"Um, excuse me?" Skyler turned to find a petite young woman with short-cropped chestnut hair and soulful brown eyes, looking at her nervously with a beet red blush that spread all the way from the top of her forehead down to the collar of her dark green camouflage-patterned shirt--part of an outfit that was adorably, self-consciously butch despite the little splash of color provided by the rainbow flag pin she wore on the lapel of her denim jacket. She looked at Skyler as if uncertain whether the taller woman's attention equated to permission to speak, and the silence stretched out for a long uncomfortable moment before she finally managed to squeak out, "I, um... I really like your Girl."
That was almost where it ended. Compliment delivered, the young woman's eyes darted to the ground as though she was trying to read the label on Skyler's combat boots, and her body tensed with a barely suppressed desire to bolt away into the crowd. If she really was interested in Skyler's brand new factory-fresh Girl(tm), with its pastel shades that tinted diagonally from red up on the head and right shoulder down to a rich violet hue on the left foot, she didn't have the nerve to show it openly. But something tethered her to the spot, and Skyler didn't have to ask to know what it was. She and her Girl exchanged a knowing glance. Then with a gentle smile, she said, "Thanks. She's one of the new Spectrum models. I pretty much picked her out just for today. Do you have a Girl(tm) of your own?"
It was very nearly the wrong thing to say. It was hard to tell for sure--she had a waifish body that would probably continue to look like a teenager well into her forties--but Skyler would have been surprised if she was any older than twenty. This was probably her first Pride as an adult, maybe her first time being out and queer in a public space of any kind, and just approaching a six-foot-two Caucasian butch daddy in head-to-toe black leather with spiked green hair and piercings on her piercings probably intimidated the hell out of her. Asking her if she had her very own lesbian sex robot deepened the young woman's blush to the point where she looked like she might very well pass out from lack of blood to the rest of her body. "Um, uh, uh, no, um, I, uh, um, uh...." she stammered, clearly put on the spot by her lack of experience.
Not that she was the only one without a Girl. There were plenty of other young people at the park who were testing out their identities and orientations for the first time, and more than a few older people who still disdained the latest trend in alternative sexuality. Some folks came straight from work and didn't have a chance to bring along their Girl, some still couldn't afford one despite the precipitous price drop since their initial introduction. And a few even brought Boys, although Skyler steered well clear of them. She'd known practically since she was a toddler that she liked girls better.
But whoever this young woman was, she clearly felt like she was betraying some inadequacy by not already having a Girl to display. "Hey, hey, whoa, it's okay. They say only one in every seven and a half people has a Girl(tm) of their own. Although whoever that half a person is, I think that not owning a Girl(tm) is the least of their problems." That got a shy smile out of the young woman, and some of the tension went out of her taut shoulders. "I'm Skyler, my Girl(tm) is Chimera. What's your name?"
The young woman glanced up. "Um, uh, Dawn," she mumbled, her lips pursing for a moment as she considered and discarded whatever other name she was no doubt thinking of calling herself today. Skyler didn't have to look over at her Girl to know that she giving off a low-key vibe of calm and relaxation, helping to center Dawn's thoughts and keep her from getting too flustered to continue the conversation. It was clearly working, because after a moment she blurted out, "But my f-friends call me, uh, Amethyst." Her gaze shot back down to the ground again, as though hoping for the ground to swallow her whole, but it wasn't long before the subconscious memory of pleasure she found within Chimera's stare beckoned her back to meet the Girl's eyes with her own once more.
"Amethyst it is, then," Skyler replied cheerfully, although privately she had Dawn pegged as a natural Pearl in every sense of the word. But she wasn't too far removed from her own experiences as a teenage queerbaby, defiantly punting her given name 'Madison' to the curb in favor of an embarrassing two-month stint as 'Xena' that still made her cringe just thinking about it. She knew all too well what it was like to have to construct a whole new identity from scratch with every little to go on. "Do you want to introduce me to your friends, or did you decide to come by yourself today?"
The blush, which had almost receded to a warm pink, returned to boiled-lobster levels of discomfort. "Um, they, uh, they're... they're mostly online," Amethyst murmured, clinging to the mesmerizing flow of colors in Chimera's gaze like a life preserver in a turbulent sea. "I, um, I haven't really had a chance to meet a lot of people here yet. I... I thought...." She struggled to continue, but embarrassment slowly choked up her throat until all she managed was a vague and helpless shrug. Skyler couldn't stop a fierce surge of protectiveness from welling up inside her.
"You thought you might meet some new friends here," she finished for Amethyst, favoring her with a warm expression that Skyler wasn't entirely sure the younger woman saw. Those wide, puppy-dog eyes were locked onto the Girl's stare, the glassy surface of her corneas reflecting back a flow of rainbow colors that almost perfectly matched the pastel hues on the robot's body. "Well, you've already made two--Chimera and I are happy to be your friends, aren't we?"
The gynoid nodded. "Of course we are," she cooed, her synthetic voice hitting such perfect notes of calm and tranquility that Skyler's vision swam for a moment with relaxation. "We're very glad you found the courage to come and speak with us today. It can't be easy, being all on your own in a new city that's so different from your hometown." Amethyst looked surprised and almost pathetically grateful, and all Skyler wanted to do was take the young woman home and wrap her up in a nest of warm blankets and pet her forehead until she fell asleep in Skyler's arms. The brunette practically hammered on every dominant and every protective instinct in Skyler's body, right down to the attempt to go butch that only made look her even more adorably small and soft and vulnerable.