Divaricated

Thatch Aquae ran a hand through the lattice of her hair, looking up at the far distant tips of trees towering above. A banner that must have been ten feet high and a hundred feet across fluttered in an alien breeze between them, almost glittering with softly dappled light filtering through branches. Thatch had germinated too late to experience the Xa'at Autorebellion herself, but she had to wonder whether the snakes had felt as she did as they had watched their own efforts run away from them until they lost control of the consequences.

How had this happened?

Thatch wasn't anybody special. She was just one affini in a trillion. She hadn't earned her place and she hadn't repaid her debts and yet here she was nonetheless. Perhaps there was an inevitability about it, but Thatch had never been enough of an optimist to believe in matters of fate. Happiness and success came to those who earned them, and in her post-scarcity wonderland Thatch hadn't figured out how to work a day in her life.

One in a trillion wasn't even a fair accounting: That was just in-system. Across the entire intergalactic civilisation Thatch was a rounding error. One in… she didn't even know. Maybe one of the clerks would, but a census that took twenty years just for the information to travel would be out of date long before the forms had been filled.

Thatch was one in an infinity.

Sightlessly, she reached out to the side, half a step behind, and placed a hand on the head of her katie with the fragile beginnings of a smile. The floret made her feel special, like she was that one in infinity but irreplaceable because of it. The culture katie had originated from had been barbaric, but it was common knowledge that the harder a culture was pre-first contact the softer the resultant pets would be: They understood the pain and heartbreak of existence and would jump at a chance to escape it.

But every rule had its exceptions. There was katie, the eternal exception. As Thatch glanced down she found the girl meeting her gaze with an encouraging smile, a knowing smirk, and a knowing nod of her head towards the crowd. katie knew the pain and heartbreak of existence and yet here she was nonetheless, kneeling tall as if nothing could cow her.

Most affini took their pets. Thatch had the honour of having been gifted hers.

She returned her gaze to the banner. 'Merry One Hundred and Fourth Birthday, Thatch Aquae, Second Bloom!' it read, in letters that glimmered in the light of a hundred thousand vine-sheltered stars.

Among the crowd, a floret fired some kind of miniature chemical weapon into the air. It threw short lengths of coloured ribbon what must have been two hundred feet up where they caught on the leaves of the trees and the banner itself. Several caught only on the breeze and were whisked away, and as they approached the edge of the park the surrounding space seemed to bend as the world-scale capacity of an Affini Arbitrary Purpose Recreation Zone expanded to fit. It seemed like a catastrophic waste, but if the restrained post-scarcity of a forward scout was difficult for Thatch to understand then the overwhelming excess of a worldship was truly indecipherable.

As if the shot had been from a starting gun, the collected others cheered.

They stood in one of the literally uncountable public parks on the Meandrina, the unjustifiably large new bureaucratic and logistical stronghold of Independent Probe Unit space. It was like being planetside again, just with marginally less ocean and the uncomfortable suspicion that this portable moon, this civilisational masterwork, held only fallible, flawed individuals.

Terrifying. Not why they were here.

“Thank you for coming,” Thatch spoke, after a moment of deliberation. Were there meant to be speeches in these? She didn't really know what to say. The gathered folk spanned the full range from acquaintance to family. Thatch had much experience with the former group, people and pets who she knew of but not well. The latter group was novel still, but her katieflower was a constant companion and, more to the point, would be quite disappointed in her if she spent the entire party focusing on something she could have done at home instead of on the guests.

Between the two extremes lay something entirely new: friends.

“You could hardly keep me away if you tried, little one,” spoke a tiny, semi-transparent rendition of the Elettarium floating in the air. Thatch tried not to gawp, but it was difficult not to mirror her katie's excitement at seeing Affini engineering at scale. Obviously the Elettarium, or at least the big one, had holoprojectors—they weren't savages—but they were small and localised things and fairly obvious when in use. Here, not only could Thatch not even see the projectors, the illusion was also so much more complete. Ined was semi-transparent because she chose to be, it seemed. Parts of the detailing on her hull looked as solid as anything else in the park, and the shadow she cast seemed entirely believable. If Thatch hadn't known better she would have sworn that it had been a remote controlled model.

Lily Varie waved hard enough to set her perch—Xylem Varie—swaying from side to side. “Yeah! You're a lot of fun, Miss Aquae! Really high quality Affini, in my opinion!” She paused for a moment, grinned, and then continued. “Also I need to borrow kitty again some time for—” The Rinan glanced from side to side, then winked down at katie before continuing in a stage whisper— “Y'know, engineering!” She made a hand gesture that was probably covered in one of those 'Rinans are Adorable!' classes Thatch probably should have attended. “You shade my spot, I'll shade yours, yeah?”

Thatch found herself smiling. “So long as you get her back before her bedtime,” she agreed, with a quick scritch to the back of katie's head to keep the girl quiet. The socialisation would be good for her. Good for both of them, really. The Rinan cheered, then exploited everybody's focus on Thatch to leap wildly into the air and onto the back of the to-scale Elettarium, which proved surprisingly capable of supporting her weight for a hologram.

A few feet back and several to the side lay a picnic table, albeit scaled for Affini bodies. Thatch had to admit that she had found the whole size thing somewhat gauche at first. There was no practical reason for her to be any larger than the average Terran. In fact, she could quite comfortably be smaller and would likely have been better off for it.

Her opinion on that had changed little by little every time she'd seen her katie's pleading face staring up with eyes aquiver. Watching her little creature long with such adoration in her gaze made Thatch feel her every inch.

Her hand rested lightly against the girl's hair. What could have been a passive experience was brought life through her katie's enthusiastic lean and worshipful nuzzles painted on Thatch's thigh. She burned with the heat of her attentiveness, so focused on what Thatch needed that the affini was growing used to expecting her will to be done without a single spoken word.

It was humbling.

Here was something so beautiful, so capable, so utterly magnificent, and yet she knelt. Not because she was too weak to stand; not through force; not because kneeling was the easy option for her. If she had wanted to kneel then the adoption register would have snapped her up before she'd stepped foot aboard the Elettarium.

Thatch's gentle fingers curled through the pet's hair, gently scratching at her scalp as a silent reward for her simple being. For a silent moment while the others watched a Rinan riding a spaceship around the park, the pair focused on each other. Thatch knew that her gratitude would be felt, both through her actions and through the emotional bond every pet, sapient or not, seemed to share with its owner.

Words could never have been enough to express her thanks. Thatch felt keenly the need to give her katie everything she could ever want.

And yet. Thatch curled her fingers in and gripped the girl's hair tight, pulling hard enough to bring a pained glisten to her eyes, though not so hard as to cause any damage.

This was hers to do with as she pleased. None of the rest could change that.

Thatch grinned from above, watching katie's expression twist as soft pleasure turned to pain. From the girl's perspective Thatch may as well have been arbitrarily strong, capable of lifting her with a finger or using an entire hand to gently press a delicate component into its place. It was an illusion that Thatch had no intention of breaking. Unlike some things she could mention.

She shifted down to a kneel and placed a pair of knuckles against her katie's chin, pressing with them not at all. With the hair-tangled hand and a set of vines, she pulled, forcing katie into a precise position. Back straight, chin up, hands clasped politely behind her back. With Thatch's knuckles so precisely tracking the motion the others would likely interpret it as a typical moment of softness between an impeccable affini and her soft, needy pet.

Alas, Thatch had never been without her flaws. She leaned in to place the softest kiss on katie's forehead, all to disguise the beautiful moment the girl's expression slipped as sharp fingernails hit sensitive scalp and pressed in. No harm done—not here, at least—but hard enough that Thatch suspected it would overwhelm her darling's self-control.

To her surprise, katie stiffened, breathed a little more heavily, and stayed quiet nonetheless. A surge of satisfaction rolled through Thatch's mind. Even back when they had first met, katie's reactions had always been so controlled and reasonable. She had struggled, certainly, but at her core katie had always had a strong will. Thatch had learned how she ticked over long weeks under their alien sky, paring her apart until she could see the difference between restraint coming from a place of emotional maturity, and restraint coming from the emotional deadening of trauma and depression.

Thatch knew full well how difficult it could be to just feel something. katie didn't have to worry about that now, however. Her neurochemistry had been finely balanced to help her feel and think with richness and clarity.

Still, a little extra stimulation couldn't be a bad thing, right?

“Ah!” katie gasped, her self-control finally slipping as a pair of unseen thorns scratched across her back. Vines curled tighter around her body, preventing her instinctual attempt to pull away. “Miss!” katie hissed, as quietly as she could manage under the circumstances. “Public! That— Ngh! It hurts!”

“Indeed,” Thatch replied, baring an indulgent smile. “Perhaps I simply need to take a moment to appreciate you before striding forth into that which I cannot cheat my way through by understanding it entire.”

Over a few long, tense moments, katie's breathing steadied and her face untwisted. The thorns were no less scoring lines across her skin, but she was learning how to bear it. To teach was truly the most beautiful thing in the universe.

“Usually,” her katie spoke, voice very carefully controlled between very deep breaths. “When you use that phrasing—” Another breath— “you're trying to— ah!— mislead me.”

“Yes, well. I am working on being honest with myself and accepting my imperfections, kitten.”

“Honesty… good.” She spoke only on the exhales in a quiet, breathless pant. It was spectacular. Even bent almost to the point of harm, her focus was still on Thatch's wellbeing, and her insights were still piercing.

Speaking of piercing, Thatch pressed her thorns a little harder, relishing the sensation of soft skin straining against her sharpness. She held them down for a beat, gentle hands helping hold katie in place while relishing in her reactions. Thatch might not have been able to navigate a social situation by simply understanding the participants down to the bone, but she had a long time left to learn every scrap of her floret's flesh.

Speaking of down to the bone, Thatch—

Thatch coughed, grinned sheepishly, and let herself loosen. She spent a moment stroking down the poor cat's hair and then a moment more cleaning the various fluids that her face had emitted. Leaked? Thatch should probably attend those classes she'd been putting off, but just because she didn't know the usual terminology didn't mean she didn't understand her katie.

“You good?” she whispered, dropping one of her arms to rest around the girl's back.

The girl nodded rapidly, looking up with the most satisfying breathless desperation quivering in her eyes. The only drugs in her system were purely medicinal, bringing her neurochemistry in line and dealing with a few unfortunate consequences of malnutrition and incorrect hormonal balance that her former civilisation had been unable to properly care for. Thatch rolled her eyes. She brewed katie's drugs herself, it wasn't hard.

“I, um,” katie whispered. “You don't have to stop,” she ventured, voice hitching in the middle as all that control momentarily slipped and the little strings within her vocal system danced to the wrong songs. Thatch made a mental note to give that a tune up at some point. Need had been painted all across katie's face with a coarse brush, and she quivered with even the softest touches.

“But kitten, we're in public,” Thatch replied in an intentional deadpan, knowing her own excitement would be plain as day to the girl. She couldn't hide her emotions, but she didn't need to hide how she felt here. katie knew she was being toyed with.

“I- They're not paying attention!” katie whispered, insistently.

Thatch felt like she was getting better at her humanlike mannerisms. The angle of a smile or the tilt of an eyebrow could express a surprising amount of nuance. katie had declared that Terran body language was mostly based on the 'vibes', though her own were far from Terran now. She sat with her rear against her heels and her hands held up to her chest, begging, showing little sign she recognised the position as uncomfortable despite her skeletal structure not being built to hold it for long, or that she cared how well it would have fitted into her former culture.

A fine piece of reprogramming, if Thatch said so herself. Her katie had no need of humanlike expression and so it pleased Thatch to fill that gap herself. “And?” she asked, with a slight smirk and a slight backwards lean. She could be casual here, to emphasise the gulf that lay between them.

The affini: calm; collected; in control. The pet: desperate; needy; reduced to begs and pleas. It was a nice feeling. Was it real? Thatch's power was a granted one; a gift given. Her katie could break the illusion with a word. With a look. With a single breath that didn't actively reinforce, reflect, and amplify the rapport they shared.

“Please?” katie asked, straining the word, letting the texture of her submission stain it.

It was almost funny. Even with all their power and technology, the Affini way of life still came down to this. The universe's fine creatures knelt, and it was not truly by force. Certainly, they could be forced to stop fighting; even forced to kneel; even broken, as katie herself had begged to be, but all of that was in service to what Thatch supposed may well be the deepest secret the Affini Compact held.

“Please, who?” she asked, voice firm.

“Please, Miss? Pretty please, Miss Aquae?”

All their real power was a fragile construction. This wasn't the affini sweeping across the galaxy forcing all before them to smile, it was the Affini Compact—and the florets may not have been citizens, but they were the key to it all. Thatch wasn't enough of a romantic to suggest that their deepest secret was love. Love was chemicals, and easy to incite even without an injector.

No, the secret was desire, and all else was built upon that. A crueller species could have forced this upon them all. The Affini were too kind for that and instead offered them a better way. They extended helping vines to anyone who needed them, and never turned down a sophont in need.

Thatch Aquae figured that she lay somewhere in-between the two extremes.

“No.”

Power. Thatch could do nothing to truly enforce her decision and yet all katie's world hung on the word. The girl's burning desire to serve overwhelmed whatever meagre want she might have held for raw sensation. Thatch grinned down while she watched katie's expression flickering. The moment of disappointment evident in the slackening of her smile felt like touching a vine to the fire, and had that been all Thatch could have begged for katie's forgiveness.

It was not all. The smile returned, softer but with a weight to it as want struck need and need, as always, won. “Yes, Miss, thank you,” she breathed, eyes slipping closed as she nodded, trying to bring herself back under control. She had an impressive strength of will—Thatch knew she did good work, and she had an excellent assistant and an excellent canvas in katie—and after a few short moments she nodded again, this time more firmly. “Thank you, Miss.”

“Good girl,” Thatch replied, actually using her knuckles to lift the girl's chin so she could sneak a quick kiss. Neither of them were much for physicality, but Thatch had to admit that something about being entrusted with so much control really got her core pulsing. Be it a hook tweaking katie's mind-state; overwhelming emotional influence; or just as potent, words spoken at a whisper. “Now, let us go be polite to our guests. Best behaviour now, pet. Perhaps if you are good you shall get a treat later.”

katie nodded quickly enough that her gentle sway would have brought her head in contact with Thatch's, so she pulled back just enough that she merely felt her girl's heat. Her own self-control might not match up to her katie's in every respect, but her physical control was a fine complement to katie's emotional grasp.

Thatch and katie both rose from their positions with a practised ease. Thatch because her physical form was a facade she maintained only to interface with the rest of the universe; katie because her physical form was mutable and her muscle memory was surprisingly easy to program, even without much implanted support.

A few of the guests smiled fondly towards the katie as Thatch turned to meet them. Also, Lily had gotten herself all tangled up in the branches of the nearest tree, as was the scaled-down Ined Incertae. Zona Varie seemed to be busying herself trying to figure out how to get them free without more damage to the environment.

“Looks like our assistance is required,” Thatch chuckled. “I believe you wished to assist the other florets with cooking, katie, so how about we reconvene at the meal?” She strode forward, walking into the air on invisible stairs as she did, to help. Socialising may have been a terrifying prospect, but helping was something Thatch could do.

“Lily is certainly an enthusiastic one,” Thatch quipped upon arrival, taking a branch in a gentle pair of vines and easing it down so that Zona could unhook a branch that had bent almost to breaking in the collision.

“Isn't she, though?” Zona bit her false lip, reaching past Thatch to wrap a vine around the floret. She started to lift, careful not to put too much strain on any individual branch while Thatch busied herself easing things back into place in her wake. Given that the trees had likely been grown or compiled specifically for the event, going out of their way to protect them was… Well, very Affini of them.

“Your katie seems better trained every time we see her. You simply must share your secrets sometime.” Zona smiled over, holding a now-sleeping Lily in one arm as she held onto the main trunk with the other. Thatch wondered if she should feel a little self-conscious as she simply hung in the air with a few well-chosen attachment points for support. She decided not. Her mannerisms may not be usual around here, but they were her own.

“I suspect I will have her write a book on the subject eventually. I believe it has far more to do with her than me.” Affini small talk revolved, in Thatch's experience, almost entirely around the subject of florets. It had been unbearable before she'd had one of her own. It was somewhat more bearable now she actually had something to talk about.

“Little one, your evasion is as transparent as your attempts to hide your earlier play. You are among friends and in the early stages of a new relationship. Gush,” Ined insisted, voice resolving to a point in space about halfway between Thatch and Zona.

“Oh!” Zona squeaked in a moment of surprise, twitching in surprise. “You simply must warn me before you do that, Ined! Though I'm not sure quite what you mean by play?”

Thatch rolled her eyes. “I was trying to be subtle. A moment of comfort between my pet and I before she—we—entered the equine's den, as it were. Perhaps I am more obvious than I thought.”

“Plant, please, I am a two kilometre scouting vessel. I hear the crackles of your cognition straining against the confines of your meagre shell, never mind your whispers. If you could pull the fur over my eyes I would hardly be a good scout.”

“And yet you do appear to be very much stuck in this tree,” Thatch replied, with a flat affect and a smile barely present. Her katie would have been able to spot the amusement running beneath, and perhaps Ined would too.

“Admittedly true,” the ship grumbled, matching amusement with a wry laugh. “I think I will break a branch if I jump free from here, and it would be rather unsportsshiplike to use my full-scale effectors to free small-scale me, which leaves this tree somewhat out of my weight class.”

“But you're a hologram!” Lily exclaimed, seeming to wake up midway through the sentence. “Can't you just, y'know… bzip?”

“Well, yes, but that would be cheating, Lilypad,” Ined replied, little engines straining with the attempt to disentangle herself. Unfortunately, one of the branches had gotten right between the habitable arcs and the tiny manoeuvring jets couldn't put out enough force to dislodge the other branches holding her down. “It may be difficult to notice from down there, but I do rather like being small, else I'd be a command ship.”

“Oh! Maybe I could upgrade your engines?” Lily gasped, flailing to find purchase on the tree until Zona relented and let her go. The floret leaped from branch to branch with impressive agility. “Is it cheating to get a toolkit compiled i—” The floret stopped talking as the stench of cinnamon burst into the air, alongside a small box that dropped into Lily's waiting hands. “Thank you!”

Thatch rumbled and turned to Zona to complain, only to find her already leaning in close. “It's kind of ridiculous, isn't it?” She gestured towards the Rinan mechanic using a pry bar to open up a miniaturised starship with tools that had been conjured from thin air. “It's weird being on a big station again.”

“I—” Thatch paused, taking a moment to inspect her fellow affini more critically. “Are you all not used to this?”

“Ha!” Zona laughed, and began to climb down the tree piece by piece, waving for Thatch to descend alongside. “No, not at all! Uh, first bloom was mostly on the Hurkin homeworld. Have you ever been?”

A shake of the head. Thatch wasn't entirely sure where that was, even. She pointed up at the banner. “I am rather younger than my blooms suggest.”

Zona spent a moment in contemplation. “Understandable. If you ever feel the need for a fifteen-year trip, it's a lovely destination, and there's a lot of worthy sights on the way.” She paused, tilted her head, and then called over to Xylem, who seemed to be instructing a literal pile of florets—katie among them, and, Thatch noted with a rush of pride, on the top—in the art of properly mixing spices. Given that this appeared to involve protective goggles Thatch wasn't sure interrupting her was wise. “Hon, did they finish the Relay through Phoenix yet?”

Xylem shook her head, so Zona looked back with a nod. “About fifteen years, then, yeah. Anyway, Hur is beautiful and extremely well-developed. A little slice of the Core Worlds at this point, really, though without the Resonance.” She smiled, humming a few bars of the song that every affini knew whether they'd been near the Core or not, before focusing back on Thatch. “I hated it. There was nothing to do, y'know?”

As they approached the picnic table Zona grabbed the surface in both hands, hopped up, then swung herself into a seated position. Thatch blew a little air out of her sides. Was every affini this much of a show-off? She did the reasonable thing and disassembled her legs so that she could slide naturally into the seat without breaking stride, then reformed them in a sitting position.

“Presumably there were many florets who needed good caretaking,” Thatch suggested, leaning forward to signal her interest in the answer.

“There sure were, and don't get me wrong, I was happy to petsit occasionally, but that just isn't me. Ended up bouncing around as a Cubeweb Infoarchitect for a while, routing logistics deliveries through the Andromeda Gate, and that was pretty nice. Got kinda boring after a while. Eventually Xylem turned up—she literally crawled into a delivery cube because she wanted to see where it would go, which given that it didn't have a registered destination, was to me—and we ended up resonating.” Zona glanced over at her partner for a long moment, smile softening. “We put in a request to be on the exploration register, got the call a few weeks later, and took off for the stars.”

As she spoke the last word, she held out her hand towards the vast rooftop window into space that hung absurdly far above them, and a stream of little sparkles followed the gesture. Thatch and Zona paused as one, then repeated the gesture and evoked yet more stars.

“I'm sure the special effects are impressive to the florets,” Thatch proposed. “Speaking of, for somebody who suggests that life isn't her, you do seem remarkably like you have a floret.”

“Yes, well.” Zona's smile softened further as she glanced up into the tree, where a souped-up starship was slowly working her way free of her trap. “She's not just any floret, is she? Besides, don't let Lily hear you talking like that, she'll—”

The Rinan landed hard on the table between them. The Elettariumlet zoomed overhead, free to fly once more now it had delivered its cargo. Lily stood, swinging her wrench out to point towards Thatch's chest. “I'll let you know that I'm the one in charge of this adventuring party! Don't let the Floret in my name mislead you, this story has a protagonist and her name is—”

“katie,” Thatch continued, as Zona's gentle hand pulled Lily into a rough hug from which the Rinan could not escape, “is much the same. I did not expect to take a pet, but sometimes it is not only our choice. Besides, if this story has a protagonist, it is—”

“Thatch!” Cici announced, making itself known. It was flanked by a pair of affini, and though Thatch was sure she recognised them from somewhere she had to admit the names weren't coming to mind. “Happy—birthday! I got you—a gift!”

A small compartment on Cici's side opened up, revealing a small mechanical arm holding a small datacard, which it offered up. Curious, Thatch reached out and grabbed it between two fingers before pulling out her own communicator and tapping the two together.

The screen shifted, displaying an Elettar-IM profile page and associated friend request from one Cici Incertae-Dentate-Viridi-Samar-Altheae-Liliale o Cynanchum. Thatch glanced up with a bemused smile. “You could have sent this request whenever you liked. Admittedly I should probably have sent it myself.”

The machine beeped a rapid sequence in a language Thatch didn't understand. “It would not—have had the necessary effect—had I done so earlier.” It slowly trundled forwards to bump its casing against Thatch's side. “Thank you—Thatch Aquae—without your help—I would not—have arrived—here today.—I will not do you the disservice—of forcing a debt;—our slate is—clean.—I do not need—your caretaking—any longer.—I require nothing—from you.”

The contraption popped and clicked as the dishes and sensors atop its casing tilted upwards to meet Thatch's gaze. “I'd still—really like—to be friends,—please? I—have no intent—of having my friends—misunderstand—again—how I feel.”

Thatch glanced back down to her communicator. Cici had filled out its whole profile. Paragraphs of description, pictures of it and those important to it. Links off to enough owners that the interface broke and the last few names had to hang holographically just beyond the confines of the communicator itself.

It had an entire life of its own now that Thatch wasn't entirely privy to. Pictures showed it signing paperwork with the clerks; on some kind of rollercoaster; and even taking a shuttle ride around the outside of the ship.

Then, in the middle of the stream of those essential, a picture of Cici, Thatch, and katie eating at a local hab. It had been cuisine from some culture none of them had ever experienced before. Cici and katie had liked it, and Thatch had enjoyed their reactions. With a smile, she confirmed the request. “The last creature I promised equality ended up begging me to rescind that, so I shall avoid making the same promise here. I would love to be a part of your life, Miss Incertae-Dentah— Uh,” Thatch glanced back down at her pad.

“We are—calling ourselves—the Elettarium Processing Hub—for short,” Cici interjected.

“And we shall be seeing you around,” spoke one of Cici's entourage.

“We have heard good things,” continued the other.

“And interesting things.”

“And there is little hope of escaping our influence,” Ined suggested, on a fly-by.

Thatch rolled her eyes and turned back to Zona. “We are surrounded by eccentrics,” she complained, scratching Cici under a vacuum tube.

“We?” replied the other affini, with a light, tinkling laugh. “I am surrounded by eccentrics. You and your floret are as unusual as any of them.” She gestured over to the kitchen—with an arc of stars sparkling as she did—to katie, who was presently holding a glass between her teeth filled with a bubbling concoction that smelled divine. They watched as she hopped down from the out-of-place kitchen–slash–laboratory desk, movements so sleek the liquid barely rippled even as she landed a several foot jump. katie hurried over.

“She did not wish to appear human,” Thatch admitted, “and I will say that there is something—” Thatch paused. Was there a polite way to describe the way she felt with a metaphorical vine in katie's brain?— “beautiful about reshaping somebody to my designs.”

Beautiful? Thatch felt her own rhythms rising to an uproar just watching the way her katie moved. Every part of her was in constant, smooth motion. She was a storm of cycles that came together to make movement. Thatch could cheat. The difference between pulling oneself around in zero gravity and walking in heavy gravity approximated to nothing in a powerful affini body, but katie was small, soft, and weak. Every scrap of optimisation Thatch had put into redesigning her muscle memory would be felt.

Every scrap of control she took made Thatch want more.

It was katie bringing the beauty here. The intent she embodied; the song in her heart that harmonised so with Thatch's own. Reshaping her wasn't beauty—it was desire and want and animal lust. Their culture put the affini apart from the animals—even Terran culture had drawn a prescient distinction between flora and fauna—but there was no better word for this. Neither Thatch nor her katie found much enjoyment in raw physicality, and yet.

As katie approached the oversized table, Thatch watched with a hunger. She shifted backwards, putting most of her weight onto her legs, and pushed off. Her hands reached out to grab the seat so that she could guide herself into place, bringing her legs up almost to her chest so that she could find footing on its surface. She kicked off again, neither breaking stride nor spilling a drop, mixing hardcoded patterns of movement written into her body with the artistry of a living creature using her body as a tool.

Neither Thatch nor her katie found much enjoyment in raw physicality.

And yet.

Thatch took her pet's chin between a finger and thumb and lifted it to meet her gaze. “Open,” she demanded in her native tongue, knowing her other hand would be out of sight. The girl trusted her, of course, and opened her mouth without question. The glass fell an inch or so into Thatch's waiting grip.

She slipped a vine within, to drink. “Oh!” she rumbled, eyebrows raising. “This is new.” The liquid was so caustic that it bit at her flesh in a way that was almost painful, even to her. It was like ice and fire running down her vines, clashing together in an unsustainable culinary contradiction. Thatch found the tips of her vines involuntarily curling and discovered, with some surprise, that she could not easily counteract it.

It was delicious. Thatch knew she would never have tried this by herself. She looked down at her katie's hopeful eyes and half-open mouth and grinned, leaning down for a ravenous kiss. To the stars with subtlety, she held the girl with a feather-light fingertip and vines curling so tight that katie couldn't hope to escape it. A long, breathless moment passed as Thatch forced her will down upon her malleable, fragile machine. Her body burned with the food, with the need, with the pulse of her own rhythm wrought orchestral.

The beauty came from katie, from how eager she was to submit to reshaping herself. She was lost in the moment, too far gone to worry about publicity, sunk deep into her own desire.

If Thatch was ice, then she was fire.

If Thatch was precision, then she was ignition.

If Thatch taught, then she learned.

They pressed themselves together, delighting in their beautiful contradictions. The pet who submitted through strength in the empire built on softness; deciding each and every moment to surrender her decisions anew; lost in the desire for what she did not want.

When their kiss finally broke Thatch placed the now-empty glass on the table and patted katie on the head. “Such a good girl,” she whispered, in Xa'at-dialect affini. She doubted any other language would have penetrated the blissful haze katie had sunk within.

The girl's smile widened enough to make the unreasonable wonders of the Meandrina seem unimpressive. What technology could mean more than this? katie ducked closer and rubbed her cheek against Thatch's chest, rumbling with her own kind of delight while gentle fingers found her favourite spots and filled them both with wordless comfort.

Zona, for her part, raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Yes, okay,” Thatch admitted. “Perhaps we are our own kind of weird.”

“Then you'll fit in just fine.”