My new mother let me down from the changing table and I found myself adjusting to the height and body for the first time. When I had woken, I was dealing with the shock of having woken as a young girl, but I had been focused on the strangeness of it all rather than any kind of exact nature. I felt my diaper between my legs, and it felt like it was a bit too big for me. It wasn't forcing my legs apart but I felt the plastic backing of the thing against my thighs.
I followed my new mother out of the room as she beckoned me to follow. She hadn't dressed me in anything extra so the appearance of me in just a diaper and a shirt must have been the norm for the family that lived here. I went downstairs from the nursery which was in all likelihood my only bedroom and found that the house was quite empty. I had hoped that there would be one or two other people, a father figure and a brother for example, but it seemed that it was just me and her. I wondered what that meant, because I wasn't seeing any pictures on the wall or other outward signs that anyone beyond us lived here.
I passed by the living room on the way to the kitchen. A small aquarium acted as the only artificial light source as the morning rays filtered in through lace curtains. A bunch of toys were gathered around the base of the coffee table and I figured that those were going to be for my entertainment as time went on. They didn't seem particularly infantile either, unlike the diaper. I snuck a look at the diaper again as I crossed the threshold to the kitchen, and noted its pink exterior with a mixture of stars and rainbows on its surface. If I had been asked to design such a product when I was a man in the design industry, this is probably what I would have settled on as an acceptable design for growing girls. That is, if I didn't ask one of my female colleagues to use their own inspiration for it instead.
Breakfast was perfectly normal. I wasn't spoonfed or treated as any younger than my age would imply, and that was even more curious to me than most of what I had seen so far. I looked to the left and saw drawings posted on the refrigerator, each of them signed with "Darla" on them. I supposed that was supposed to be my name. I could have figured out what my new mother's name was, but I hadn't known anyone to call their parents by any more than the default gendered parent name in their language. Most of those were the same across languages but the point should still stand. She was just Mom, and she would stay that way because trying to tell her that I was really a mid-thirties man occupying the body of her daughter, and the real personality of her daughter had been sucked away into some purgatory was not going to be a pleasant conversation if she believed it at all. When I thought about the daughter, the Darla that I had become, I wondered briefly if she had been simply relegated to be an observer while I controlled the ship, and I figured that would be a fate worse than death. It was either to have the real Darla just cease to exist than to put her through that, so it is what I chose to believe.
With breakfast finished, I led the cleaned plates to the sink for washing, something I hoped Mom would do, and crossed back into the living room. I wondered what I was supposed to do with the toys. There were various dolls and girl-oriented action figures of sorts amidst some cars and imagination play sets. If I was an only child then it would be easier to afford a wider assortment of toys, but if I was doomed to incontinence then that would certainly eat into Mom's funds. Here I was, inhabiting her daughter's body by accident and already feeling like I was some kind of burden on her. She had to have been okay with it, and I had to bet there was some amount of government assistance for a condition like mine if finances were really tight.
I opted against the toys and reached for the television remote. The guide had enough shows to watch but most channels had some kind of parental lock on them and I knew too little of this new life to conveniently guess the four-digit pin. I tried 0000 and 1234 before giving up in case it send her an e-mail and navigated to a children's network that wasn't keen on playing the absolutely mindless shows I knew other kids were obsessed with. Other kids. Here I was trying to fit in with this new life and not once today had I thought about going back. Maybe there was something about this body that had my brain reconfigure to a different frame of mind, perhaps one it dimly recollected from long ago, or maybe there was something in the back of my mind that wanted to treat this as a temporary thing and the shopkeep would come along to take me back to my regular body. If there was one thing I hoped, it was that Darla didn't get stuck in my body back in the shop.
I did my best to keep my attention on the shows and only briefly took my attention away to stare at the aquarium, or to adjust my seating position as I found myself grow uncomfortable. I heard a call from the kitchen some time later.
"Darla!" Mom said. "Can you come here for a minute?"
If she was calling me Darla then it meant she hadn't been expecting anything yet. I got up to go to the kitchen and found that my diaper was again sagging. In the time I had been watching the show, my incontinence, now confirmed, had decided for me what I was going to use the diaper. There was a little bit of liberation in that, which I thought was strange. As a man I would have deemed pissing my pants to be close to the ultimate shame, but here it seemed okay. I couldn't help but think that existing in this body was going to have an effect on me that I couldn't predict.
I entered the kitchen and looked at Mom, hoping that what she was going to say wasn't going to be too big or laden with so much information about this world that I'd have no way to respond properly.
"You sleep okay," she said. I nodded in response. "Good, we'll be headed out in about an hour. Why don't you go pick something out to wear?" I nodded again and made to look like I was somewhat excited for the prospect of going outside by walking a bit quicker and then running up the stairs. The diaper swayed heavily between my legs and I was hoping that whatever I had to pick from wouldn't make my state too obvious.
What I found was...