5 Chapter 3
created: 2023-06-04T10:39 updated: 2023-06-04T10:
Lilly reached out to silence the alarm on her phone. She had set it for a time that was obscenely early so that she could get into the airport and hopefully get a flight out. She quickly changed her diaper, forgoing the shower, she could get one when she got home. There hadn't been enough hot water to wash her face. It wasn't that she had to clean makeup off, Delaney had forbidden makeup: she wasn't old enough (not to mention that she was beautiful without it); it was because if she didn't wash her face, her acne would more than likely flair up and cause problems. Looking in the mirror, she quickly brushed her hair and pulled it into a ponytail. While it looked ok, it didn't seem to convey the overall look that Delaney would have liked to see. She tipped her head and then reached out and pulled the elastic band out of her hair. She ran the brush through it a few times, before separating it and doing low pigtails. It was closer, but still not quite there... Reaching up and pulling the elastic out of her hair again before brushing it again, and starting to braid it. The braid hanging on the left side of her head looked right, so she repeated the process with the right side and was satisfied with the result, although she now looked half her age. The pink shirt wasn't a shirt at all, but was really a onesie with a butterfly on the front. It looked like something out of the girls department at any number of stores across the country. She reached up and pulled her contacts out and put her pink framed glasses on in their place. She really did look like she was twelve. She really hoped it wouldn't cause problems in the airport. She had a company credit card, her ID, and her work ID. That should be enough to establish her identity should it be necessary. Her boss had authorized her to just pay for a ticket, regardless of cost. She took the sky bridge across to the terminal. Her employer always had a room in the hotel on standby, and she always took the sky bridge to get to the terminal. Walking up to the counter at Southwest, she was dismayed to find that the counter was taller than her.
"Excuse me..." She said, loud enough to be heard. A few seconds later, a man's head popped over the edge of the counter.
"Yes?" He said, his tone condescending. Lilly wasn't sure if it was because she was a girl or if he thought that she was much younger than she really was.
"When is your earliest flight to Columbus Ohio?" She asked. Hopefully she would win the guy over with kindness. She often got treated like she was a kid, even without wearing the overalls. She had started at the Southwest ticket counter because the company had an account and she could get the ticket without having to deal with the expense report that she'd have to fill out for using the card. The bean counters were very particular about their beans...
"Sweetie, I don't have time to play childish games..." The clerk said, the condescending tone still in his voice... "Why don't you go get your mommy or daddy and have them come talk to me, grown up to grown up." He turned away and back to the discussion he was having with a coworker before she had approached.
"Excuse me?" Lilly said, loud enough that she knew he heard her. "For the record, I'm twenty four, and the company I work for spends an awful lot on airfare with Southwest. I'll ask again, When is the earliest flight to Columbus?" She was used to being treated like a child at first glance. It would happen even if she wasn't dressed in the manner that she was currently dressed in.
"I already told you to go get your mommy or daddy and I'd talk to them," The condescending tone was back. He had stepped over to where checked luggage was placed so that she could clearly see him. This provided a view of his name tag. It read Victor, and Victor was being a condescending asshole. "Now go somewhere else or I'll have you arrested."
"Ok," Lilly said, "But, Victor," She emphasized the name, making sure he knew that she knew who he was. "Expect a phone call from your corporate office on Monday." She turned on her heel and walked to the United counter. This counter wasn't as tall and she felt a little more comfortable with the older lady in her mid forties that was working behind the counter; She smiled as Lilly approached.
"What can I do for you, sweetie?" She asked, moving to the opening where the checked baggage would be placed to make it easier on Lilly to see her.
"When is your earliest flight to Columbus, Ohio?" Lilly asked, willing herself not to cry, although, she mused it might help...
"Uh," the lady said standing so she could look at a terminal. "Looks like I have one taking off in about an hour. I think I can get you on it." She moved back over the gap in the counter. "Is your mom or dad here somewhere?"
Delaney rolled over and looked at Kirsten's sleeping form. She would often watch the person that was her husband and sometimes her wife sleep. Due to the baby face, that Nathan possessed, there was little that Kirsten had to do in terms of shaving or makeup. She could go two weeks without shaving and her skin was always soft and smooth. She was like that all over her body. Of course this caused issues in the winter as she would get cold very easily. Getting her in a dress after the temperature dropped below sixty was hard. Her small frame made it easy to shop for though, and because they both were were wearing women sizes, it make it easier to do mommy/daughter outfits. She watched her spouse sleep for a few more moments before getting out of the bed, the nightgown she wore falling back to her knees. Walking around the bed, she gave Kristin a kiss on the forehead and left the room. Like Kristin, her phone charged in her office, and she stopped by on the way to the coffee maker to make sure that there were no updates from Lilly. She was shocked to see that there was one; Lilly had managed to get on a flight that left Denver at six thirty, and would arrive at Columbus somewhere around eleven thirty assuming everything went to plan. Delaney did the math in her head, there was enough time for her and Kirsten to get breakfast and still be at the airport to pick Lilly up. Even though Lilly's employer would pick up the cost of parking at the airport or a taxi or some other form of ride sharing service to get Lilly home from the airport, Delaney preferred to go and drop Lilly off and pick her up if possible. It had more to do with being a caregiver and guardian than anything. There had been a recent series of incidents where drivers of one of the ride sharing services were accused of various sexual crimes, mainly against young women. One of the drivers had been shot by his would be victim. One of Delaney's jobs as a caregiver was to protect her 'children' and she would do that in any way she could. She forgot about going after the coffee and instead went back to the bedroom where she shook Kirsten awake...
"Huh?" Kirsten mumbled, fully aware that she wasn't awake yet...
"Well, Lilly managed to catch an early flight out of DIA," Delaney said, puling out a diaper to change Kirsten into. "And she'll be here about eleven thirty. Do you want to go get breakfast?"
"Sure..." Kirsten said, flipping the blanket mostly off of her frame. The blanket flew about as well as an anvil due to it's weight; the blanket weighed close to twenty pounds. If it helped Kirsten, then that was all that mattered. Kirsten extracted herself from under the part of the blanket that hadn't flown off of her, and stood. Delaney flipped the diaper open on the end of the bed and Kirsten laid on it. Delaney quickly changed her wife's diaper, and then helped her back to her feet.
"You can chose what to wear today," Delaney said. "If you want to wear something of Nathan's I'll let you." She smiled.
"I'm the one that told you I wanted you to sort of force me to come to terms with myself..." Kirsten said. It was true, Kirsten had asked Delaney to help her come to terms with herself. She knew that Delaney would protect her no matter what. Every day, Kirsten came more and more to terms with herself and she had been doing research on hormone replacement therapy. Of course, Delaney had been doing the same research just to see what the options were. Delaney had been working her side for a little bit longer than Kirsten. "I think I'll wear my plaid skater dress and black tights. Casual, but cute."
"Ok," Delaney said, looking in the closet herself to figure out what she wanted to wear. She wasn't in a dress mood, so she pulled out a pair of jeans and a light weight sweater. She quickly dressed and turned to look at Kirsten. She was still working on the tights. She hadn't really worn tights and Delaney put a hand on her shoulder. "Stop..." Kirsten glanced at her.
"Why?" She asked, stopping the tugging she was doing.
"Because you're gonna rip them..." Delaney walked around the bed and took the tights from Kirsten's hands. "Watch..." She bunched the leg up so that it was a large mass of black fabric, and slid it over the outstretched left foot. She repeated the process with Kirsten's right foot and slowly slid them up the hairless legs of her wife. "Stand up." Kirsten did so and Delaney worked the tights up her legs until the waistband sat where it should. "Although, you really should be in stockings and a garter belt. It would be easier for me to change you... But, that's much to old for a baby like you, also, you need a bra..." She went and rummaged in the drawer and pulled out a padded black bralette and put it on Kirsten before pulling the dress off the hanger and held it out so that she could drop it over Kirsten as head. The dress hugged the curves of the small girl, and accentuating the small breasts on the girl. "You're wearing flats... You've not had enough practice walking in heels..." Delaney was more worried that Kirsten would twist her ankle or break something than anything.
"Yes, Mommy." Kirsten said quietly. She realized that she had been dressed like a child would have been, but she was ok with that. "I'm cute." The whole outfit had a school girl quality to it, and it made Kirsten feel younger and that made her happy. She slipped her feet into a pair of black flats and stood up. She felt over dressed compared to Delaney, but that was ok as well. A girl had to have her own sense of style after all. Delaney handed her a little black purse and smiled at her.
"You ready?" Delaney asked. Kirsten looked at Delaney.
"Should I do something with my hair?" Kirsten's hair was shoulder length, and generally didn't need much work, like now.
"What are you going to do to it?" Delaney asked, she thought it looked fine.
"I don't know..." Kirsten looked at the floor. She was stalling because she was nervous and Delaney knew that the only way to combat that would be to simply take Kirsten's hand and drag her out to the car, which she was about to do.
"Go grab your phone and lets go..." She said, her voice in that tone that said it wouldn't be wise to disobey. Kirsten did so and the next thing she knew, she was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car next to Delaney and they were slowly traveling down the driveway.
"Well, Folks," The Captian's voice came over the intercom. "we're going to be arriving in Columbus about an hour later than expected as we have to go around the same system that caused delays in Denver yesterday." Lilly sighed, thankful that this airline had onboard WiFi. It wasn't enough to stream anything, but it was enough to run some shell sessions and verify that the data restore on the server was completed properly. All of her data verification's were reporting as correct. She left the backups where they were on the other server located in the coloco and disconnected from the server. Her slice battery had come close to dying. She switched the batteries out and decided on starting to write a story. She fired up her normal text editor and thought about it for a second. It wasn't really designed for this kind of duty, but she was sure that someone had come up with a way to make the editor work better for writing something like a story.
Delaney pulled into the cell phone lot at the airport and put the car in park. They were probably half an hour early for the flight to land and probably forty five minutes from Lilly calling and saying she was in the pickup area. There was always people trying to sit in that area waiting on people to come in on flights. The airport police usually shooed them off telling them to come back when the passengers called to say that they were about to walk outside. A light drizzle was starting to fall from the skies above. Delaney knew that the system that had delayed Lilly the previous day was making it's way through the area and this was the leading edge of it. In the backseat, Kirsten was pecking away on her laptop, working on more of the code that she'd been working on for the last three weeks. This project was getting closer to being done. "I really wish that Lilly had given us the fight info..." Delaney mused out loud, watching a Delta plane taxi toward the terminal.
"She's online..." Kirsten said, "Want me to ask her what airline and flight number?"
"Please?" Delaney pulled her phone out and opened the app for flight tracking. Because she did a fair amount of flying for work and the fact that sometimes Kirsten had to fly somewhere, she was familiar with the issues facing the airline industry after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
"Uh," Kirsten said, "She's on United 529, and according to what I see they should be not far out..." Delaney typed the flight data into her phone and looked at the location of the aircraft.
"I see..." Delaney said, putting the phone in the clip on the dashboard. "Good thing that we all know how to travel light, she only has the one bag and nothing was checked. No reason to go down to baggage claim..."
"I agree..." Kirsten said, smiling at Delaney watching her in the mirror. "I'm amazed at how much we can fit in the backpacks..."
"If you know how to pack it." Delaney said, looking down the airfield as a plane's landing lights came on. They were bright against the gray sky. She couldn't tell what airline the plane belonged to as it was still too far away. Timing wise, it might have been Lilly's flight. They had been sitting there for about forty five minutes. "You'd be surprised what would fit in a smallish bag." Delaney's father had been in the military and if you wanted to talk about learning how to pack a bag, those guys knew how to pack, but then again they also were really good at throwing vehicles and ordinance out of planes too...
"Yeah..." Kirsten said, smiling. "I'm glad you taught me the tricks. It made going to Charleston last month easier." For now, business trips were still being handled by Nathan. No one where Nathan worked knew about Kirsten, and for right now, that was how Kirsten wanted it. Some day, she'd be out at work, not that it would realistically matter, she was just a name on a screen as text scrolled by for the most part. Delaney's phone chimed, and she looked at it.
"She's on the ground, and they are taxing to the terminal." she said, after reading the message. Watching in the mirror, she saw Kirsten close her laptop. "We're not going yet..." Kirsten dropped her laptop in her bag and glanced toward the front of the SUV.
"Oh, I know," Kirsten said, I just want to be ready to move when she comes out." Kirsten smiled. "Besides, she's never seen me dressed outside of the house..." Kirsten was normally in girl mode at home, and it was something that she found comforting. "I've been thinking about Hormones..." She said.
"Well," Delaney said. "We've both been doing research on the topic... If it's what you want, then we'll do it."
"I'll be honest," Kirsten said. "Part of the idea scares the heel out of me..." It was the truth; Of course being dressed like she was right now had scared the hell out of her as well. Now it was more common for Kirsten to go somewhere than it was for Nathan to go.
"What about it scares you?" Delaney asked, watching as a United Airlines jumbo jet hit the end of the runway and made a turn for the taxiway. "I bet that's her plane..."
"The somewhat permanence of it..." Kirsten said quietly. "I'm worried that by starting HRT, I'll realize that I'm not transgender and want to stop and will have breasts or something and then I can't easily do anything."
"May I make a suggestion?" Delaney asked, turning in the seat to be able to face Kirsten. "Why not do an extended, lets say six months, maybe a year, real life test. Everything you do, you're doing as Kirsten; and Nathan only exists on your official documents. Most of the people you interact with never actually see you, and you've been contributing code to the projects you work on with K. Wasserstrom for a while. No real change there..."
"AMD if I decide that I'm not trans?" Kirsten asked, thinking she already knew the answer.
"Then I'm still in love with you and you're not transgender..." Delaney said. "I want you to be happy and healthy, those are the two goals. Nothing else matters. Besides, you won't know for sure until you try it..."
"It wouldn't be much different than now, would it?" Kirsten asked, her voice thoughtful.
"Not really, I would let you have all of your girls pants because I will need the entire trunk to contain Nathan's clothes..." Delaney said. Realistically, Lilly would get her pants back too. The contents of Nathan's wardrobe would fill the trunk, possibly even more than just the trunk. "I want you to think about it for a little bit, and if you decide that you want to just be a girl for a while, we'll make it work." Delaney's phone beeped and she glanced at it. "Looks like she's off the plane and is now making her way out of the terminal, got your seat belt on?"
"Yes, Mommy." Kirsten said, her voice barely audible. The only thing that would have made Kirsten feel more little would have been if Delaney had buckled her seat belt for her.
"Alrighty," Delaney said, putting the car in reverse. "Let's go get our little girl..." Delaney put the car in gear and drove toward the pickup and drop off area at the terminal. "Hopefully she's waiting outside when we pull up... We can only sit there for five minutes before we have to circle." She turned left toward the terminal, entering the queue of cars heading for the pickup and drop off area.
Lilly walked out of the terminal, brushing one of her pigtails back over her shoulder. Delaney hadn't said anything about her hair, so she had put it in braided pigtails before leaving Denver. The staff at Denver International had asked her where her guardians were. She had to explain that she was an adult and then showed her ID to prove it. Since everything matched the ticket, she was allowed to proceed to board the aircraft. Delaney would undoubtedly get a kick out of what happened in Denver. She looked for the black Ford Explorer that belonged to Delaney. There were a couple of Explorers in the pickup area, but none of them were Delaney. Lilly watched as the line of vehicles slowly passed, people pulling off, passengers embarking or disembarking when Delaney pulled up in front of her. She watched as Delaney pushed a button and the lift gate went up. Lilly put her bag in the back of the SUV and then went around to the drivers side and climbed in the back. She buckled her seat belt and looked over at Kirsten. "That's cute..." She said, smiling at Kirsten. "Hi Mommy, you won't believe what happened before I got on the plane to come home..."
Delaney looked in the nursery, Both Kirsten and Lilly were curled up in the crib napping. The three of them had worked together to bring the crib up and set it up again. When they had gotten the sheets on the mattress, Lilly had climbed in and almost instantly fallen asleep. She never slept well when she was away on business, regardless of what coping methods she took with her. Multi night trips where the hardest. She was ok with the girls both sleeping, but would want to wake them up soon so that they would sleep that night. Other wise she would have two cranky children at the zoo and she didn't want that... Tomorrow was supposed to be a relaxing day for all three of them. Dinner would have to come first...
Kirsten cleared the table while Lilly started on dishes. Once the dishes were cleared off the table, Kirsten helped Lilly do the dishes. Delaney looked at them. "After you girls get done with dishes, go make sure your diaper bags are packed." The pair of them turned to look at her. "We're going to the zoo tomorrow. I think it'll be a nice distraction after the week we've had..."