Like other age-regressed people, Sam had been placed in a home with "parents." In his case, he was staying with a lesbian couple, Dianne and Rosie. Once she had become biologically female, Dianne realized that she was attracted to women. Rosie was bonded. She had been a widow in her late seventies when she found her crystal (or it found her, as some of the bonded theorized). She had married young, and only realized that she preferred women romantically when it was too late. Having regressed to the age of twenty, she was eager to make up for lost time. But she also liked the idea of being a mother of children again.
Sam was sitting on his bed in Rosie and Dianne's house thinking about the change and the events of the day. Poor Anna! Anna's decision to stay female made Sam wonder about his own future.
The most notable aspect of the change to Sam wasn't anything physical. It was like when background music one learns to ignore suddenly stops--a vast surprising silence. In Sam's case, the background music was the fear Samantha had learned from her father as a child. The fear had always been present--muted when Samantha was alone or in the company of women, louder when she was with men or in insecure situations. Now it was silent.
*Is it really that simple?* Sam looked down at his new organs. It seemed silly that the bit of soft flesh that was the penis of an eight-year old boy would be a talisman to drive away the fear Samantha had felt as a woman, but there it was.
Sam knew he wasn't a transsexual--he had talked to Luke, who had described what it was like to grow up as a man in a female body. Sam knew that wasn't Samantha's story. But was it worth staying male, just to be free of the fear? Sam was missing being female a lot less than Samantha had thought he would.
Still uncertain of his future, Sam drifted to sleep.