Karsan watched his parents slip out of the parlor and practically gagged. It was obvious they weren’t really that tired or sleepy, they were just pretending to be so they could let Grandma babysit the kids and go have sex. Karsan didn’t mind his parents having sex normally; he wouldn’t exist otherwise. But he didn’t like to be reminded of it more often than absolutely necessary. And the idea of them doing it when they were in the wrong bodies was just — ecch.

Worse yet, his little-girl body really was getting sleepy much too early in the evening, though he was trying hard not to show it, having suppressed or hidden several yawns already. Devi and Ami weren’t trying as hard to hide theirs, but they were still chattering excitedly about the stuff they’d seen on their tour earlier, while Grandma talked with the wizards about what things were like here, where she could live and what she could do and what she would need to learn if she moved over here for good. Karsan hadn’t contributed much to either conversation. The tour had been kind of neat, he had to admit, more fun in some ways than some other vacations Mom and Dad had dragged them around on — if he could ignore the huge and unignorable fact that he was a little girl! Seeing adults look at him and his siblings and smile at the cuteness they couldn’t help radiating was enough to put a sour expression on his face every time, but he suspected that he only looked cuter when he scowled. Or perhaps “pouted” would be a more accurate word.

Finally, he startled awake suddenly, realizing he’d slumped over against Ami as he dozed off.

“I think it’s time for these little ones to go to bed,” Grandma said, his deep voice adding insult to injury by reminding Karsan of the voice he’d finally attained after years of sudden, embarrassing mid-sentence voice breaks. “Come on, kids. — Kashpur, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Of course,” Kashpur said. “Do you wish Tashni’s help?”

“I think — well, yes, maybe it would be better if she put the girls to bed. The boys who currently look like girls, I mean,” he added, seeing Karsan’s glare.

Karsan and his siblings got up and followed Grandma down the hall, while Kashpur rang a bell to summon his housekeeper. Grandma knelt down and hugged Karsan, then Devi.

“Do you need anything before you go to bed?” he asked.

“No,” Karsan said, but Devi blurted out “I need to go to the toilet,” and of course, that made Karsan realize he needed to go too. He’d probably been subconsciously ignoring it because she hated the way sitting down to pee made her feel. So Devi led the way toward one of the bathrooms and went in first, and Karsan waited for her.

Tashni found her waiting outside the bathroom door. “Is your brother or sister in the bathroom?”

“Yeah,” Karsan said. “I guess we’re going to bed after that,” and yawned.

“All right. I’ll help you get into nightclothes when you’re done.”

A few minutes later, they were in the guest room with Tashni. Devi stripped out of her robe without a blush and took the little nightgown that Tashni offered her, but Karsan stared defiantly at the housekeeper.

“I can change into that myself,” he said.

“Oh, all right,” Tashni said. “Here you go. Good night,” and she kissed Devi on the cheek, and made as if to kiss Karsan, but he ducked his head and avoided it. Tashni laughed and walked out.

“I’ll turn my back,” Devi volunteered, and after she did, Karsan changed into the nightgown. It wasn’t that much different from the robe he’d worn all day, but the fabric was thinner and it wasn’t dyed, just a plain greyish white. Devi was already climbing into bed and under the covers, and Karsan followed as soon as he tied the sash of his gown. Then Devi reached over and touched something on the bedside lamp, and it went dark.

After a few moments of quiet, Devi softly asked, “You’re still grumpy about all this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Karsan said. “I wanted to stay home, go to basketball practice and hang out with Tyler and Austin... I should be old enough to stay by myself for a couple of days. Tyler’s parents left him at home when they went off for their anniversary.”

“Tyler has a big sister,” Devi pointed out with frustrating logic. “Maybe that’s why?”

“Maybe,” Karsan grudgingly admitted. “My point is, I’m old enough to take care of myself and not burn the house down or something, and I hate being a little girl, and I’ll be glad when we go home.”

“But wasn’t it neat, seeing all that stuff today?”

“Yeah, kind of. Some of it. The big bonsai trees they’d shaped like people and centaurs and stuff were cool. But —” He fell silent. Then: “Do you like being a little girl?”

“I hated it at first,” Devi said, “back when I first came here. But after a while I got used to it and now I kind of like it. And I’ve missed Zindla and her family since I came home, almost as much as I missed you and Ami and Mom and Dad while I was here. I wish Pasyala could have come to dinner, too — she’s Zindla’s grandma, she’s really nice. And Tyemba, that’s her daddy. Zindla’s, I mean, not Pasyala’s. Anyway. I like it here and I hope we come here on vacation again.”

“I think we probably will,” Karsan said. “It looked to me like Mom and Dad were having way too much fun. They’ll want to come back for a longer vacation in the summer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“You mean like when we get home?”

“Hah.”

Devi pestered him for a while longer, but Karsan refused to say anything. It was really kind of cute how Devi was almost eleven and still didn’t know what it meant when Mom and Dad were making eyes at each other. He didn’t want to spoil that.

---

Hamanta woke feeling very strange; it took him a few moments to remember where he was, that he was a man, and that — Karsan’s head and arm were sprawled across his chest. A little of her drool had gummed up his unfamiliar chest hair. He smiled and stroked her hair gently. A few minutes later, she stirred slightly and opened her eyes.

“Oh!” she gasped.

“Good morning,” he said softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” she admitted. “But I don’t regret last night,” she added hastily, seeming to see his alarm on his face.

“Now you know how I felt after our wedding night,” Hamanta said. “More or less. We’re both more experienced now, so I hope I didn’t — well. It was your first time in that body, so some soreness is inevitable, but I think I managed to minimize it.”

“Thanks. I don’t regret it. I just wonder if every time we visit this world, it’s going to feel like the first time?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamanta said. “But on the bright side, you’d probably have to stay here for several weeks before you have a period.”

“Yeah, that’s probably all the compensation I need.”

They kissed, and one thing would have led to another if Karsan hadn’t said, “I need to go pee.”

“It wouldn’t hurt if I did, too.”

They got up, sponged off with the basin of cold water Tashni must have left in their room at some point, and got dressed. They found Ami waiting outside the guest bathroom.

“Good morning,” he said. “Karsan got in there before me.”

“Good morning,” Karsan said. “How did you and Grandma sleep?”

“Pretty okay, I guess.” He looked at them knowingly, but didn’t comment on their recent activities — which might have been audible in the room next door, Hamanta realized.

While he waited for the toilet, and half-listened to Karsan chat with Ami about what they’d seen the day before, Hamanta finally got around to something he’d been looking forward to ever since he’d realized that the portal was real: using his native speaker intuition to analyze the linguistic structure of Stasari. He knew that Devi had forgotten every word of the language itself when she came home, as Sashtun had when he was in Hamanta’s world, but he hoped that he would retain more if he consciously thought about it. Somehow, the shock of his new body, followed by the whirlwind tour of the city, had distracted him from the novelty of having a whole new language shoved into his cranium all at once as though he’d grown up speaking it, and of course he hadn’t had any quiet alone time to analyze the language except brief moments in the bathroom (which were the times his new body had distracted him most... until last night).

By the time Ami and Karsan had taken care of their urgent business, Sharun and Devi were also queued up to use the toilet. Just after Hamanta peed (still taking great pleasure in the novelty of standing up and aiming his stream this way and that in the bowl, but continuing to mull over Stasar’s split ergative as he did so), Tashni came down the hall and told them that breakfast would be ready soon.

They joined their hosts at breakfast, which consisted of flatbread with a mildly savory dipping sauce, some sort of oatmeal or porridge with dried fruit, and strips of roasted goat meat. Sharun spent most of breakfast talking further with Kashpur and Sashtun about Rishpara and the Inupara Republic, their customs, laws, school system, and economic conditions. It seemed he was seriously considering moving here permanently; Hamanta and Karsan asked some questions as well, and answered Kashpur and Sashtun’s questions in turn. Hamanta wasn’t so wrapped up in thinking about how different postpositions were used with different oblique cases that he didn’t notice that Karsan the younger was still sullen and dissatisfied, picking at her food. She wasn’t contributing to the adults‘ conversation, which he took pride in doing back home when they had guests over, nor to her younger siblings’ chat. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring him here. At fifteen, he could probably be trusted by himself for a couple of days... but after the tantrum he’d thrown when they broached the plan of all going over here and staying overnight, it hadn’t seemed like a good idea to give in to him. Hamanta and Karsan could discuss it further in private before their next opportunity to vacation over here.

Hopefully, Hamanta’s parents would be with them then. But getting them to the house in Douglasville would take some careful managing. Since moving to that retirement community in Florida, they’d only visited a handful of times in the last ten years, instead preferring to invite their children, in-laws and grandchildren to visit them. Hamanta and Karsan could simply tell them what was up, but would they believe it? Maybe if Sharun added his — her — corroboration...

After they’d all finished eating, the conversation turned to timing and scheduling. “I’d like to invite a few friends my age to come over and visit here with me,” Sharun said. “Sometime in the next few weeks or months. We’ll have to come and go at a time when Karsan and Hamanta are at home, but other than that, I hope we won’t need to disturb them much.”

“Maybe we can free up our schedules to visit for a day when Mom’s tour group comes over,” Karsan said, “but it’s too early to tell. I don’t have our schedules memorized; I need to look in my calendar to see when we’re available, and if I had it with me, I wouldn’t be able to read it.”

“My schedule is simpler, for the most part,” Sharun said. “But I’d have to be at home to look at my calendar and verify when I’d be free to come over here for a longer stay. And I’ll have to talk to people and see who I can persuade to come with me.”

“I understand,” Kashpur said. “Shall we plan for Sashtun to come over again in a few days and discuss the scheduling with you?”

“Next weekend,” Hamanta suggested. “It should be morning of the second day of the week back home by now; Sashtun could come over on the evening of the sixth day or morning of the seventh, let’s say...” They did the math and figured out how many days and hours that would be in this world.

And then they returned to their guest rooms and changed into the ill-fitting clothes they’d come over here in. Sharun in his skirt suit and the children in their far-too-big clothes looked especially ridiculous, but it was only for a few minutes. Soon they gathered in the room where the cabinet was stored, and Kashpur opened the portal.

“Hurry through,” Sashtun said. “I’ll see you in a few days.” Sharun was already walking through the portal; Hamanta and Karsan waited until their children were through before they followed.

Amanda’s breasts didn’t grow neatly into her bra, unfortunately; he’d put it on under his shirt, but apparently it had slipped out of position sometime before he stepped through the portal and changed back. The kids were having to adjust their clothes, too, and Sharon seemed to be having the same sort of problem with her bra, to judge from how she was discreetly trying to adjust it.

“I’m going to slip into the restroom and adjust my clothes,” she said, already trying to remember as much as she could of her analysis of Stasari. “Let’s talk in a few minutes.”

“Sure,” Carson said.

As Amanda was starting downstairs toward the master bathroom, Carson Jr. charged across the hall from Davey’s bedroom into his own and slammed the door behind him.

---

Later that evening, after they’d eaten supper and Carson had taken his mother home, and the kids were in all in bed, he and Amanda sat on the couch, half-watching the late news and talking in low voices.

“I really want to go back there sometime,” Amanda said. “Do you still feel the same way, now that you’ve got a little distance from it?”

“Yeah,” Carson said, thinking of last night with Amanda. They’d been like newlyweds again, rediscovering everything new about each other. “We’ll have to figure out when we can take time off again. And whether we want to take the kids next time, or ask Rob to take care of them for a few days in the summer.”

“I think we should consider letting Carson stay home, or stay with Rob, if we go there with Amy and Davey again,” Amanda said. “He was miserable the whole time, it seemed to me.”

“Yeah... I can’t blame him. I was half afraid I’d feel the same way about the transformation, that we all would, but he seems to have been the only one who kept feeling like that after the first hour or so. But... well, I’m okay with leaving him to watch the younger kids for a few hours while we go out to eat with friends, but I’m not sure he’s mature enough to be by himself for two days or more.”

“I’m not sure either. Maybe we need to put off our next extended trip to that world until he is ready. It shouldn’t be too long.”

“I meant to find time to talk with him alone, man to man, sometime today, but things got away from me. Maybe after school and work tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Let’s plan on that.”

---

The next day, after Carson got home from work, he went up to his oldest son’s room and knocked. “Carson?”

“Yeah?” came his muffled voice.

“Can we talk?”

The door opened. “Come in, I guess,” his son said, and gestured at the desk chair. He sat down on the bed, and Carson took the chair.

“I want to talk about what happened in Sashtun’s world,” he began. “You seem... pretty upset by it. I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner that you were miserable there — I was distracted, but that’s no excuse.”

“I was a girl,” Carson Jr. said angrily. “What I can’t figure out is why you weren’t freaking out the whole time like I was.”

“I can’t explain it,” Carson said. “It was pretty weird at first, but... after a while, I managed to shift my focus and pay attention to the city our hosts were showing us.”

“And to Mom,” Carson Jr. said with a sarcastic tone. “I guess for you, being a girl temporarily while Mom is a guy could be pretty cool. But why should I be excited about being a little girl?”

“It’s not ideal,” Carson said. “But your mother and I hoped you could get past it and enjoy seeing the strange sights of Rishpara. Sashtun seemed to be doing okay when she was visiting here as a woman, at least after the first few hours, and when Davey told us about his stay there, he didn’t sound too upset about being a girl.”

“Davey’s practically a girl already,” Carson Jr. said sullenly. “And I don’t know about Sashtun, but at least she came over here as an adult, not a little kid.”

“That’s true. About Sashtun, I mean. I don’t want you talking about Davey like that. Are you saying that just because he was excited to return to the other world?”

“Yeah, mostly. He said he was freaking out when he first went there, but after a while he got used to it and liked it.”

“Did you consider that he might have just been excited to see his friends again?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think that was all.”

That was a troubling thought — but not any more troubling than what Carson himself had done when he was female and Amanda was male. He shook his head. “I’m not here to talk about Davey. How are you doing? Are you feeling okay now that we’re back home in our own bodies?”

“Yeah, no thanks to you and Mom.”

“I’m sorry. We couldn’t have known, and — well, we don’t think you’re quite ready to be home alone for two whole days.”

“Yeah, you said that last week when you told us we were going there. But I am old enough to take care of myself.”

“We’ll give you a chance to prove it. Leave you alone for longer and longer periods — but not when we’re in the other world, yet. When we’re just a phone call away.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Carson gave his son a fist-bump, and saying, “See you at supper,” left the room. He paused for a few moments at the head of the stairs, then turned and nudged Davey’s partly-open door.

“Knock knock,” he said.

“Hi, Dad,” Davey said. He was sitting at his desk and drawing — it looked like he might have been sketching some of the tree-sculptures they’d seen in the park near the parliament house.

“Hi yourself. I wanted to talk about... what we did in the other world.”

“Wasn’t it awesome? They have such a neat city. Sometime I want to go out in the country and see what it’s like, too. How soon do you think we can go back?”

“Whoa, slow down,” Carson said with a laugh. “We’ll have to talk with Sashtun next time she comes over, and see when it suits for your mother and I to take a few days off work, and when you kids are out of school... maybe Spring Break, but maybe not until summer. And... I don’t know... we might try to arrange for Carson to stay with somebody else. Uncle Rob, maybe, or Grandma and Grandpa Woolcombe in Florida. How did he seem to you while we were there?”

“She was grumpy all the time. Kind of like I was sometimes when I first went there, but a lot worse.”

“Yeah. What was that like for you? I — maybe I should have talked to you about this sooner...”

Davey talked more than Carson had ever heard him talk about discovering he was a little girl, being treated as a girl by Zindla and her family for a while until Zindla agreed to make him some clothes in boy colors, then switching back to girl clothes so he could participate in Zindla’s coming of age ceremony, and continuing to act more or less girly for the remainder of her stay in the other world. “I figured, maybe I went there so I could learn what it was like to be a girl, and be a better brother for Amy when I came home,” he finally said. “And now Amy knows what it’s like to be a boy, too! And you and Mom and Grandma... and... well, Carson, too, even if he was too grumpy to learn anything.”

Carson smiled broadly. “I’m proud of you, son. You’re very mature for your age.” He thought, but didn’t say, that he could wish his namesake were as mature for his age.