The shop Serru had in mind bore the familiar five-petalled flower sign that obviously indicated healing supplies, and possibly other things associated with healing for all I knew. I really should ask about that ter. This sign had three such flowers in a triangle, all different colours. I wondered whether the variations meant anything or were just personal taste. The door was fnked by rge windows that had actually been painted with translucent paint, one showing a neatly-organized workroom in which an older man with light skin and amethyst hair worked amidst pnts and potion bottles, and the other a scene in a wood with someone crouching to gather something; the someone, I couldn’t help but notice, had long rosy hair.

  The shop walls were lined with shelves bearing increasingly-familiar medical supplies. I immediately pnted all four feet in the middle where I couldn’t accidentally hit anything, even though there was plenty of space. A simple backpack could sweep a shelf clear; what could my centaur back half do?

  “Serru!” the shopkeeper greeted her. “I was starting to worry!”

  I scrambled back through my memory for what pronouns Serru had used for her friend, because I had no idea.

  The shopkeeper wore a calf-length swirly violet skirt, nearly the shade of their long mostly-loose hair, slit up the left front to show off boots not unlike Serru’s; the snugly-ced sleeveless top, purple-bck with silver-white edging, might have light boning in it, but as far as I could tell it did little or nothing to alter the shape of a ft-chested lean torso. Their lips were a medium violet that showed well against pale skin, their eyes had been darkened, and they were wearing dangly gold earrings through double piercings on each moderately-pointed ear and gold bangles on one wrist.

  That hug looked, to me, warm and affectionate and prolonged.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. I got a bit distracted by two new friends and lost track of how long it’s been.”

  “That seemed like the most likely, since you mentioned meeting a paramedic who needed help, but still. Oh well. How is your family dealing with your great-grandfather moving on? He was a wonderful man and right in the middle of everything, it must feel very strange and empty without him.”

  “It does, but he was ready and he had more of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren around him, or at least stopping in to visit for a few days, than I think I’ve seen in one pce in my whole life. He had nothing else he wanted to do. He’s missed, though. But it feels good to be back out on the road and seeing the other people who matter to me.”

  “You’d hardly be you otherwise. How’s Kesseli?”

  “Wonderful, and she says hi. The farm’s thriving and expanding. While she was setting up a new pasture for the yearling calves on the riverside, she found a big patch of sand that we both think is very high quality. She’s asking a local alchemist to assess it, but she also sent me with some for your grandfather because she respects his opinion. Can you find me something to put three handfuls of sand in?”

  “Be right back.” Terenei ducked through a curtain behind the counter, and I heard muffled voices, then they returned with a rge shallow coppery bowl. “He says he’ll check it out and send her a message with what he thinks.”

  “Good. If it will work for him, we can probably arrange a way for her to ship it here in enough quantity to keep him making high-level potions indefinitely.” She reached into her bag and drew out, one at a time, handfuls of gleaming near-white sand, pouring each into the metal bowl. “All right, with that job done before I can forget about it and keep carrying that sand all the way to the Highnds and around again... Terenei, these are my new friends Nathan and Aryennos.” She gestured to each of us in turn, distracting me from specution about whether I had been missing the existence in the local humans of additional physical sexes, social genders, both, or something else, and what they might use for social cues, if anything. Whichever it was, it seemed highly unlikely that transphobia and its evil retives existed here.

  “Always a pleasure to meet the friends of a friend,” Terenei said cheerfully. “And welcome to Coppersands. Did the monitor turn out to be the right kind?”

  “Perfectly,” I said. “And it got used on the way here, even. So thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome. Supporting healers is just sensible.” That smile felt warm and genuine. “All right, I know you, Serru, let’s get it out of the way. You have more than sand in that satchel of yours for my grandfather, hm? You know you’ll never get a better price than here on anything he can use. What’ve you got?”

  “Not entirely what you’re expecting,” Serru chuckled, and reached into her satchel, withdrawing one of my best potion attempts, a basic Quickheal. “I do have raw materials to sell, and we have medical kits to refill, but also I have some of these.”

  Terenei took the bottle and inspected it, holding it towards the glowing lumina stone suspended in the centre of the shop ceiling. “Not absolutely fwless, but good. With more practice, whoever made this could be excellent at basic alchemy in time.”

  “It’s by a friend who’s still learning,” Serru said, unloading empty bottles from her bag into a box on a low table next to the counter. She’d mentioned they could be recycled. Apparently that was by alchemists personally. “And several more. The only way to practice is, after all, to simply do it.”

  “Absolutely. And there’s always a market for discounted potions for minor household bumps and bruises that don’t really need a full-price full-strength fwless one. What else do you have?”

  Serru arranged my various efforts on the counter. I’d been making sporadic attempts, and she’d been patient about offering me any materials I needed; we’d followed a stream we passed until, between the three of us, we’d collected plenty of handfuls of clean golden sand, which was invariably necessary. I’d tried most of the items on my list of recipes, but Quickheal had the most readily-avaible ingredients and, as Aryennos pointed out, that was by far the most universally useful potion, so I’d done more of those, leading up to the one Serru had offered first.

  Terenei examined every one of them, sorting them neatly by type and quality. Then they suggested a price for them. I still didn’t have the hang of the local currency, and I was perfectly fine leaving the good-natured haggling to Serru, who had every reason to be good at it.

  Aryennos took the opportunity to perch in a chair in the corner and pulled out his journal, although I had no clue what he could possibly have to write about at the moment.

  I let my eyes roam along the shelves, identifying as much as I could. I had a much better idea now how healing supplies worked, and the shelf contents were much less mysterious.

  One wall held boxes painted in various colours and patterns, and it would not have surprised me if those colours and patterns were standardized for quick recognition to go with the high-contrast text on top. White as a background appeared to be for first aid, aside from red for field kits, but there was a considerable range within that. One that was white with several medium-width red stripes running at right angles had a neat bel in front of it that said “Basic Home First Aid,” and one beside it that had wider stripes said, “Home First Aid, Young Children.” On the same shelf, and next to that, one alternated thin green stripes with the red, on a white background, and the bel on that one said, “Home First Aid, Small Animal.” On a shelf below that I saw boxes with wavy or diagonal stripes, with bels indicating that these were specialized kits to keep in a tavern or bakery kitchen, a schoolroom, a farm, a workshop, a ship or dock, and other locations that might trend towards specific common injuries. I didn’t open them to look but I was tempted.

  A stack of three neat boxes, each painted in multicoloured stripes in a wavy pattern, was belled “Pregnancy Kit.”

  Now I knew, from a discussion with my friends about where babies came from here, that they meant that literally. While the normal system functioned for wildlife, and domesticated animals all had clear seasons defining whether they could reproduce or not, it was impossible for people, human or centaur or felid or anything else, to get pregnant by accident. Serru and Aryennos had both been appalled by the idea, and I hadn’t been willing to traumatize them or depress myself by getting into the rest of the issues around the subject. When I’d questioned the kits as a form of control, Serru had pointed out that they were easily avaible and were not expensive, and anyone who couldn’t afford that much money or effort had no business trying to have a child anyway. I couldn’t really argue with that.

  Serru had said that the kit contained a pair of potions that would make both would-be parents, of the same species, highly fertile for around two weeks. It was extremely probable that conception would occur. There were nine potions meant to be consumed monthly after that to make certain that all went well for both mother and developing child. One helped with the birth process itself, one was for recovery immediately after, and one a day or so ter helped ensure that ctation would be optimal. It all sounded highly specialized and complex, but probably no more so than the prenatal and postnatal care offered in my world, and it all came in one neat box sold as a unit. As near as I could tell, the potions ensured only health and nothing else; variation and diversity certainly still happened, but even more extreme or inconvenient forms might be less devastating in a culture that took accommodation and acceptance as a given.

  One wall had four columns of shelves—two of them had a prominent red symbol at the top, three concave arcs forming a pointy thing that might be called a triquetra, and two had a simple interced pentagram in green, so I guessed that was meant for doctors and paramedics specifically.

  I wanted to know what all the boxes held and what all of the things were and how to use them and how much of it I could make.

  I would, with any luck, not need to know it for long, since it wouldn’t be useful information in my own world, but there was still a lot of ground to cover between now and then. And wanting to know itched in the back of my mind, nagging at me.

  This wasn’t the moment, though. I distracted myself by pying with my new begleri-like toy, trying to get the feel of it, the texture and flexibility of the cord, the mass and bance of the rainbow metal weights.

  “Nathan?” Serru said. “Could you bring those two medical kits over here and open them?” She pulled her own basic one out of her bag and opened it on the counter.

  I complied, and Terenei scanned through all three, moving swiftly around the shop to collect repcements for everything that had been used. Now and then they had to ask what had been in a slot, but less often than I’d have expected. Three neat groups formed, next to each case.

  “These kits are adequate, but that’s not entirely the same mix we sell, and the things you’re running out of are exactly why. It might be helpful to have a few supplemental things, if you want them.”

  “We do,” Serru said. “Including a few extra Recovery. Due to adventures, my brother included, I was so low on my own st kit that it was easier to buy a whole new one before I left home, and Nathan’s is what they had in the nearest vilge. I would have preferred to wait until we got here.”

  A small extra group began to form, which they arranged inside a currently-empty white box with a centred red stripe in each direction and a simple white-bordered red heart in the centre. That was a relief: items rattling around loose in a rge bag would be hard to find in a hurry.

  “No, of course, being out with nothing would be pointlessly risky. The idea is to be as safe as possible. You needed a Heart?”

  “That was on me,” Aryennos said sheepishly.

  “Hm. I’m gd you’re all right now.” Terenei added one to the collection, then eyed the contents of the counter and its groupings of potions and harvested materials to sell, the potions and other things to refill and add to the kits. “I think that’s everything, isn’t it?”

  Serru smiled and added five cardinal fruits near the ‘to sell’ pile. “Those are obviously a gift, and say hello to your family for me.”

  “Those won’t make it past dinner tonight, I promise. Speaking of which, are you going to be able to get together while you’re here?”

  “Mm... probably not. I need to catch up on a few things and I promised to help Nathan get sorted out, and I don’t expect to be here long. I’m probably going to have to pass until I can get back over here. Sorry.” She sounded regretful, and that made me feel bad.

  “Fair enough, I suppose I can’t argue with that.” I was quite sure Terenei both meant that, and was not entirely happy about that response from her. “It can wait.”

  “Can I ask a favour anyway?”

  “Of course you can. Anything, any time, always.”

  Serru fished around in her bag again and pulled out what looked like a choker or colr made of metal with a dandelion-yellow finish. She set it on the counter, and followed it with a matching rectangur box, not much rger than the size of an old cassette tape case. “This stopped working for me almost a month ago. There aren’t many pces I can get it repaired, and I’d prefer not to buy a new one. They don’t sound or feel right if they’re made by someone else.”

  “You’ve had only your own thoughts for company? With all that time just walking? No wonder you found friends to travel with!” Terenei’s tone was just too dramatic to be believable, and it was followed by a ugh. “I’ll tell my grandfather I have an errand to run and see what I can do. Where are you staying?”

  “The Seashell.”

  “Consider it done, and I might give it back with some new additions I think you’d like but you probably haven’t encountered yet.”

  “Thanks. I’m not sure I’ll have time to get over there.”

  “You’re busy and not here long, and repairs aren’t always fast. It’s not a problem at all.” Terenei tapped a violet-nailed finger against their lips as they looked at the counter, then shrugged and ughed. “Close enough. Call it even? I’m honestly not sure which way the total would tip but it wouldn’t be far.” They put the remaining loose items into their pces with swift efficiency, closed them all, and stacked them neatly.

  “I know exactly which way the total would tip, and thank you. Thank your grandfather, too.”

  “Thank him by stopping by soon for dinner or something.”

  “As soon as I can.”

  The pair traded a quick kiss along with another long hug, which triggered further questions since I was fairly sure Serru was rgely into women but I had no idea how she defined that or whether it was an absolute or what connotations a kiss had here or, well, much of anything else. It felt rude and intrusive to even specute about it, but... if this world was genuinely as casual about gender as everything I’d seen and heard so far suggested... it also felt personally relevant.

  I really should just ask. I had no reason to think I’d find myself suddenly abandoned if I brought it up.

  Terenei bid farewell to Aryennos and I with a warmth that suggested that ‘friend of my friend’ had real meaning here, and we left.