Divaricated

“Here you go, Miss!”

katie held out Thatch's favourite electrolytic hook at the edge of her vision. It was their nice one, with the handle made of wood they'd grown and carved themselves and the Xa'atian alloy tips. Ten years prior, kings and gods would have gone to war just to touch it for five minutes. katie handed it to her plant as a flirt, cherishing the brief moment of surprise as Thatch realised her needs had been pre-empted.

The affini took it in one vine and ruffled katie's hair with another, then returned to her work. katie beamed upwards for a moment, but Thatch's attention was focused elsewhere. Her smile took a few moments to fade even so. It was nice to be useful.

There were few things in this universe that seemed capable of truly distracting Thatch Aquae, but their current project was one of them. katie's smile grew stronger as she glanced across the desk, identifying all the little pieces that she actually understood. What would have looked to her like a little bundle of plant matter just a few months ago was now clearly a living system with a hundred different responsibilities. It looked vaguely like a ball of twine that'd gotten above its station.

The strangest part of all was that katie actually understood enough to help. This was not her area and she could not have taken more than an assistant's role, but a good assistant needed to understand. If Thatch needed to give an order every time she needed help then katie may well have an enjoyable time, but Thatch would hardly be more effective than if she'd worked alone. By working together as one, they could reach greater heights than either of them could have alone.

It was strange, though. katie had thought they'd been done a while back, but Thatch was still tweaking, doing something she couldn't quite follow.

Absent-minded fingers traced over katie's naked neck. Her collar lay mere feet away, half deconstructed with twitching organic lines trailing between it and the twine. The creations weren't any more sentient than a blade of grass, but they lived. katie's collar required water and food—though it got both from katie herself—and this new project would have its own complicated array of requirements that thankfully would be none of katie's responsibility.

Going without her collar left katie feeling an uncomfortable kind of empty. She still noticed herself dancing to Thatch's unheard beat, but it was unheard. The collar elevated subconscious understanding to clarity, and losing that was a strange reminder of how katie had once lived. Thatch's distraction didn't help, as it left her attention muted and distant.

katie wrinkled her nose. She needed a distraction of her own and she didn't really want to bother Thatch. Thatch was busy. katie thought a few minutes ahead and tried to predict what tools and components might help, but Thatch had been cycling between the same three tools for the past hour and they were now all arrayed on the desk before her.

Three quick hops took katie down from her perch. It had been a simple evening project for them, ending a low-energy day on a high note. The series of platforms were mounted at uneven heights and positions around a central pole, with each platform covered in a nice padded material and liberally sprinkled with blankets and pillows. katie spent a decidedly non-trivial amount of time lying around watching Thatch work regardless, so she may as well do it in style.

She leaped down platform by platform until her paws hit the ground, and then slipped from the project room back into the digital sunlight of their main living space. The atomic compiler—after a brief negotiation—deigned to print them something to drink. A glass full of water for Thatch, and a bowlful for katie. She carried both back into the project room on a little tray, then very carefully grabbed the glass's handle between her teeth and carried it up the platforms until she could reach over and place it on the desk.

“Thank you, kitty,” Thatch replied, absent-minded, and patted katie on the shoulder. The girl shifted over a few inches and the next pat landed in the right place. Satisfaction itself.

katie returned to the side of the desk and nosed her own bowl out onto the floor, then quickly snuck back out to decompile the tray. She'd only forget if she didn't do it now, and then Thatch would have to deal with it. If katie did it first, it would be one less thing for her plant to worry about.

katie's nose pressed against the compiler's glass-like safety shield, watching the tray's atoms getting stripped layer by layer with a smile. It was nice, katie thought, watching the compiler do its work. It could do this almost instantaneously but most of the time it did so in luxuriously slow motion, methodically pulling the item apart and drawing the resultant subatomic cloud up into a little nozzle mounted in the top of the assembly. katie knew a little about how this worked too.

She still preferred to think of it as magic. She sat there transfixed until the last pieces of the tray dissolved and were sucked away. The device beeped and katie sat back so it could run the decompiler for a nanosecond longer to clean up her smudge, then the safety shield retracted and left it ready for another task.

Okay. Another task!

Leviathan came up to meet katie's gently wiggling fingers, happily swimming around its unreasonably ostentatious water fortress while the little flakes of food katie was sprinkling into its tiny river assaulted the gates. The kitten lay in her grass wiggling her legs in the air while she watched her fish hunt in its false, but enriching, environment. It was a good fish. Very well behaved. Healthier than it had ever been.

It was a good thing katie was around to keep the less ethical predators away. She left it to its feast.

There was a small pile of styrofoam takeout boxes nestled in the depths of their cave; a remnant of one of those nights where neither she nor Thatch had been willing to cook but hadn't felt up to the social expectations of actually going outside. Curling up in an dark, enclosed space eating surprisingly sweet Xa'a-ackétøth takeout was, in katie's humble opinion, definitely a form of romance. Though the boxes had once contained food they now contained only memories, and katie took no pleasure in their decompilation.

But they had started to smell, so it was time.

The bed needed making. The bed always needed making. It was a ritual that was almost entirely pointless given how rarely katie actually managed to get under the covers. Why would she, when the caring embrace of her person was warmer, softer, and more comfortable than even the highest quality of Affini fabrics? katie was told that Affini materials science had progressed to the point that a dress or a duvet could be softer than silk; stronger than steel; lighter than a dream; and precisely engineered to have an appealing texture. She still preferred Thatch's slightly rough, occasionally scratchy vines.

The plant was admittedly higher maintenance given that she couldn't be recompiled fresh every evening, but katie could deal with that little inconvenience. She spent a few minutes making sure everything was tidy and well organised so that Thatch wouldn't have to take a few seconds to achieve the same goal that night before inevitably making a mess. katie knew who it was that she served.

The bathroom was pristine, of course. Neither of them enjoyed cleaning that and so they had it set to automatic. katie had on multiple occasions tried to catch the hab in the act of cleaning, but whatever mechanism it used seemed determined to appear magical and she had so far failed even to find the bathroom in a partially cleaned state. It was as if it knew when she would be distracted for long enough for it to do its work, and she had yet to win that particular battle of wits.

katie glanced out over their main room with a gentle pout. There wasn't very much that actually needed doing. Post-scarcity living might be convenient in a lot of ways, but it did make it harder to keep herself busy with things that she knew Thatch would appreciate. The plantlife was all taken care of by the hab itself. The river was self-cleaning. Their life support systems aggressively filtered dust from the air, so there wasn't even dusting to do.

If katie cooked, she'd get to clean up after herself? Did it count as service if she made the mess she was cleaning up? It probably didn't if she was just making herself a sandwich, that was just being a polite housemate.

If katie were making something for Thatch, though, that would be different. The only complication there was that she only really knew one recipe that her houseplant liked, and it wasn't a very complicated one. She really needed to learn something better so that Thatch's favourite meal could be something higher-effort than a slush a floret could throw together in under twenty minutes. The ingredients might have been primarily things katie had never heard of, and she might need to wear protective gloves while handling the intermediate stages, but she could smell another culture's depression food a mile off.

katie couldn't think of anything better to put her time towards. She scurried back into the project room, gave Thatch's leg a quick nuzzle, retrieved her communicator, and hopped back up onto her katie tower. The fifth platform from the bottom put her at about chest level with a seated affini.

There was plenty of room to stretch. The platform's central pillow was large enough to curl up on, with a little room to the side to place the communicator where it could be seen and interacted with. “Hey Miss, how do you feel about hot foods?” katie asked, lying on her stomach with her chin resting against her hands.

Thatch didn't pause in her work. She'd always been good at multitasking. katie inspected her efforts carefully, watching how she was sewing technology and artistry together in such a tight weave that saying which was which was simply impossible. katie had learned enough to—barely—understand what Thatch was doing, but that did not mean that she could have reproduced it. Thatch was running with their design concepts and filling in blanks katie didn't even know existed.

But it really didn't look like she'd made much progress in the time katie had been away. More than that, katie noticed a connection that hadn't quite been entangled correctly. Best not to think about what the results of that could have been. “Oh, Miss, you missed a spot!” katie pointed out, gesturing towards the flaw. Thatch reached over and tied the two ends together, then ruffled her hair.

“Good catch, thank you. Hand me that— Thank you.” katie smiled up, having grabbed the reel of fine vinework that Thatch needed next so she could be holding it out before it had been asked for. Thatch's voice was, as always, dry. katie could have been unfair and called it unemotional, once, but she'd learned to interpret the signs. Something seemed off.

“As for nutrition,” Thatch continued, hardly glancing away from the work she wasn't doing, “you already know I prefer to feed you freshly cooked meals, kitten; why do you ask?”

katie rolled her eyes. “I mean for you.”

The plant frowned, finally inspired to look towards her pet. “Warmth is nice, but hardly as important for me as it is you. We have very different nutritional needs, and a high temperature is an unnecessary luxury.”

“Ah yes, that thing that we try to avoid around here: luxury.” A human-standard voicebox could never hope to match the aridity of a determined affini, but katie tried her best. “I want to cook you something nice so I need to know what you're willing to try.”

“Hmn. I must admit I do not have much experience in this area.” Thatch reached over and pressed a finger beneath katie's chin, smiling down patiently. “I recognise that your nutritional needs and preferences are a complicated little puzzle to solve, but mine are very straightforward. Water and a nutrient mix are all I need. It is convenient.”

katie let out a soft snort and butted her head into Thatch's arm. It wasn't fair that her plant could be so disarming while being so wrong. “All I need is water and nutrients!”

Thatch chuckled, then reached out and drew a finger down to katie's stomach. “Hardly, you require a very specific balance of elements and compounds to thrive, in addition to flavours and chemicals you find enriching.” Her finger drew up to tap katie on the nose, prompting and then stifling a startled squeak. “If only it were that easy. Your body evolved to crave certain substances simply because they were rare in your natural habitat and you needed to take them where you could find them, and so you have instincts without end demanding you devour that which will do you harm simply because your programming was set so long ago that excess was not to be found in your problem domain.” Her warm hand settled against katie's cheek, drawing her in with the promise of touch and comfort.

The plant smiled a thin smile. “See? You have such complicated requirements that simply providing your necessities requires expertise. Expertise, might I add, that you lack. That which your body actually requires varies by the hour, the day, the month, and the decade, by your mood and by the phases of the nearest moon, and rarely in ways your own mind is given knowledge of. Perhaps you could survive for a time on water and nutrients alone, but only if the ratios were set by a practised vine, and in that case it would be a pity to deprive you of the husbandry you deserve to thrive.”

katie glared, then leaped down to the ground, platform by platform, and left the room. Long moments later she returned with a mostly-intact freshly compiled synthcube carefully held in her teeth. She had needed to promise the compiler it was only being used as a visual metaphor and that she wouldn't actually eat it and she suspected that if she broke her promise it would refuse to print her anything without explicit permission for weeks. Thankfully this was an easy promise to keep: it wasn't feeding time and katie wasn't hungry.

She dropped the cube at her owner's feet and sat back on her haunches. “This is a Terran Accord Official Standard Reference Sustenance Cube.” She pointed down at it and waited for Thatch to lean down and pick it up between finger and thumb for inspection. It looked comically small in her grip. “A little before the invention of the Terran Jump Drive, some rich asshole got it into his head that all the problems with society were because of freeloaders coasting off of government handouts, and so developed these things. They're three centimetres by three centimetres by three centimetres and each contains sufficient nutrients and hydration to cover the human body's needs for a six hour period. They are flavourless and designed to reject attempts to change that. Try to cover this in ketchup and it'll just slide right off. You can't cook them; they're unreasonably flammable. He figured that if the only food poor people were allowed were these then they'd work harder to be allowed real food. Once space travel started being a thing, their convenient stackability, high density, and ease of calculating logistics made them extremely popular. They were—” katie paused and glared up at Thatch. The plant was too distracted by the cube to notice, so she cleared her throat to get her attention— “convenient.”

“You may not eat this,” Thatch promised, crushing it between two fingers and a thumb, “and your former society somehow becomes yet less tolerable the more I learn of it. I assume you have a point, my little freeloader?”

“Stop eating synthcubes, Miss. I can survive off of those, but I won't thrive. You can survive off of the basics, but you won't thrive either. You deserve better.”

Thatch rolled her eyes. “You will always believe I deserve better, pet.”

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” katie beamed. “Hence making you dinner tonight.”

Arguing with her owner wasn't a fair activity by any stretch of the imagination. katie knew she could be silenced with a firm look and so that she hadn't been was again tantamount to permission. Further, any pet had an intimate understanding of its owner's moods and needs even without technological assistance. That was just part of being in a relationship with somebody.

Thatch stared down at her with a raised eyebrow, as if waiting for katie's will to break. She would be waiting a long time. katie sat with a straightened back and stared upwards with a polite, unimpeachable smile, waiting for those subtle ripples of affirmation that she could feel swirling beneath Thatch's depths to reach the surface.

“I have already made food for tonight, it would go to waste if I did not absorb it,” Thatch complained.

“It's literally in stasis. It'll keep,” katie countered.

Having conversations with Thatch felt like cheating. Back in the increasingly hazy before times, katie had always needed to walk a line between trying to figure out how to talk to people without figuring it out too well and feeling manipulative. In the modern day, talking to other affini was an exercise in being alternately awed and petted, and talking to humans was inherently safe. They all had their own guardians and katie didn't need to worry about them.

Thatch, however, katie was free to manipulate with every tool, trick, and technique at her disposal, and she did. If she was an extension of Thatch's own will then really this was closer to assisted introspection than anything else. Besides, they'd spent months now practically inseparable, bonded through near-death experience with the kind of deep emotional connection that katie had given up hope of finding. The supernatural attunement she had to her owner's emotional state helped, but that alone couldn't form a foundation for the rapport that they shared.

All that was to say: katie could see the indecision in Thatch's core and in the twitching of her vines, but it was their mutual understanding and trust that let her know how to handle it.

Thatch faltered. “We have a busy day tomorrow, I should really stick to something familiar.”

katie pressed on. “I'm sure we can make you something healthy!” She smiled a little wider.

Thatch glanced away, towards the desk, and something in her seemed to deflate. Her head drooped and her weak smile fell away. katie's own smile shifted to a frown in an instant. That wasn't supposed to happen. “Miss? What's wrong?” she asked, breaking her posture to reach out and press a hand against Thatch's leg.

“I—” The silly houseplant's gaze stayed averted as she reached over to stroke across katie's hair and down her back. “I do not actually know any better recipes, nor really my own preferences. Before I met you I was rather asocial and a little set in my ways. I was not very good at taking care of myself.”

“You were depressed,” katie corrected with gentle words, slipping out from under Thatch's hand so that she could instead climb up her leg and settle on her lap. Thatch shrugged, popped the remains of the synthcube into her own mouth, and then used both hands to adjust katie's position until they were both comfortable.

“Yes, that is what my, ah, 'space therapist' said as well,” she admitted, through a sigh. “I suspect you both are quite correct, but I should be fine now. I have you, we have friends, we have plans for the future and hobbies and everything a good affini should have and so everything should be fine.”

With tremendous effort, katie managed to wrap her arms around one of Thatch's for a firm—by Terra standards—hug. “It doesn't just go away, though, does it?”

Thatch broke katie's grip with typical ease. She brought the girl up into a two-armed hug, holding her against her chest in a firm—by real standards—squeeze. “No,” she replied, a moment later, with the low vibrations of her speech felt so fiercely katie could have sworn that she had simply become part of Thatch's vocal apparatus. “It does not.”

If katie was to speak aloud Thatch's thoughts, then that was fine. She could do that. “Everything is better now, but you feel guilty because you aren't fixed.” The bittersweet undertone of Thatch's emotional state was ever-present, but katie didn't need to see that clearly to understand the darkness. She'd known it all her life, and it had taken the best affini in the universe to cure her of it. It was only fair that she helped share Thatch's burden. “And you worry that if you were, it would be disrespectful to those who couldn't get here with you.”

After a moment of hesitation, her plant spoke, with a sigh and a long glance towards the wall. “Indeed.”

katie could feel an all-too-familiar stiffness in her vines, but underneath ran a gentle resolve. That was new. Thatch wasn't freezing up or turning away. Her body language screamed with sharpened edges and outturned thorns; vines curling in protectively around the pair of them as if she were expecting an attack; and a rhythm that could have overwhelmed a rave.

Yet still she found the strength to talk.

“Additionally, guilty for struggling still, even after you have given up everything for me. I do not wish to suggest that you are insufficient to me, kitten. You have done for me something that nothing else has managed. Yet...” Her words slowed, and katie found a vine to hold and squeeze until Thatch felt she could continue. “Yet still I feel that call of the void. I am sorry if that is upsetting to hear, but we are both very aware that I cannot mislead you.”

They shared a few moments in a companionable silence, katie hugging around one of Thatch's arms with all her meagre strength while she was squeezed back in turn just a hair shy of suffocation. Eventually their mutual forces relaxed and katie could take her turn to speak. “I know you do, hon. Why do you think I'm trying to get you to eat better? Make friends? Take me out on walks to new places? Hell, even the dumb Terran sitcoms.” She shrugged. “You know what I was like when we met. Even though the really bad times were in the past I wasn't happy. Even once you were taking care of me, I didn't just automatically get better, did I? I don't think this kind of thing gets fixed, usually? It's just something you learn how to manage and deal with and then day by day it becomes so natural you don't even realise you're doing it.”

“I did fix you,” Thatch pointed out. “That was neurochemical imbalances in your brain. You are running much more smoothly now.”

“I am, thank you, Miss.” katie smiled widely, giving Thatch's arm a quick squeeze. “Even then, that's active effort, no? I'm not fixed, you're just managing it for me. I didn't expect anyone could do that for me, but you're the best person in the universe and can do anything.”

“I am literally not.”

“You literally are. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just follow them.” katie grinned, got a gentle smile in response, and settled down. “But you lot are the exception to your own rules. You won't abide any of us suffering, but you have a blind spot for your own. You're probably in the same boat that I was before you arrived: the long, slow journey of getting better step by step, and having to do it the hard way. Well, the people might have a blind spot, but the pets don't, and we see how much you need us. I'm going to be here to help the whole way, right?”

“Right,” Thatch agreed, after a careful few moments. After several seconds of deeper silence, she sighed. This close it was like being in a wind tunnel. “I wish it could just be fixed. I am so tired of living under this cloud.”

“Yeah.”

“I feel the need to apologise,” Thatch admitted, after a silence.

“Because you feel like you're failing me as my partner by being imperfect and having your own rich inner life?” katie paused. “And because you feel like not getting better immediately is like taking advantage of my help?”

”...Yes,” Thatch growled, reluctant. She grunted, blowing air out through her sides like an engine roaring into life. “Is that so unfair? Is that not our promise? I cannot even separate myself from 'the promises my people make' now, for I am among them and I am partaking. Rejoice, o' cute and useless creatures of this universe,” she spat, “for the perfect Affini are here to solve your problems for you and make everything okay?” Thatch held katie tighter for a moment, then picked up her project with a careful vine and gestured with it. “Let us wrap you in biotechnological control and so much medication you'd forget your own name if we hadn't changed it because we are perfect and we know what is best for you and you shall never need bear your burdens again?”

“I think there's more nuance than that,” katie suggested. “In a sense maybe you're kinda right, but I don't think you can generalise. Isn't that the point? Everybody gets their individual treatment as they need and deserve?”

Thatch was rarely angry. katie had seen her driven to violence a scant handful of times. Her self-control was almost absolute. katie winced as their project hit the wall with a dull thud and a clatter as sensitive, fragile work broke. “Then individually, let us consider myself,” Thatch snapped. “I have sat here putting together a machinery that I do not know that I have the right to use. I am finished. I have been finished for hours but no matter what tweaking I perform I cannot fix the mistakes I have made. I am a failure, katie. No matter how far I go I cannot escape that.”

“You've always done your best,” katie insisted, raising a hand to hold against one of Thatch's many vines. She pulled it downwards, slow but insistent, and it came. Some of the tension drained from the affini's body as it did, but only some.

“And it was not enough.” Her vines began rising again in what seemed like an instinctive defensive posture. katie had seen her in action; she fully expected that Thatch could keep herself safe from a platoon of soldiers, but that was of no help against her own feelings. “I should have been able to—”

katie yanked on the vine, interrupting her mid-sentence. “Hey, can we have less of that? No 'should' please. It wasn't enough, and it never will have been. You're probably never going to just get better and you can't change the past. You've still made so much progress on learning how to carry this weight, and you aren't carrying it alone.” katie smiled upwards. “What's the foundation of this relationship, if not neither of us being able to carry ourselves alone?”

Thatch rumbled, fury spluttering into frustration. “The foundation of this relationship has always been you, kitten, but what right do I have to you? I am supposed to make you happy and content and yet it is spoiled by my own incapacity.”

katie snorted, shaking her head. “Should I be put on class-Os?” Oblivion, as rebel propagandists had put it. Drugs so potent they'd burn the sadness from her bones along with everything else. The very same regimen that Caeca, Thatch's former flame, had been on for nearly half a century now, because if she had been sensate the pain would have killed her.

Thatch looked up in alarm, distracted from her own problems. “What? No. There is no basis for that, it would be monstrous.”

“But I'd be happy, right?” katie pressed.

“But not fulfilled, not content. You would not be the best version of yourself.”

katie wrinkled her nose. “Of course I would. That's just, how did you put it, a neurochemical imbalance? If you wanted to, you could make me perfectly happy and perfectly content. I wouldn't need to struggle to figure out how to help you and you wouldn't be able to do me any harm. In fact, isn't anything less just deciding to let me suffer? I wouldn't care if you were hurting, or about what I'd lost because I'd be endlessly, peacefully blissful, right? I still have problems. You could do better at taking them away.”

“I...” Thatch hesitated. Her already hostile vines wrapped themselves tighter around them. In a much smaller voice, she continued. “Yes, I could. Do you want that? There are protocols for volunteers.”

“What I want doesn't matter.” katie kept her gaze fixed, leaving Thatch nowhere to hide. “I'd be fine with it. Even if I fought you as you injected me, wouldn't it be right for you to do it? Wouldn't I be happier in the long run?”

“No!” Thatch shouted, before managing to get her volume under control. “No. No, of course not. It would be harm done! Harm to the universe, robbing it of its beauty. Harm to you, robbing you of your dreams and the impact you can have. Harm to—” She hesitated and clung to katie more tightly— “Harm to me. I need you. I suppose it is selfish of me, in a sense, to let you suffer with conscious awareness when most of the benefit is to others, but I cannot lose you.”

katie smiled up, giving her best impression of the same patient smile she'd seen a thousand times on Thatch. The tutor telling her student they had the pieces of an answer and just needed to figure out how to assemble them.

After an age of silence and squeezing, Thatch finally spoke again. “And that is your point, I suspect. I am letting you suffer because I think it best—for the universe and indeed for myself. That you wish to bear it so that I do not have to is a convenient excuse, but it is not the whole truth. This relationship is not purely selfless for either of us.”

katie beamed. “When you lot first arrived,” she replied, shuffling in place to learn against Thatch's stomach, inviting and receiving strokes and pets in quantity. “I thought you were monsters. Turning humans into pets? It was the stuff of nightmares. As I learned more about you and found out that you weren't the perfect killing machines I'd been told I started to believe that you were just a little dumb. You could have called us wards or protectees or protégés and probably had to fight half as many of us.”

katie laughed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “But you called us pets—a word we knew—and florets—a word we didn't, even if you borrowed the term from botany—” katie coughed— “like you borrow all of our botanical terms—” Cough again— “and you were right to do so. People don't keep pets because they're so perfect they don't need anything or because they only want the pet to be happy. People keep pets because they need something from it. Companionship; emotional support; something to nurture; something to love. Something they can trust and confide in and something they can know with certainty is on their side.”

She shrugged. It all seemed simple from katie's perspective. She knew who and what she was for, and being a pet was a responsibility. It didn't mean endless insensate pleasure or mind-melting control. It meant the hard emotional work of being there for somebody no matter what even when that person was fallible and even frustrating.

Though yes, admittedly, the mind-melting control was a nice side benefit.

“Thatch, if your insecurities were right the Affini Compact would have swept through Terran space and class-O'd the lot of us. We'd all be endlessly happy; you'd all be endlessly perfect; and everything would be great for everyone. You're not perfect. You need us just like we need you. Have you ever asked anybody else why they keep a floret or two around?”

“I... have not,” Thatch admitted, softly.

“I think you should. They're not going to say they're perfect either. Miss Incertae said that the Affini Compact is the same thing no matter how far you zoom in or out, and we're pretty zoomed in here but I think it still holds. Imperfect individuals coming together to build something that's bigger than either of us could have built alone. Everybody gets what they need, and that means everybody gets something unique. There's no promises that hold for everybody. All I care about are the promises we make to each other. I'll hurt for you just like you hurt for me, and when we suffer, we'll suffer together so we can hold each other up and build the foundation of our own futures.”

katie's collar was lying on the desk, barely beyond her reach and yet dormant. It was a powerful symbol representing the role she wanted to express to the world, but in here where it was just the two of them, she could handle its absence. Their relationship was their own, not a set of roles commanded from above, and they knew it without the symbols. The emotional turmoil within Thatch felt muted and a distant without the collar but she still gave off a thousand signs of that rich inner life. The pain didn't make her any less alive.

More, if anything.

Nervous but hopeful, Thatch sat a little taller and clung to her katie with a little less desperation. “Perhaps you are right,” she spoke, quiet in the same way a landslide could be heard from afar. “I shall endeavour to enquire among our companions the basis on which their relationships are built.” She raised a finger to katie's mouth, shushing her before she could reply. “It will not be the same foundation as ours, this I see clearly. You are something special indeed. Ensuring your happiness is simple. Merely chemicals held in the correct balance, and so you are right: another could make you as happy as I could, or likely happier yet.”

Thatch rustled as she drew air in over her leaves, surrounding katie for a moment with her scent and her pollen. “Yet none,” Thatch continued, voice taking on a firmer edge, “would appreciate you as deeply as I do. None would make of you what I will make of you—what I have made of you. Certainly none would make of me what you have made of me, but you.”

Even without the focusing effect of the collar, katie could feel the smile bearing down upon her as Thatch's hug grew more intense, arms joined with a half dozen vines to bind her and to squeeze her, while the plant herself gently swayed from side to side while a quiet, humming song filled the air.

“I may never be fixed, you realise?” Thatch asked, eventually. “If you do harbour the desire for an easy life then know that I cannot promise it.”

“I don't want an easy life, I want to be able to put my efforts and my skills towards things that matter. Besides, you don't need fixing. You're already the best person, but I'll be here to watch you grow.”

The plant laughed. “Best person only after that which I have done to you stripped you of the award,” she teased, running the back of her thumb under katie's chin. “And even after all that, you remain the best floret.”

“Guilty as charged, Miss.”

Thatch glanced back at her project. “We have the park booked out for tomorrow, but I must confess that I do not know that I will be ready.”

“Perhaps delay it? It can wait,” katie suggested. “Let's just be together, tonight. May I organise something to celebrate tomorrow regardless? It is meant to be your birthday party and I would like to start figuring out your tastes.” She glanced over to the bench, where the tangled web of infinitely fractal roots lay draped, inert and silent. “We can do my implantation whenever you're ready.”