would miss, and wondered what it implied about her experiences. Was food more expensive where she came from? Did people regularly go hungry there?

“I will keep that in mind,” she said, and then repeated the word “bananas” under her breath a couple of times. Apparently they called them something else back in Wurland, if they had bananas there at all. Then she asked: “What is a ‘refrigerator’?”

I showed her, and explained. It seemed they were still using ice-boxes in Wurland, cutting up lake-ice and storing it with sawdust insulation as long as possible, then delivering chunks to the better-off people’s houses every few days during the warm months. Once I’d gotten her a more varied and filling breakfast, I went to take my shower and get dressed, then helped her figure out what to wear. We went through the two other changes of clothes in her backpack, which consisted of two more tight shirts, a skirt about as long and pants about as loose as as she could get away with back home, plus underwear, long socks, and a winter coat.

“These tight shirts are going to make it hard to look feminine,” I said. “Do you want to try on a couple of my blouses? We could fix up a temporary solution to make it look like you have breasts, until we get your money changed and you can buy proper breast forms.”

“Yes, I thank you.”

She was a little more slender than I was, lucky girl, and didn’t have any trouble fitting into one of my blouses. Under it, she wore an old bra I could spare and wouldn’t want back, stuffed with rolled-up socks. She wore her other skirt with it, and looked… pretty good. A lot more feminine than I would have expected after just a closer shave and a change of clothes.

Once were were all dressed and ready, I said, “So… last night you said your ghosts could guide you to someone that would give you fair value for your coins. How would they do that? Could they maybe point the place out on a map of the city, or do we need to drive around with you telling me whether the ghosts say to turn left or go straight or whatever?”

“We can use a map.”

So I brought up Google Maps on my laptop (which raised a ton of new questions, most of which I deferred till later) and got it to display a map of the city and most of its inner suburbs. Permelia pointed out an area, and I zoomed in on it (to her further amazement), and we repeated that until she was pointing to a specific shopping center containing a Publix, a Papa John’s, and a few other stores that weren’t identified in Google’s database.

“Okay,” I said, entering the address into my phone. “That’s going to be a half-hour drive. I’ll call Victoria and let her know where to meet us after we’re done there.”

Soon we were on the road, and I wound up spending most of the drive answering her questions about computers, smartphones, map apps and other software, electricity, the Internet, and on and on. I had questions, too, but they could wait.

The place we were looking for turned out to be Shorthouse Jewelers, a small place run by a sweet older couple, maybe in their fifties. Given their age, I was afraid they would be transphobic, but I needn’t have worried. Probably Permelia’s guides wouldn’t have brought us here if they weren’t accepting as well as fair.

“What can we do for you today?” the man asked.

I’d asked Permelia to let me do the talking. “My friend has some gold and silver coins to sell,” I said. “We don’t know where they came from originally. She inherited them from an uncle who used to travel around a lot, so who knows.”

“Let’s see,” he said, and Permelia dumped out the bag of coins onto the counter in front of him. He picked one up and looked at it, then put on his loupe and took a closer look. “Sue, take a look at this; you’re the coin expert.”

His wife came over and put on a jeweler’s loupe of her own, then took the coin he handed her and examined it. Then she looked through the coins on the table and picked up one of the silver ones, then a copper one.

“I’ll have to look things up to see if they’re worth more than the precious metals in them,” she said. “I don’t recognize them. The minting techniques seem to be relatively modern, like eighteenth or nineteenth century, but I thought I’d recognize all the historic coins of that period, and I don’t.”

“My friend who’s a linguist thought they were just some rich conlanger’s vanity project,” I put in. “And if you don’t recognize them either, they’re probably just worth the value of the gold and silver… and the copper, if that’s copper and not zinc or something. Copper’s worth more than it used to be, isn’t it?” I’d looked up the current market values of all three metals while Permelia was in the bathtub last night.

“Yes… well, if that’s the case, we’ll just start assaying them and let you know how much they’re worth.”

That took a while, but we walked out there with enough money to pay for a pretty large chunk of her transition – maybe all of it, if we could get her some ID that would hold up to scrutiny and a job with decent insurance. I felt nervous, carrying around a check for that much made out in my name, but a check made out to “Permelia Martford” wouldn’t be usable until we got her some ID, and the jewelers didn’t have anywhere near that much cash on hand.

“Breasts and clothes next,” I said. “I’ll pay for them today, and you can pay me back once we deposit this check. And sometime soon, we’ll need to get you an ID; I have no idea how to start doing that, but maybe your guides can tell us?”

“I will ask them.”

Our next stop was the little store near downtown where I’d bought my breast forms seven years earlier. They were able to set Permelia up with a nicely-fitting pair of tits that matched her skin tone. We also bought a few bras and panties there.

Then we met up with Victoria at a mall not far from the university where she taught – she didn’t have any afternoon classes that day – and spent a few hours before and after lunch fleshing out Permelia’s wardrobe. She favored ankle-length or mid-calf skirts and dresses, things that were feminine both by her culture’s standards and ours. She kind of went wild trying on patterned things – her culture only produced solid-color garments on any large scale, partly because of technological limitations, and partly because of outdated sumptuary laws that limited clothes with complex patterns or images (historically embroidery, but now including machine-woven fabric) to the nobility. Her joy and euphoria at getting to wear feminine clothes did my heart good.

We also helped her buy some makeup suited for her skin tone, and a couple of new pairs of shoes.

At lunch, we talked more about her magic and how it could maybe show us how to get her an ID that would let her get above-board medical treatment and (once she’d acclimated enough) a job, hopefully with great insurance.

“I think if I ask my guides to lead me to a person who can help me get an ‘ID’, I can simply ask them what to do next,” Permelia said.

“See, the thing is, whoever your guides are going to lead you to is going to be a criminal,” I said. “Hopefully a fairly honest criminal, who’s breaking the law and resisting the police state out of principle instead of just for the money. But a lot of people who deal in fake IDs also deal in much worse things, or at least that’s my impression. You need to be careful.”

“Do your guides automatically look out for your safety?” Victoria asked. “Or would you need to specify in your request that they lead you to someone who will be safe to deal with?”

Permelia frowned. “When I am dealing with a guide I have known for a long time, yes. If I am asking advice of a new one, I will be more specific. But doesn’t your country have a ministry for welcoming newcomers from other lands?”

Victoria sighed. “Yes, it does. But they’re selective about the number of people per year from each other country that they let in. They’ll want proof that you’ve already been offered a job by someone here, or that you have skills that are in high demand… and most importantly, they’ll want to know where you’re from. And either they won’t believe you’re from Wurland, and they’ll try to deport you to whatever country they guess you’re really from – or you’ll use your magic to prove you’re from another world, and they’ll take you seriously and we’ll really be in trouble.”

“Movies have taught me that nothing good ever comes of the government finding out about a lone visitor from another world,” I said solemnly. “Once in a while a large or powerful group of visitors gets decent treatment, but a lone visitor is always abducted and experimented on until the plucky heroes can rescue them and help them get home. Add in the fact that you’re trans, and it would get even worse.”

“Oh,” Permelia said, looking horrified and puzzled. In retrospect, she probably hadn’t understood a lot of that, but she clearly got the gist. “Then dealing with criminals would be safer than dealing with your government?”

“Yes, at least if your guides can point us toward a relatively honest criminal. Who’s very good at making fake IDs that will stand up to scrutiny. And won’t cheat you or refuse to help just because you’re trans.”

“I think they can,” she said. “If they can’t, they will give me signs that they can only partly answer my request.”

“All right,” I said. “Today isn’t the day for it, but tonight back at my apartment, we can zoom in on the map like we did before, and then the next time I have a day off work – which will be Wednesday – I can drive you to wherever you need to go and help you deal with… whoever we’re going to see.”

“You should see if you can get somebody formidable-looking to go with you,” Victoria said. “Somebody like Chris or Marc, maybe. Even if the person you’re going to see is perfectly safe to deal with, they’re likely to be in a dangerous neighborhood and you might run into danger on the way.”

“Yeah, I’ll see if they’re busy that day.”

We went back to shopping when we finished eating, and a few hours later, parted ways.

“Hey, Permelia,” Victoria said as we finished loading my trunk with Permelia’s purchases. “If you want to spent one or two of the next few nights with me, instead of the whole time with Jenny, that would be fine. I’d like a chance to talk with you more about Wurlian. Figure out more about the differences between Wurlian and English, that kind of thing – Jenny would probably be bored by that, and we’ve had more important things to talk about, so I haven’t gone into it much so far…”

“That would be interesting,” Permelia said. “I thank you.”

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