They split up after breakfast to get ready. During her shower, Elijah thought some more about names, and decided to try on the name “Eliza” for the day. She would need something to for Cassie to call her when she was going out in public as a girl, even if she didn’t start living full-time as a girl, and committing to a name change, until much later.

After she dried off and before she got dressed, she looked in the mirror and cast the fat-moving spell to shift a little fat from her hips to her face. She overshot the first time, and moved some back to her hips, then grinned in satisfaction at how the slight bit of added fat softened the too-sharp lines of her face. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a big improvement.

She got dressed in some casual clothes Cassie had loaned her, a glittery green sweatshirt that would cover her breasts decently until she could buy bras, and a pair of pink sweatpants, then left the bathroom.

Once she and Cassie met up again in the living room, she cast the fat-moving spell to soften Cassie’s face. It didn’t take much to achieve what Cassie declared, on looking in the mirror, to be worlds better than before. Then she spontaneously hugged Eliza.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have asked first. I’m just so happy.”

“So am I,” Eliza said. “Oh, I sort of decided on a name. Maybe just for today – I need a girl name for you to call me while we’re out in public even if I don’t decide for sure until later…”

“What did you decide on?”

“Eliza.”

“That should be easy to get used to, anyway.”

“Yeah, and when I use my debit card I can pass my legal name off as a typo.”

“Oooh, clever girl.”

Eliza beamed.

A few minutes later, they were on the road. It took almost two hours to get to Asheville, most of the route being on twisty, mountainous surface roads. They passed the time partly in conversation, partly in listening to music. Eliza read aloud from the name book and they talked some more about possible names. When Cassie put on a mix of electronica from her phone, she read some more of the name book, then switched to the spellbook and studied the new library search spell she still hadn’t tried, what with being so busy helping Cassie and figuring herself out. It would be fun to cast it, but it would have to wait until they were back at Cassie’s house – if she wasn’t too tired from hours of shopping.

The closer they got to Asheville, the more nervous she got. She’d been high on the euphoria of seeing her much-improved face and the excitement of getting to wear girl clothes for the first time, and that had temporarily pushed back her nervousness from the day before about whether people would look at her and see a girl. Now it was back, and she couldn’t focus on reading anymore.

After a while, she said, “I’m scared.”

“So was I, my first time going out in girl mode,” Cassie reassured her. “But you pass way better than I did then – you’ll be fine.”

“You already told me that,” Eliza said. “And it helped then, but it’s not helping now.”

“You’ll see,” Cassie said. “It’ll be fine. And if someone does clock you, and they’re being obnoxious about it, we can just leave and go to another store. Asheville has over a dozen independent clothing stores just in the downtown area, plus big box stores at the expressway exits. If we don’t feel comfortable in one store, we’ve got lots of options. And the odds are heavily in our favor.”

Despite all Cassie’s efforts, Eliza was only moderately reassured. She still felt nervous when they arrived in Asheville, though her excitement about trying on clothes was starting to come back. The last twenty miles or so of their trip had been on I-40, and they pulled off at an exit with a number of big box stores and chain restaurants not long after they entered the city limits.

“I figure we’ll start at a couple of these department stores for the basics,” Cassie said, “before we go to downtown and visit the boutiques. They’ve got more interesting selections, but they tend to be pricier, too.”

It suddenly occurred to Eliza that shopping with someone who had a lot more money to spend than she did could end up being awkward and embarrassing for completely different reasons than she’d been worrying about. If even Cassie, with her recently inherited money, considered the downtown shops in Asheville expensive, would Eliza even be able to afford stepping in the door?

As Cassie had predicted, no one at the first department store they visited seemed to notice they were trans, or if so, they didn’t make a scene. Cassie led Eliza to the intimates department, raising a blush that Eliza felt sure would give her away even if she looked perfectly feminine otherwise. Cassie helped her pick out a package of panties that should be the right size, and a couple of plain bras for each of them to verify that they’d measured each other correctly, and they went to the changing rooms.

Eliza closed the door behind her and took off her sweatshirt, pausing in renewed astonishment and joy at the sight of her bare breasts. They might not look right up close to someone familiar with women’s breasts, they were all fat and no milk glands and the nipples apparently weren’t the right shape, but they were hers, and much better than she’d dared hope for. Then she started trying on the first bra.

After a couple of minutes of frustration, she got it on, but wasn’t sure she’d done it right. Was it too loose because she hadn’t adjusted the straps right or because it just wasn’t the right size? She tried fiddling with the straps some more and finally concluded that no, it wasn’t the right size.

The second one fit better, but she thought it was probably too tight. Or maybe it was just right? She figured they had to be tightly fitted to some extent to offer any support, but the way the edges dug into her skin didn’t feel right.

She fleetingly thought of asking one of the staff for help, but frantically rejected the idea. They’d see that her nipples weren’t right, if not the overall shape or the way they hung. And how would she explain that she wasn’t wearing a bra to begin with and wasn’t sure how to find bras in her size?

Oh, of course – she could buy this bra here, and go to another store and ask for help, saying she’d outgrown her old bras. The staff could measure her professionally and tell her what size she really needed without her needing to take off her ill-fitting bra and show her too-boyish nipples.

She took the bra off and decided to run that plan by Cassie. First, though, she took off the sweatpants Cassie had loaned her, then her jockey shorts, and hesitated a moment before tearing open the package of panties. She would have to buy them whether she opened them or not, but she couldn’t think of any other way to figure out what size she needed than to try them on.

So she did. She had a little trouble with tucking, never having done it before, only read about it, but the panties themselves fit fine. She took off the bra to pay for it, got dressed again and left the changing room. Cassie was already outside waiting for her.

“How’d it go?”

“The panties fit, but neither of the bras quite did.” She outlined her tentative plan, and Cassie approved.

“Yeah, I understand how you might be nervous about getting them to measure you. So am I, kind of. One of the bras I tried on fit fine, so I’ll buy a couple more in the same size from the same manufacturer while we’re here. But yeah, we can go on to another store as soon as you buy that bra.”

So they did. They checked out, and once they arrived at another department store down the street, Eliza went to the ladies’ room (feeling another pang of fear at being clocked) and changed into the too-tight bra she’d bought in a stall. Cassie was waiting outside, and when she was done, they walked over to the intimates department and looked for a staff member.

They approached an older woman who was going through a rack of nightgowns and marking the prices down. Eliza started to say something and froze up. Cassie looked at her sympathetically and said, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

The woman looked up at them. “How can I help you?”

“My friend has outgrown her bras a little, and she’d like to get measured before she starts trying on new ones.”

“Sure, I can do that for you. Hang on just a minute.”

She walked over to the nearest checkout counter and rummaged in a drawer until she came up with a measuring tape, a notepad and a pencil. Then she quickly and skillfully measured Eliza, who was relieved not to have to take off her sweatshirt, and wrote down her bra size, tearing out the page and handing it to her.

“Want me to measure you too?” she asked Cassie. “A lot of women think they know what size they are, but they’re a little off and don’t realize they could be wearing something that fits more comfortably.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks.”

Moments later, Cassie had her measurements as well, only slightly different from what Eliza had measured back at the house, along with some advice about how some of the major bra manufacturers differed in their labeling. They thanked the staff person and started looking for bras in the right sizes.

“Thank you,” Eliza said to Cassie as soon as they were out of earshot. “I was so nervous I just clammed up; I couldn’t say anything.”

“No problem,” Cassie said with a smile. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Before long, they had each gathered a few more bras to try on, and went to the changing rooms. This time Eliza found that two of the three bras fit her well.

Next, Cassie recommended that Eliza look for some fun, feminine sleepwear before moving on to semi-casual and dress clothes. “We could have a sleepover,” she said with a giggle.

Eliza smiled uncertainly. “That might be fun.” She wasn’t sure what that would entail. She’d gone to a couple of sleepovers as a child, to celebrate her friends’ birthdays, but she had a vague idea that girls did different things at sleepovers than prepubescent boys, and maybe kept doing sleepovers when they were well into high school… but at twenty-two? It did sound fun, though.

So she looked around the women’s sleepwear section, not sure what she wanted. Pajamas or a nightgown? Her mom wore a nightgown, Monica wore pajamas; they were the only women Eliza had ever seen in their sleepwear. Nightgowns were more inherently feminine in their very structure, but some of these pajamas she was looking at were pretty feminine in their colors and patterns. She grabbed one set of pajamas, pastel yellow with flower patterns, and a white lacy nightgown, and took them to the changing room.

She changed into the pajamas and stepped out to let Cassie look at her.

“Oh, those look really cute on you!” Cassie exclaimed. Eliza blushed and ducked back into the booth without saying anything. The nightgown fit just as well, not surprisingly given its looser tolerances, and Cassie was if possible even more effuse about it.

After they both bought some pajamas and bras, they left the big box stores and went downtown to start visiting the independent clothing stores. At the first of the stores Cassie had picked out, Eliza bought a purse, and they both started trying on skirts, dresses, capri pants, jeans, blouses, camisoles, tank tops, and more articles of feminine clothing than Eliza could keep straight. They visited three different stores before Cassie declared they had enough to last them a while, but Eliza hit her budget limit just after they hit the second store.

“All right, let me buy you a few more things,” Cassie urged. “You haven’t bought enough to go a week without washing.”

“Then I’ll just have to wash more than once a week,” Eliza said. “You don’t need to buy me anything.”

“I should do something for you as a bonus,” Cassie said, “since you’ve been doing way more than I hired you to do.” She glanced around to make sure no other shoppers or staff were in earshot and added, “Helping me transition, I mean.”

“I was just, you know, helping out a friend. You don’t owe me anything in return.”

“Then let me do something nice for you as a friend, if you won’t accept a bonus as an employee.”

In the end, Eliza gave in, but only allowed Cassie to buy her another couple of outfits so she wouldn’t have to wash more than once a week. In practice, she figured a lot of her old clothing was unisex enough she could keep wearing it, on days when it was just her and Cassie around the house, and wash every ten days or two weeks.

After the third clothing store, they ate a late lunch, and then went to a salon, where they got their hair cut and styled. They decided they didn’t have time for “the works,” and Eliza was nervous about being more likely to be found out the more time they spent with the salon staff, but Cassie said they should come back for a longer, more luxurious treatment some other time.

After that, they went to a used bookstore to trade in a few boxes of books Cassie had decided she didn’t want to keep. “Uncle Eugene used to take me here,” she reminisced, “back when we’d come to stay with him for Thanksgiving or over the summer. Like on Black Friday when Mom and Aunt Rebecca went shopping in Hickory or Johnson City, Uncle Eugene and I, and sometimes Dad, would go to the bookstores in Asheville, and we’d usually start here.”

“It’s a nice place,” Eliza agreed, wishing she hadn’t blown her budget on clothes, and reprimanding herself for even wanting to buy more books. She was living in a house stuffed to the eyebrows with books that she could read any time for the rest of the summer, and then when school started back she’d have access to the university library, which was even bigger though its selection of fantasy and science fiction might not be any better. And that wasn’t even counting the books she’d bought on her last used bookstore trip back in Greensboro and hadn’t finished reading yet.

She still went over budget by the cost of one fantasy paperback, though, Stranger at the Wedding by Barbara Hambly. Cassie bought a big stack of a dozen or so short story collections, novels, and biographies. “See, I’m making more work for you, so I need to pay you a bonus in clothes,” she joked as they checked out.

In the car on the way back, they talked excitedly about their day, and their plans for the future. When the conversation lulled, Eliza read some more from the name book and then started reading Stranger at the Wedding.

When they returned to the house, well after dark, it took two trips to bring in all the bags and hanging clothes. Cassie insisted on them both changing into their new pajamas right away, after which they made a big bowl of popcorn and watched Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase.

“Do you want to watch it on the TV in my bedroom or the monitor in my office?” Cassie asked.

“The TV has a bigger screen, right?”

“Not by much, but yeah. I just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable with us sitting in bed together,” she said, not quite meeting Eliza’s eyes.

“We’re both girls, right?” Eliza said.

Once Cassie had set up the movie, they sat leaning against the headboard with the bowl of popcorn between them. Eliza was self-conscious at first, but soon relaxed and was engrossed in the movie. It had been a long day, exciting and fun but stressful at times, and by the time the movie reached its denouement, she was almost too sleepy to appreciate it.

After the movie was over, she mumbled sleepily, “Do you know if there’s something after the credits?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Then I’m gonna bail. Don’t think I can keep my eyes open much longer.”

“All right, sleepyhead. Don’t forget to clean off your makeup before bed.”

“Oh.” After a minute or two of effort, she managed to sit up (she’d slumped down in the bed over the last half-hour of the movie), then sat staring into space for another minute.

“Never mind,” Cassie said. “Just sit here and I’ll go get a washcloth.”

Eliza sat there trying to parse that and failing until Cassie returned with a damp cloth and started applying it to her face. That woke her up, and she apologized profusely for making Cassie clean her makeup off.

“No problem,” Cassie said. “You were up earlier than I was this morning, and you’re obviously exhausted… There. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

Eliza tried not to lean on Cassie, but she stumbled once on the way down the hall to her bedroom and might have fallen if Cassie hadn’t caught her arm. A few moments later, Cassie was tucking her into bed. She was asleep before Cassie turned off the light.