Divaricated

The Affini were clearly unfamiliar with the idea that the pen could be mightier than the sword, for Katie was better armed than she thought should be allowed. To her left lay an array of implements in a dozen colours; to her right the tower of paperwork the plants expected her to sign.

Across the desk were the clerks. Wing and Montsechia Vidalii.

The pen-pusher and her pet.

“So,” Montsechia began. “We can take this slow. There's a few decisions to make and barring unforeseen disaster you have our close attention. To make sure we are all on the same page, as it were, my beautiful assistant has prepared a few questions.”

She slid Wing's writing pad over the desk, showing off the jellyfish's precise scrawl. She also held out a potato slice an inch away from Katie's mouth, making her lean forward to eat it out of her fingers. The slices were delicious and Katie was pretty sure she was being shamelessly manipulated, but in all honesty she found it a comfort. These weren't emotionless bureaucrats like Terra had preferred, but instead clever ones who knew they knew best and simply needed to lead Katie into giving them those few missing puzzle pieces.

Katie ate the potato slice and received a quick chin scratch in exchange. She felt a moment of comfortable quiet overtake her as she chewed down a treat while receiving doting attentions and letting her mind sink just a little into her comfortable petspace. She kind of wanted to double-check to make sure the gem on her collar was inactive, but it wouldn't have done anything for the clerk anyway.

This was just training taking hold, with Thatch's influence making it stick.

“Thank you, Miss Vidalii.” Katie beamed up at the clerk for a moment, then glanced down at the questions. She wasn't sure if the pens she'd been given were smart enough to tell whether they were writing on paper or technology or if it was simply that the difference between paper and plant-tech was thin enough to disappear, but her pens worked just as well on either surface.

Katie quickly skimmed through the questions with a growing sense of concern. Her spare hand squeezed Thatch's. Some of them looked hard. Katie's plant was being quiet, mostly here for support and security, as otherwise this was Katie's time. The girl looked up and backward, stretching her neck to glance towards Thatch's face.

“Do not worry, little one.” A vine stroked its way down Katie's arm. “They are not trying to catch you out. There are no wrong answers here, it is merely that the solutions may be different depending on your needs.”

Katie nodded, a little distant, and returned her focus to the pad. It was hard to believe that such complex bureaucracy could really be so benign, but it was easy to believe as she was told to. Funny how that worked.

I, Katie [Aquae, Second Floret], hereby confirm that I am very cute and deserve all the good things which are coming to me.

To the left of each line was a checkbox, and at the bottom of the pad was a place for her signature. This seemed like an unusual place to start. Every word could be vitally important. Katie knew nobody was really trying to trick her here, but getting her to sign away more than she expected seemed like something the paperwork predators before her would treat as sport.

“So, okay. Firstly, the name is styled differently, what does that mean?” Katie asked.

Wing flashed a rapid sequence of colours at a speed Katie couldn't hope to follow. The lights jumped around her body faster than Katie could even keep up with, never mind have any way of understanding. Montsechia seemed to have little trouble translating. “Wing says that she thought you would prefer to use your name-to-be here, and that it doesn't really matter because we're about to strip your legal authority anyway and all of this will really be enforced by your owner.”

A gentle tug on Katie's emotions from above, flaring up a sense of amused confusion, had her trying to stifle a laugh and subtly kicking her plant's leg under the desk. How had she found the one affini on board who didn't have a massive thing for paperwork?

Katie considered the question fresh, shrugged, and slapped down a tick. She was very cute, at least according to Thatch, and if karma existed then she sure did deserve a break.

I, Katie (henceforth known as pet, floret, or Katieflower), confirm that I wish to revoke my citizenship with the prior Terran Accord and do not wish to use it as a basis for citizenship under the authority of the Human branch of the Terran Transitory Territory Administration.

Well, that one was easy. Katie checked the box.

Thatch raised the hand which wasn't entwined with Katie's own and gave her head a quick scratch. “Good pet. You didn't need that old name anyway.”

Oh. Katie(flower) flushed. It hadn't taken her long to get tripped up after all, even watching out for it. She'd spent a long time trying to pick herself out a name that felt right and signing it away hit hard, even if 'Katie' was still a valid shortening of one of the names she was now permitted. It was still exactly what she'd been afraid of back on the Indomitable, that her identity would be forfeit, wasn't it?

“Worry not, Katie,” Thatch rumbled from above. “I was very involved in the construction of this. There are no answers here that are wrong.”

Her prior identity hadn't been stolen away, it was just being used as a trellis. Support on which to grow someone new. Katie could feel a nervous excitement bubbling up within her, and it was hard to tell whether it was her own or a reflection of her owner. Maybe it didn't matter.

Okay. Next question.

I, pet, confirm that I am not attempting to escape loan, let, or lien, nor am I attempting to circumvent the requirements placed upon me as outlined by the Treaty on the Methods, Limitations, and Procedures for Human Domestication, section 158.

Hmn. Katie glanced up. “I don't know about this one, I kind of am? I don't think I'm trying to avoid it in, like, a bad way, but it'd feel pretty bad to be told that I still counted as human.” She laughed, then used the blunt end of her pen to jingle her own nametag. “It's not like I'm trying to get out of domestication here, right?”

Montsechia emitted a thoughtful hum, then spent a moment dancing coloured leaves at her assistant. The conversation seemed rapid and though Katie at first thought it impassionate due to the lack of clear body language she soon decided that the growing want in the pair's eyes suggested this was anything but cool and calm.

“We were going to suggest we create a new human-derived subspecies for you, but that would require you abide by the terms of the existing treaty. However, we have some experience with treaty negotiations now and we would be delighted to hash out the Katie Domestication Treaty with you at a later date. Be warned, however, my darling Wing has a taste for it now and you are unlikely to have many rights left over by the end of the negotiation. You hardly have much leverage here, little one.”

Katie had grown a reasonable appreciation for paperwork since stepping aboard this ridiculous civilisation's starship. She understood why much of it was important. Even given that, the hunger in Montsechia's eyes as she proposed a firm and combative stripping of Katie's legal rights, despite that she was trying very hard to give them away, was difficult to understand. The enthusiasm was catching all the same. “Do I get a lawyer?” Katie asked, feeling a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth that she only just managed to suppress.

Montsechia grinned back openly, with eager cruelty. “No.” She placed a single finger just in front of Katie's chin and pinned the girl under the weight of her expectation until she gave in and placed her head atop it. “You get one hour to negotiate and we reserve the right to dock time for bad behaviour, or grant it for good. We're two points into this and you've already given us your name. How long do you think you'll last if we stop trying to be nice? So, be good while we go through the rest of this and maybe we'll let you have a say in what you'll end up signing.”

Stars, Katie should really check up on how Cici handled this. The poor thing seemed mechanically hardwired for fluster, and it had the further disadvantage of actually having been doing this for real. Katie just laughed and glanced away, biting the end of her pen with a growing blush. When they put it like that, Katie could start to understand how they could get so worked up over paperwork.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Katie laughed. “Shall I just skip this point for now?”

“Hmn, put a cross through the last part, I think you can still agree with the first clause.”

Katie did as she was told, then slapped a check next to it. If the pressure on Katie's mind was any indication, and it invariably was, Thatch wasn't quite sure how to feel about this either. Maybe Katie could convince her that filling out forms could be fun.

Next question.

I, Thatch Aquae, so swear that my floret-to-be is extremely cute and adorable and I love her very much and will take wonderful care of her and she deserves all the nice things I can give her.

The pen was unceremoniously stolen from Katie's fingers, and then returned once Thatch had placed her own elaborate checkmark in the box just to the side of her oath and surrounded it with half a dozen little hearts. Katie glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “Are they making you do this?”

“We made her tone it down, actually, the pad has limited storage capacity,” Montsechia interjected. “After the preludes we get into the most important pieces.”

Ah, this next one just referenced one of the sheets to her right. Katie spent a moment thumbing through the pile looking for the right one, and then eventually gave up and looked over at the clerks for help. How was she possibly meant to find one sheet in such a tangled web?

“It's the one on the top, pet. We put them in order for you.”

Ah. Katie flushed, grabbed the first form, and started reading it. It used much more standardised language than the previous points, but with some parts crossed out and replaced with more appropriate versions.

Elettarium Office of Records and Rituals

Regarding acquiescence and submission to the dissolution of the prior Terran Accord 'government', intended for feralist and prior feralist ideologues

1.1 I confirm my understanding that the political structure previously known as the 'Terran Accord' has been found in violation of the laws of the Affini Compact and therefore was not a valid structure. 1.2 I confirm my understanding that due to this, the structure once known as the 'Terran Accord' has been permanently dissolved. 1.3 I confirm my understanding that this was deserved and just. 2.1 I confirm my understanding that, as a prior citizen of the former 'Terran Accord', I can no longer receive political representation via prior 'Terran Accord' structures and my prior citizenship is no longer valid. 3.1 I confirm that I would pretty please like to ask nicely for citizenship in the Human Katie branch of the Terran Transitory Territory Administration. 3.2 I confirm my understanding that while the above is not predicated on good behaviour, I will be a very good girl and do as I am told anyway because I am a very good girl. 4.1 I confirm that I am exceptionally cute and very grateful to the Affini Compact for rescuing me from the prior 'Terran Accord'.

Katie glanced over at the the stack of things they expected her to sign. Were they all going to be this saccharine? There was almost a cruelty to it if she tried to imagine what these forms would have been like to sign back when Terra had first fallen. This wasn't just signing away her rights, it was signing away her dignity, too.

Katie dropped her signature at the bottom. A practiced, flowing Katie led into a much rougher, printed Aquae. At least she'd spelled it correctly. Katie figured she would get plenty of practice before the end of the day.

After that she returned to the pad for the next overall point in this obtuse and inexplicably exciting process. Every tick and signature left her feeling smaller than the last, and there was something intensely comforting about burying herself in the bureaucratic embrace of a species so comfortable with its own superiority as to demand this of her.

I, flower, confirm I would like to withdraw from the Human race, politically, biologically, and legally speaking, and am doing so with a full understanding of what this means to me and for me.

Katie carefully placed the pen down on the table and opened her mouth. Montsechia took the opportunity to deliver a potato slice into it, and Thatch ruffled her hair while Katie chewed. This was bullying. How was Katie meant to do philosophy like this? She whimpered and thanked both of them, then took a breath and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. This was the big question, and something that had been a quiet recurring struggle for her for many years even before Thatch had ensured it would dominate her idle thoughts.

Katie didn't know if she could check that box. How did she know if she was legitimate, here? She needed a second opinion. “I don't really know what it means to count as human,” Katie admitted. “If it's the society, then all my life I've been told I don't fit, that I'm not a real girl, that I don't deserve to be comfortable or to be happy because I studied the wrong thing, was too lazy, or wasn't born rich. I never got anything out of trying to be included but more people pushing me away. The only reason why I had to play along was because if I didn't, I would have been left to asphyxiate in deep space, die of thirst on some forgotten rock with a bare atmosphere, or left to starve even in Terra's grandest cities. I don't agree with the prevailing values of humanity, and while I could probably find people there who I do agree with, they too were on the edges of society and they too were made to suffer to earn a place they were forced to strive for.”

Katie believed it, but it fell flat. Her problem had never really been the bigots or the assholes. She had never felt welcomed, no, but she'd gotten used to that. There were other things she'd never gotten used to.

“If it's the biology, then I really don't care for that either. Miss Aquae told me that species divisions are kind of arbitrary, and I haven't really been able to stop thinking about that since. I do have a human body, I guess, but I don't really want it? It was born wrong and I've already had to pull it apart to replace bits of it just so I can be comfortable and I'm so tired of it.”

Katie looked down at the pad. It was such a big question. How could she be sure that she had a full understanding? Who could possibly tell her that?

Another easy one. Thatch could, obviously. That was why they were here, so Katie could present herself in totality and let herself be judged by somebody that had earned that right.

“There was a human philosopher, like, a long, long time ago, called Regge Despartes or something and he was full of shit. He said, um, that humans were better than animals because animals were just little biological robots going about their programming without real minds, and that's what I feel like. One of his 'beast machines'. I can't think like I need to be able to without medication. I can't look like I need to without drugs. My emotions swing wildly without giving me any clue as to what's wrong and I so obviously react in preprogrammed ways. I think things not because they're right, but because people back under capitalism could make higher profits if we'd all been programmed to want things we didn't need. I act in ways not because they're useful or smart or beneficial, but because a hundred thousand years ago my biological ancestors needed to be able to run away from predators and so now any time I see something moving in the distance there's this part of my brain that demands all my attention so I can check it isn't dangerous, even though it can't possibly be dangerous because I'm here.”

Thatch's spare arm came up to gently squeeze Katie's chest. She took a moment to close her eyes and lean into the embrace, letting herself be calmed by the gentle rise and fall of Thatch's heat. She'd been getting a little worked up. This helped.

“So, um. I don't want that either. I want a body that works and a mind that was at least programmed by somebody who cares about me and I guess calling myself not human isn't really true there, but maybe it can be an aspiration. I feel like I could be so much more than I am if I wasn't being held back. I don't know if I'm just a biological automaton, but if I am I still want Thatch to be the one oiling the gears.”

Katie looked up at the plant who owned her in all ways but legally. “I don't know if I get to check the box, Miss. Am I... do I count as understanding? I can't say I'm certain about any of this.”

Thatch smiled down at her. “We'll figure out just how you work together. Check the box, my little beast machine.”

Katie checked the box. There it was. Down in black and white before the only species in the galaxy with the bureaucratic might to actually strip her of her species and grant her the freedom to find out what she really was. Regardless of what that little voice in the back of Katie's head that doubted everything she said might think, there was a higher power involved now. Katie was not human.

How many more of these points were there left to go?

I, the undersigned, promise I am a very very good girl and will sign this document with my very prettiest signature!!

Okay, that was an easy one. Katie checked it.

The next referenced the next sheet in the stack, taking her from the HumanKatie branch of the Terran Transitory Territory Administration into the TerranKatie Protectorate.

“How much work did you need to do to make this all add up?” Katie asked, looking up at the clerks. They'd gotten distracted by each other and both looked up with vaguely guilty expressions on their faces.

“Honestly most of it just copied from elsewhere with some wording changes, but admittedly neither of us slept last night. That's okay, though, I don't need to sleep anywhere near as often as I like to, and my darling jelly here is on a very high dosage of class-Z0 xenodrugs.” After realising Katie was unfamiliar, she added “They inhibit tiredness and sleep responses. Not a good idea to use indefinitely, but she is so very cute when she's loopy.”

Katie looked over at the pair with unsubtle concern. “You stayed up all night for this? I... really didn't want to be this much of a bother.”

“Oh, no, floret, please. The kerfuffle down in the stasis bays was what kept us up. Your project was so we could blow off some steam after.” She gave Katie another potato slice, and followed it up with a piece of one of the burgers. Katie gave an appreciative moan to the latter. It was very good, and—they were assured—not poisonous in the slightest.

Katie wasn't sure how to feel about the rest of the crew of the Indomitable being here, apparently now awake. If they'd been in stasis since the ship had been taken, then for them Katie's whole journey had passed in the blink of an eye. What would they think of her now? She shook her head. That kind of thinking was a relic of the old Katie, who had to worry about things beyond the cute but damaged plant currently cuddling her. The fates of her old crew were out of her hands and ultimately didn't matter. They'd find good homes and have happy lives and Katie didn't need to worry herself any more than that.

She signed the document. The work was already done, it'd be rude not to use it.

“Hey, if I'm the only citizen of the Katie Protectorate, does that mean I'm technically in charge?”

Both present affini laughed. Thatch's grip grew a little tighter, pinning Katie in place. “If you're good, we'll let you make suggestions for the flag. If you're very good, we'll let you recite the founding documents for us.”

Oh no. Thatch was getting into it too, now. Katie abandoned her fledgling lust for power, nodded rapidly, and moved down to the next line.

I, Katieflower, agree that I am no longer permitted to practice trading with the intent to amass capital and will never again be allowed near double-entry bookkeeping without supervision. I understand I will no longer be permitted private property.

Well, that just seemed obvious, didn't it? Katie paused with her pen just above the checkbox. “What does private mean there? I still get... public property?” Katie glanced up at Thatch, who shrugged and gestured over to Montsechia, who shrugged and gestured over to Wing. The jellyfish spent a few moments narrating, and then her owner began to translate.

“As a member of the Katie Protectorate, you are still permitted to own anything that you would actually use or care for. Your hab unit, your toothbrush, your fish, your clothes, and so on. You are not permitted to—” Montsechia frowned. “Are you sure you have this right, Wing? That doesn't seem— They did what? Frozen roots, those poor things.” She looked back towards Katie with a helpless shrug. “You are not permitted to own things for the purpose of denying them to those who need them so you can extort things out of them. I swear, that this even needs to be said...”

“Oh.” Katie checked the box. “Does everyone have to sign that one?”

Wing flashed a bright green, followed by a few mitigating shades. “Only the ex-Terran Accord citizens,” Montsechia provided. “Don't worry, though, we'll take private property away from you too now, let's move on.”

Ah. This was the one, then. Katie's breath caught in her throat as she pulled the next piece of paper from the pile. The important one. The one she wanted. The one she needed.

With a shaking hand, Katie began to check the boxes one by one.

Above all else, you, Katie Sahas, must obey your guardian, Thatch Aquae, Second Bloom, in all things. This is for your safety, wellbeing, and care.

Checked.

Your guardian, Thatch Aquae, owns you. A pet is property. You do not have political rights in the Affini Compact. All existing rights and privileges are invalid and inapplicable.

Agreed. Shivering fingers smudged the checkmark. Why? All of this was already true, but a small line of ink made it seem real and inescapable. This was Katie making a statement, declaring these universal truths. Ensuring they would be true no matter what happened.

You do have a guarantee of your wellbeing as defined in Section TBC of the Katie Domestication Treaty. This does not preclude corrective measures being imposed where discipline is required.

She hadn't even signed that treaty yet. She didn't know what she was agreeing to. Ink-stained fingers hung above a firm checkbox, clutching her pen hard enough that her hand shivered with the strain. She was declaring these things true and she didn't even know what it truly meant. She couldn't. There was too much. She looked at the pile to her right. She couldn't possibly understand all this. She looked up at her legal owner and silently begged for help.

“You agree, pet.”

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” Katie's checkmark came down hard and surprisingly steady. Her breathing started to stablise. She didn't need to understand what she was agreeing to. She just had to trust that she was signing herself over to somebody who wanted the best for her, and she knew that was true.

From this moment forth, your full legal name is Katie Aquae, Second Floret. You will answer to, and refer to yourself by, any name your guardian chooses to permit you.

The lines got easier after that. Katie read something she couldn't possibly understand the implications of, asked for help, and was told that she agreed. She signed her prettiest signature on the dotted line and very carefully placed the pen against the table with a trembling hand.

“And there we are,” Montsechia declared. “It's always so lovely to watch a new pet sign themselves over to our care. You have a delightful floret, Thatch.”

“I do,” she growled, vines coming in from both sides to bind Katie's limbs and hold her close. “And I think that's quite enough self-determination out of it for today.” A finger scratched under Katie's chin and then tapped the gem on her collar. The girl froze up for a moment, body desperate to twitch but held too tightly to manage it. Katie tried to hold on to the scraps of her consciousness but they just slipped through her fingers like finely ground sand.

“Yes, there's a good girl. Eyes on me,” Thatch whispered, squeezing tightly enough with every vine that it hurt. The pain was enough to give Katie something to hold on to, something to focus her mind. Katie looked up, or was made to look up, and stared up with rapidly dwindling willpower. She spluttered out a word, though she wasn't sure which word she'd managed.

Thatch laughed quietly, holding the girl close. “Do not worry yourself, pet. There no longer exists a force in this universe that could free you from me. Fight, surrender, beg, or sink. It matters not. You need no longer suffer the burden of choice.”

A hand came out of nowhere to rest around Katie's neck. “But I'll have you sink for the moment. Let go, Katie. Let me take care of the rest.”

She sank.

Check, check, check.

Of the twelve pens that had been with them at the start of the day only three remained at its end. The finest writing implements known to this universe had broken themselves on the horror of Affini xenobureaucratic theory.

It was absurd, but it was done. Thatch's darling Katieflower had her life mapped out in detail enough to please the clerks. Thatch found herself almost disinterested in the paperwork, but, well. She was making an effort, wasn't she?

Thatch stretched out, letting her form dissolve into vines so numerous that even she lost count. Somehow, every single one of them hurt, ached, or shivered. She would have preferred to just let Cici shoot her again, but this mattered to Katie.

Speaking of. The delightful little thing had been sleeping soundly, curled up in Thatch's lap for the last three blooms—or however long the paperwork had taken, anyway—but the stretching had been enough to wake her. Katie blinked slowly, then lifted her head off of Thatch's thigh and glanced around before finally making the connection and looking up. Her face melted into a soft smile.

“Hey,” she whispered, doing a little stretch of her own. She straightened her arms and legs, arched her back, and squirmed while pulling the most satisfied little expression Thatch had ever seen.

Roots, but the thing was cute. Thatch spent a few moments gently playing with one of the girl's hands, folding down each adorable little finger in turn, then reversing the process. Precious beyond belief. Tiny and soft, but smart enough to understand all the things Thatch wanted to give to her and willful enough to let Thatch feel safe doing it.

“Good evening, flower,” Thatch replied, eventually. Katie grinned back, then gestured her head over to the side. What was she— Oh.

Thatch glanced up to find the clerks waiting patiently.

Ah—as Katie had been so kind as to teach her—fuck. She'd become just like everybody else. Thatch sighed, put one hand atop Katie's head so she could absent-mindedly keep the girl entertained, and returned her attention to the matter at hand. “Apologies. What's left?”

The Spectrum Jelly shone to a staccato beat. It was fast, conversational chromaticity that Thatch found herself unable to fully comprehend. She got maybe one in every five words. It wasn't a fair comparison, of course, she hadn't had a conversation partner in fifty years and even then it had been Caeca flashing slow and simple in a different dialect, and with a very different body shape.

Montsechia translated. “We're all done with your floret there,” she confirmed. Thatch had caught enough of what her floret had been saying to know what was coming. Heck. “Now we do have a few things to talk to regarding you, Ms. Aquae. Of course we wouldn't brush the dust off of our regular archeobureaucracy hats without talking to you about it, but we are willing to do so if you can give us some pointers.”

“Uh,” Thatch faltered. “Is it important?”

The clerk nodded firmly. “Less important than Katie's is, certainly, but it's important that you get the care you need as well. Your records are very incomplete, but it doesn't look like you've been attending your medical checkups?” After spending half the day listening to Montsechia speak in doting, lilting tones it felt strange indeed to hear her speaking to an equal, but that was how these things went, wasn't it?

Thatch didn't begrudge her that. She was hardly above the behaviour herself. Katie had spoken of biological heritage and Thatch supposed that this was hers. Perhaps the only thing that Affini bioengineering hadn't changed about their bodies over the years was the instinctive response they felt to the adorable creatures of the universe. In a sense, she and Katie were more equals than they might think. Both of them simply responded to their incentives. How much faster could Affini progress have gone if the universe's greatest scientists, engineers, and thinkers didn't spend most of their time focused on individual sophonts?

Thatch sighed and nodded, putting her attention back onto the clerk. Time to deal with an equal. “I am a capable biologist in my own right, Montsechia. My body is operating well within the acceptable bounds laid out in current medical guidance, though I am aggressively cycling out the transplanted life from my time stranded to ensure this remains true for my entire bloom.”

The clerk spent a moment fussing over her Wing, arranging things such that the floret could curl up safely against her lap, just as Katie was curled up against Thatch's. A conversation just between the adults in the room, then. “You know that checkups are for more than just physical health, Thatch. I can't make you go, but I can strongly recommend that you attend.”

“I... There are many aboard this vessel with greater needs than mine. I do not wish to take more from them than I must.”

Montsechia reached a vine out across the table. After a moment, Thatch took it in one of her own, and the clerk continued. “I don't really know you, Thatch, but nobody here does. I don't know why you're where you are, but people who don't need to go to their checkups don't have the kind of breakdowns you had.”

Thatch winced, and glanced down to make sure Katie was safely asleep. Thankfully, the girl seemed to have fallen back into slumber quickly, curled up on the chair by Thatch's side with her head sandwiched between a thigh and a hand.

Montsechia's vine, and voice, grew firmer. “You haven't told your floret?”

“I wasn't— It hasn't come up,” Thatch admitted. She looked away. Both of them knew that wasn't how this worked. If Thatch didn't want it coming up and Katie didn't know to push then it would take a lot of willpower to defeat that subconscious urge. Every affini was fully aware of the responsibility that their positions demanded. One couldn't keep an intelligent and once-independent creature as a pet without putting their needs first in every respect. Thatch didn't know if she could accept that responsibility all of the time. She felt the everpresent Affini need to take care of something, but there was a difference between the fantasy and the reality. If she accepted that level of control and responsibility then her mistakes would resonate. She could hurt more than just herself.

“I can't make you attend for your own sake, Thatch, but you know that if this ends up harming that floret of yours then the vote will be fast and decisive and you will end up attending your checkups.” Thatch wilted. It was about as close to a direct threat as one could get. Montsechia was correct, of course, if any harm came to Katie then it would not be difficult to get a binding vote held on whether Thatch would attend. It was one thing to passively avoid something uncomfortable, but quite unthinkable to go against the results of a vote. Thatch may sometimes feel like a bad Affini, but she was still Affini.

“It will not,” Thatch replied, firmly. “Katie is fully capable of standing up for herself and would not allow me to bring her to harm.”

Montsechia raised an eyebrow. How strange, Thatch thought, that even in a conversation between affini alone, they still adopted the mannerisms of the local species. They had a whole universe to pull from, here. Thatch shuffled some leaves around, covering the remaining bioluminescent bulbs that still remained on her body with different stacks of leaves. She lacked any blues, but the light was naturally a little blue, so she had access to a few different shades. Not enough to speak with any nuance, but enough. Promise. Pet mine taken well care of. Take good care of me, too, Thatch flashed. She wasn't hugely confident in her wording,

Montsechia's other eyebrow rose to meet the first. “Well, aren't you full of surprises? I didn't realise we had anybody else aboard who'd been around those parts. Not that I have, my darling Wing found me here.”

Hmn. A long-range scout was an odd place for an independent jelly to find herself. Thatch glanced over at the sleeping floret, wondering if they might have more in common than Thatch had first thought. What had she been running from?

“A few years, a lifetime ago,” Thatch replied, eventually.

There was a tightness in Thatch's core. She'd gotten so used to hiding herself from others that even giving out such a small fact stung. She regretted it immediately. This was so much easier with Katie. Katie was trusted, safe. Even before the girl had been hers she'd still been those things. Thatch could give her secrets away without worrying they'd be used against her. How could she trust anybody else on that level?

The bureaucrat glanced away for a moment, piecing together the obvious implication. “Ah! With first contact, then? A complicated time. Humanity has been my first and it is not as smooth as I had expected. Speaking to independents among our ward species did not quite prepare me for how ferals would behave.” Montsechia's gaze grew a little darker for a moment.

“A little after that,” Thatch admitted. This was getting closer than she'd like to why she'd been running. She looked down at the innocent creature in her lap. 'Innocent'. Guilty of plenty. There was a whole section of Katie's paperwork stack that indirectly detailed the harms she had been forced to commit under the authority of the Terran Accord. Calling her innocent, as if she were unblemished by the hard truths of the universe, was unfair. Katie could be forgiven.

Thatch could not.

The girl in her lap stirred. Perhaps she was responding to the shift in Thatch's mood, perhaps it was simple chance. Either way, Thatch took the opportunity for distraction. The floret's eyes fluttered half open, lips quivering with gentle, half-formed words that Thatch silenced with a series of gentle strokes from the top of her head down to the small of her back. “Shh, it's okay. Stay asleep for me now, please.”

Katie squirmed, perhaps working out a little discomfort, before shuffling closer, wrapping her arms and legs around Thatch's limb and closing her eyes yet again.

Katie didn't want Thatch running any more. She'd said as much, albeit with different words. They could have gone to a shuttle and flown off into the void together, but what kind of life would that be for a floret? Thatch didn't know that she could handle existing inside such a grand civilisation, but Katie wanted better for her than endless escape. Katie wouldn't let her run any longer. To keep Katie happy, Thatch had to figure out how to stay happy too.

Perhaps the next step on that journey was to start treating the Elettarium as a home, not just a temporary hideout. Its crew as people, not things to be avoided at all costs. Thatch spent a moment working up the courage to speak. “I was brought in to assist with the cotyledon program,” Thatch admitted. “Shortly after first contact. One of the complicated cases, back while we were still figuring out how to safely entwine hausteria with a homogeneous nervous system.”

The clerk's expression softened. The rest of the story didn't really need to be told. The Spectrum Jellies were a recent enough acquisition that there simply wasn't time for both a happy ending and Thatch to have made her way over to the Terran front. One floret by a hundred and four was rare. Two was unheard of.

“Ah. I'm sorry. Those we could not help weigh the heaviest on us, hmn?” Montsechia's vine curled deeper down Thatch's. She almost sounded as if she understood, but surely not.

Surely not.

“Have you...?” Thatch wasn't sure how to speak the question. Any way she worded it felt insufficient.

“I have lived for almost nine blooms, each and every one a natural ending. I do not think anybody reaches that without finding somebody they could not help. I am sorry you found that so early in your own journey.”

Thatch pointed her gaze firmly towards the desk. It was hard not to feel like a child sometimes. By affini social norms she was decades beyond adolescence, but a decade was very short indeed for a species that would never die. “Thank you.” She paused for a long breath, not for the breath itself, but so she could watch the gentle smile on Katie's sleeping face as the scents washed over her.

Without that small, fragile creature Thatch would probably have been back in Affini space by now. Find some other small, out of the way ship to spool her hab onto, somewhere new to hide out until her fellow citizens got a little too close and she had to run again. Thatch—big, strong affini that she appeared to be—nonetheless found herself drawing a kind of strength she sorely lacked from her 'weaker' floret. Without that strength, she could never have continued her sentence.

“I did not expect anybody else to understand.”

Montsechia's smile grew warmer, and her vine squeezed with a momentary pulse of heat. “The very young never do, dear. Your story is, like everyone's, unique, but you are not alone. Believe me, I have seen the paperwork. We take care of the universe, but we must take care of each other, too. We—”

Wing's pad buzzed, drawing both of their attentions to it. Thatch glanced down. Priority Incident: Medical bay six engaged emergency shutoff; feralist crew is panicking. Requesting xenodiplomacy support.

Thatch slid it over. “Dirt,” Montsechia swore, reaching over with a vine to tap her floret awake. “I suppose here's our unforeseen disaster,” she continued, speaking both verbally and chromatically now that Wing was awake. “I apologise, Thatch, but I really must attend to this. Message me some time, hmn? Oh, and actually—”

Montsechia trailed a second vine over to Katie and tapped her on the head a few times. The girl woke up, glancing around until she spotted the clerk looking down at her. “Your owner here needs to attend her regular medical checkups, floret. Ensure it happens.”

Katie blinked. After a moment, she looked up at Thatch in silent question. Reluctantly, Thatch nodded, and Katie's gaze returned back to Montsechia. “Yes, Miss Vidalii!”

“Good girl.” The potato slices were long gone by this point, but aboard an Affini vessel the headpats never ran dry.

The clerks were gone soon afterwards, carrying their mountain of paper as they hurried towards the nearest magrail station. Whatever had called them away was thankfully none of Thatch's concern. All she had to worry about was the darling climbing up her torso to sit atop her shoulder.

“Hey.” Katie was a little breathless, having climbed with little explicit assistance. She would have had it in an instant had she asked, of course, but Thatch suspected it was that knowledge that had enabled her to do without.

“Hey yourself.” Thatch leaned back against her seat, reaching up to gently play with Katie's toes. So much like fingers, on this species, but stubbier. It was very strange. Not not cute, but Thatch had to admit she was biased. She wiggled each in turn until one of them forced a laugh from her Katie.

“What are you doing?” Katie asked, once she'd pushed the laugh down.

“I believe the technical term is doting. Is it unpleasant?”

Katie shook her head. “Stars, no, but I am kinda ticklish there.”

“Hmn.” Thatch drew a vine across the skin, and Katie almost lost her balance between the giggles. Another pair of vines kept her safely in place. “I shall have to investigate this phenomenon further. For now, it is getting late, though you have spent much of the day asleep. How are you feeling?”

Katie raised a hand and waggled it from side to side. “I've only just woken up, I'm fine. You?”

“I am exhausted,” Thatch admitted. “Planetfall was less effort than Affini bureaucracy, and at least that was over quickly. It is done, at least, the clerks are content and your paperwork is all caught up.”

The precious floret hugged a vine close and nodded. “Thank you, I really appreciate the effort. I'd be fine to stay out, but I think you should get home, so, wanna head back?”

“I really do.” Thatch stood, stretched again, and then spent a moment sorting the debris of their meals and drinks into a careful pile which she carried over to set gently beside the hab unit running the cafe, where a sleeping Angel lay curled in somebody's lap. They gave a grateful wave with one of their vines, but remained in place watching the stars. Judging by the way the affini in question appeared to glow and float an inch off of the ground, Thatch assumed they were an item.

It was a sign of how truly tired she was that she didn't want to figure out how the affini had done it.

Katie took the vine she had been holding and pushed it forward. Thatch was so used to the treatment that she took a step forward on instinct, but after a whole day of dealing with Affini excess Thatch figured she deserved a little indulgence. The vine curled back around Katie's torso and lowered her to the ground.

“Huh? What's up, Th—”

Thatch snapped her fingers. Watching Katie's expression crash into the sound was a delight. She really was going to make an exceptional floret, just as Thatch had suspected. The girl's demeanour snapped in an instant. Her slouch straightened up, her eyes lost most of that tightly controlled light Thatch still allowed her, and then, on the very next beat of Thatch's endless song came Katie's part of the verse.

“Yes, Miss Aquae?”

“Down, girl.”

Katie blinked for a moment, then her knees buckled, dropping her to all fours in but a handful of moments. Thatch grinned, knowing the floret wouldn't be able to look up sharply enough to see her breaking character. That was a lot faster than she'd reacted the last time, even if there was still a way to go. Mixing Terran and Affini training techniques seemed to be paying off. Speaking the command words in Thatch's native tongue had the advantage of nice clean associations in the girl's mind, as it was the only context in which she heard them and so wouldn't have to pause to determine intent, at least once she'd really gotten used to it.

Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as effective without Katie's efforts. She was a natural at this, now that she'd helped Thatch surgically strip her of the resistance that had been hurting her so. 'Broken' had such negative connotations, but how could anybody look at any creature this beautiful and think it anything but fixed?

Thatch could see how that could be enough for so many of her people. Katie really was beautiful like this. If she could just rid herself of that niggling worry in the back of her head that this could all come crashing to disaster, then maybe it could be enough for Thatch too, but until then, she would simply have to ensure she knew Katie on such a fundamental level that there was nothing left that could do her harm that Thatch could not fix.

Thatch slipped a vine into the ring hanging down from Katie's collar and set off home. “Heel,” she spoke, again in the affini dialect she'd grown up with. Not a command Katie knew yet, but a sharp tug on the leash got her moving all the same. Thatch needed to apply constant force to keep her in the right position, but that was okay. After a few moments of walking, she kneeled and slipped a treat into Katie's mouth, along with a finger to remind her not to eat it without permission.

There was something intensely relaxing about doting on the thing like this. Thatch could just focus herself down to a fine point and know that any effort she expended here would be appreciated and enjoyed for years to come. Besides, Katie was too stars-damned cute not to. She sat there with a berry on her tongue, looking up with curiosity, a little confusion, and the first embers of the desperation that Thatch actually wanted.

Thatch removed the finger. The collar sitting tight around Katie's neck was more than simple decoration; it was a project. A physical manifestation of what the pair of them could achieve together. Thatch alone never would have seen far enough outside of her own head to realise the possibilities, but Katie coming in with a fresh perspective and endless enthusiasm had breathed new life into Thatch's faltering dreams.

Like many projects, it would not be done in a day. Thatch reached one hand into her chest, where she kept a small collection of essentials, and pulled out a handheld electrolytic hook, one of the tools she'd used to build the collar in the first place. With one vine she gently levered a section of Katie's collar away from the skin and with another she tilted the girl's head up to look towards her. The girl whimpered, unable to speak around the berry, but unable to keep her mind quiet alone.

There were a lot of tradeoffs involved in any delicate work of biotechnology, and this was no different. On the inside of the collar lay a complicated weave of functional foliage, operating everything from how it interfaced with Katie's spinal column to the specifics of what pieces of Thatch's beat would get amplified and which would not, how responsive that was to quick changes, and so on.

Thatch stared down into her pet's eyes for a few moments, watching their surface carefully. The sharp, curious gaze she loved so much stared up at her, with all the micro-adjustments of her eye following Thatch's rhythm with perfection, but without much detail.

There were many words for the concepts involved in the more subtle facets of domestication theory, but translations into human tongues were not easy. It was a complicated set of ideas that they often had no direct mapping for. Some liked 'calibration' for this, but Thatch liked 'attunement'. Put a creature in a room with an affini they'd never met for an hour, and when they left that creature would probably have subconsciously attuned to the affini's rhythm on a basic level. None of the details, but the really high level stuff. It wasn't an effect that would last, nor would it have much meaningful effect in most.

The more time spent and the more active effort expended, the deeper that would go. The natural biological rhythms of an affini body were endlessly complex, but fractal. The higher layers could be understood and largely replicated without needing to dive deeper, but any intelligent creature would naturally find themselves drawn further in. They were patterns that demanded to be understood while never having an end to their depth. Katie was, at this point, so attuned that her heart would not know how to beat were it not for Thatch's guiding song, but she could always go deeper. Every extra level understood would have her piecing together more and more detail from Thatch's thoughts and feelings.

Thatch placed the electrolytic hook against the collar's biotechnological weave and kept staring down into Katie's eyes. As she shifted the hook, disrupting, remaking, and tuning the connections, she watched the way Katie's gaze wavered. Sharp comprehension sharpened further, but Thatch quickly snuffed that out with an indulgent smile. “Do not worry yourself, pet.”

The hook shifted, and the comprehension began to fade. “Yes, that's my good girl. No worries. No thoughts at all, really. Let me take you down to instinct, here.”

Katie managed a quiet gasp as the comprehension drained from her vision, replaced with a deeper adherence to the silent song that ruled her life.

Too much amplification and Katie would start getting overwhelmed. Too little and she wouldn't be able to keep her mind silent. Too fast a response time and feelings would flash by too quickly for Katie to grasp, but too slow and she would miss things. Thatch tuned her pet moment by moment, watching the look in her eyes to determine her progress while speaking constant words of praise and encouragement. Sharpness softened; comprehension was replaced with the dumb adoration of a pet; confusion with soft contentment; and desperation flared as her mind emptied to make room for the sweet-tasting juices of the berry.

Thatch let Katie's chin drop. “Such a good girl,” she spoke, taking a moment to scratch beneath the girl's chin while she stowed her tool away. Like everything she'd been saying, it was in Affini, or at least the dialect Thatch had grown up with. Katie was in no state to understand speech either way, but like this her poor mind would be spared the stress of trying.

“Eat.” As Thatch spoke, she tried to imagine a strong, sharp sense of permission and gratitude for just a moment and hoped that Katie would pick up on it. Bodily rhythms were just another form of communication, really. A subconscious one for most, but talking all the same. Speaking with vocalised words was still new to Thatch, and Spectrum Chromaticity had never been something she'd gotten entirely comfortable with, but the whole-body vibrations of the Xa'a-ackétøth had been familiar for almost a century and this wasn't really so different.

It'd turned the serpents to mush, too.

Katie was done with her treat in moments. They were small berries, intentionally so. Thatch plucked another from the transplanted material she had curled around her core, ready for the next cycle.

“Sit.” Katie knew that one. No treat just for that, just a few moments of gentle stroking and another burst of good feeling. “Heel.” Thatch started walking, with another tug on the leash to get Katie moving. After a few moments she seemed to get the picture, and so Thatch stopped and delivered another treat, paired with another blast of sharp permission and gratitude, and then verbal permission to eat.

At the slow speed of a few meters per minute, they had plenty of time to repeat the cycle as they made their way home. After five, Katie stopped needing a tug on the leash to start. After twenty, the sharp emotional click started to generate some of the excitement of a treat all by itself. After thirty, Thatch could walk slowly with her vine slack, Katie crawling at her heel like the very good girl that she was without needing much correction at all beyond the occasional reminder to heel when it looked like something was distracting her.

After a while, their journey gained speed. Thatch could only walk as fast as Katie could crawl, but the corrections became rarer, and so they had more time to actually move. The Elettarium was as populated as ever. It was late enough that the lights had started shifting down to an early evening twilight. Those still wandering were mostly focussed on one another, with only the occasional wave or smile in Thatch's direction, or an adoring gasp from afar as they spotted the well-behaved pet strutting at her owner's heel, bathing in the knowledge she was doing right. Katie was usually good at returning quiet greetings, but she was rather too focussed on her instructions to notice the world around her and so Thatch had to do that part herself.

It was inevitable that somebody would take a closer interest eventually. Thatch had barely avoided outside attention when she'd been alone, but she had to admit that Katie was simply too cute not to adore and could hardly hold an urge to do just that against anybody.

“Ho!” called a voice, waving over from the other side of the path. The pair of affini glanced around to make sure they wouldn't get in the way, and then walked over. They had a creature of their own on a leash, though it was leaping between the trees and plants that lined the path. “Remember us?”

The shuttle pilots that had picked them up on Dirt? The specifics escaped her, but Thatch nodded. “I am afraid I do not recall your names, it was a complicated day.”

One pointed at the other. “Zona.” The other way around. “Xylem.” Both pointed up at their creature, currently climbing up the tallest tree in the area, and spoke at the same time. “Lily.”

Thatch named herself and Katie. Unfortunately, Katie tried to wander off to investigate Lily, and while in principle Thatch had no objection to that it was hardly good training to allow it. She pulled the girl back into place and repeated the command to heel, and then after Katie had stayed in place for a few moments delivered another treat and another emotional snap.

Xylem grinned down at the inhuman, and then back up at Thatch. “Nonfloret, huh?”

“She made a very compelling case for why I should change her mind.”

Zona nodded, going down to one knee to be closer to Katie's level. “I'm glad she came to her senses. Lucky you, Thatch,” she said, glancing up. “Feralists make the most devoted little things, don't they? Is she okay to touch?”

Thatch shook her head. “I do not think we are there with her training yet, and I would rather not wake her up. We are trying something a little different, and it is still in the uncertain stages. I am not sure whether she ever truly believed in feralism, however, she was simply misguided and lost.”

“Isn't that— Oh dear,” Xylem paused, reaching out a vine a moment too late to prevent Lily from dashing up to Katie's side and staring.

“Woah! Cool? Is that—” Lily slipped a finger beneath Katie's collar and took a peek. Katie began to blink rapidly. The gem set into her collar shifted hue, away from Thatch's gentle green/blue towards a warmer tinge, signaling elevating stress levels. “That's so cool! How does it work?”

Thatch reached down and picked Katie up, hauling her into a one-handed embrace against her own chest. The other finger reached under her chin to tap the gem, shutting off the glow entirely. Katie's eyes sharpened back up over long moments. “Aw, that felt nice,” she protested, gently. “At least until- oh, um.”

Katie squirmed around until she could look over at Lily, who was now in one of her own owners' arms getting her own comfort. “Hey. I'm sorry, I just... I wasn't expecting to see a Rinan. I checked the registry a little while back and I don't think you were on it and— Oh! It's you three, I'm sorry. Last time we met was kind of a lot, I wasn't processing much, but it's good to see you again!”

Xylem was busy carrying her floret, but Zona interjected with an answer. “We're technically not crew, we mostly live in our own shuttle. Also, we haven't been on board for a little while, we stayed behind on 'Dirt' to make sure we'd wrapped up Cici's friends and our shuttle needed a few days to get out this far to meet back up. I... hope that Lily isn't a problem?” The last words were spoken cautiously, as though she was worried she would need to navigate a difficult situation. The momentary glance up at Thatch was an unmistakable negotiation on which of them would step in if this devolved into disagreement.

“What?” Katie asked. “Oh, um, stars, no! I'm not a racist, I just... Humanity hasn't been good to me either and my collar is really cool and I just wasn't expecting to have to deal with, y'know. I'm sorry about what humanity tried to do to your people, Lily.”

Lily flailed to no clear benefit until Xylem rotated her upright. “Not your fault! Humans sucked, but Zona says they're nice now and I don't think you're one anyway? You don't smell like a human! Hey, do you wanna see my room back home? Xylem's helping me build a rocket!”

Lily's enthusiasm seemed catching, at least for Katie. The conversation quickly dived into the kind of deep technical detail that Thatch wasn't enough of a xenohistorian to understand, and by silent agreement both Thatch and Xylem let their florets back down onto the ground. Thatch kept half her attention on Katie, just as she imagined half of the others' attentions would be on Lily.

As the pair talked, they all continued on their journey. The Varie family hadn't been going anywhere in specific, so they could all head off in the same direction.

“Heel,” Thatch ordered, just as she had been the whole journey. It was a practiced action now, starting to walk and ordering Katie close. To her delight, even without the collar active Katie immediately snapped to her side, walking while keeping pace without really seeming to notice exactly what she was doing. A quick snap of emotion put a bounce in the girl's step and hopefully reinforced all the positive associations she had with following the instruction.

“That's an unusual style of training,” Zona noted, speaking in the local Affini dialect. “Something you're bringing in from elsewhere?”

Ah, good. Personal questions. Just what Thatch needed.

Ugh. Thatch reached down to gently stroke Katie's head, soothing her. The girl had been interrupted midsentence, noticing the sudden turn in her mood and immediately shifting focus back to Thatch. She was right to do so, Thatch's emotions didn't match the moment. This wasn't an interrogation. Not every conversation was speeding the countdown until Thatch had to run again. If she was staying here, then she really had to figure out how to talk to people.

At least there was one topic on which Thatch knew she could be confident. “It was Katie's idea, actually. Old Terran techniques cleaned up and modernised some. There's some prior art, but we're making it our own. I'm finding that it's difficult to make work without creating sharp divisions between headspaces, but there is clearly some bleedover,” Thatch explained, gesturing at the floret following at her heel. They kept the shop talk in Affini to avoid spoiling the illusion for the two florets. Katie knew the details, but that didn't mean she wanted to be reminded of them when she could simply live them. “It wouldn't be healthy to treat her like that all the time, so we're experimenting with altered states of consciousness.”

“Most use xenodrugs for that,” Xylem noted. The two florets were chattering quietly between themselves, with the rise and fall in the cadences of their conversation naturally happening to align with their respective owners' so nobody spoke over one another despite the multiple overlapping conversations.

Thatch shrugged. “We like to tinker. She's mostly on a medicinal blend, and we're working up her tolerances.”

Zona took a moment to scratch behind one of Lily's wide ears. “Understandable! Our Lily here used to have a lot of trouble focusing on the details, so we switch between something that helps her think and something that helps her relax, and fiddle from there. Finding Lily out here really was a gift, we were starting to lose hope we'd find somebody who could fit into our lives.”

Xylem laughed. “Little did we guess that we'd be found by somebody who wanted to fit us into theirs. Our little Lilypad is going on the space adventure she always wanted to, we just do our scouting around that.”

While the people talked of pets, the pets were busy with subatomic physics. They lacked the depth of understanding that any affini interested in the topic would have, but they made up for it with their seemingly boundless enthusiasm.

Maybe Thatch had simply been looking at this civilisation wrong. It was a conclusion that was getting harder to avoid. On her own, all her knowledge and capability had amounted to nothing but unhappiness and regret. Maybe her fellow affini weren't just taking pets because they were bored. Maybe the pets weren't slowing them down at all. Thatch glanced down at hers with a gentle smile. She felt a burning need to give this one the universe, and a fledgling hope that between them they might actually be able to make it happen. Maybe the pets weren't a reward for contributing to their great project. Maybe they were the project.

“—so if you build a lattice with that, you can keep most of the hypermetric shock outside, I think! The Terrans didn't do it like that 'cos it's expensive, but we could do it right!” Katie seemed energised by the whole conversation, and Thatch found that energy catching. Sure, helping to hand-build a rocket that merged Terran-level technology with Affini-level sensibility wasn't going to change the world by itself, but she had proof that the 'lower' races still brought a much-needed injection of novelty and fresh perspective into their lives. Thatch ran a gentle finger along Katie's collar, something she never could have built alone.

The affini side of the conversation stayed light. The two Varies talked about their time on Dirt, spawning a short discussion on how best to cook with Dirt-native ingredients that Thatch found herself actually quite enthusiastic about. Thatch discussed a little of her early years on Xa'aat, spiraling off into a few side discussions about the serpents themselves and considerations for caretaking of aquatic species, and by the time they arrived at Katie's habitation unit Thatch felt an energy in her core that nobody but Katie had managed to inspire in decades.

Katie and Thatch waved the trio off, traded promises that they'd meet again soon, stepped inside the hab, closed the door, and collapsed into each other.

“I think that was literally all my social energy for today,” Katie admitted. “Do you wanna curl up in bed and watch old cartoons with me? Some of the floret cuts are actually really good.”

“Stars, yes.”

“Stop fucking around, Jack,” the man spat. One of the officers. He had the top few buttons of his uniform undone and a stick up his ass. One of the type that thought shouting at a problem would make it go away, and if anybody told him different he'd just shout louder.

Katie raised her hands in frustration, then let them fall. They were thirteen months into this fucking rebellion and everyone just kept wanting more and more. “Sir, do you know what happens if the exotic matter feed backflows?”

“I know what happens if those fucking xenos find us, recruit! We are jumping in one hour and if you can't make that happen then you won't be coming with us, do you understand?” the officer snarled. He hadn't even been that high up, before the war. Some disgraced captain placed on desk duty, now in charge of one of humanity's biggest war machines.

“Yes sir!” Fuck.

Fuck. Katie fucking hated hierarchy. She'd had such fire once, back when she was young enough to still believe the lies. If she worked hard she could be anything she wanted. She could change the universe. She could be happy. That'd been beaten out of her long ago and now the universe was getting devoured by killer plants in gargantuan ships. Now she didn't even dare correct her own name. There was nothing to be gained in provoking him. If she gave him what he wanted maybe he'd go away.

Now all she had to do was figure out how to repair a cracked fuel line on a jump drive that was still on a cooldown cycle. Would they actually space her if she couldn't manage it? Probably not: nobody else could keep the drive running, but that was a lot to bet on a 'probably'.

Besides. Maybe the man was right. The enemy was out there and maybe if everyone pulled together then the killer plants could still be turned back. They could still save truth, justice, and the Terran way.

Katie sighed, grabbed her wrench, and did what had to be done. With bare minutes to spare and a little bit of elbow grease she managed to fix the crack. Her hands shook as she worked the drive's controls, terrified that her hacked together repairs would falter or fail. They held. She felt the kick in her chest bursting out from the reaction chamber as the exotic matter mix stabbed a hole through spacetime and the electromagnet array guided that hole in the right direction.

The klaxon of battle a moment later confirmed they'd reached their destination. All around her the ship came to life. She heard the rising hum of a reactor shifting to unsustainable output along with the echoing clangs of slugs loading into the dozens of point defense cannons mounted along the hull. The real star of the show, though, was the railgun.

Two long spokes ran throughout the entire ship. The edges of a barrel hundreds of meters long lay barely beneath Katie's feet. That was why Indomitable's reactor was half again as large as most other ships this scale. The Catastrophe class was well named. If there was one in local space you did what it said or the results would be catastrophic.

Katie could feel the hypercapacitors charging. They gave the air a metallic tang and fuzzed her hair. She could feel the latent energy dancing on her skin. This could not possibly be healthy but no Terran Cosmic Navy battlecruiser had ever been built to keep anybody healthy.

“Brace, brace!” came the call over the tinny intercom. Katie kicked off of one wall and sailed through the air for a moment, landing on the far side of the room to brace against one of the handholds. Electric power sparked through the air as she reached to touch it, burning her finger. She had to grit her teeth just to handle the pain of holding onto an electrical ground while the ship's weaponry forced a charge upon her.

The railgun fired. The whole ship recoiled, slamming Katie into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from her body. The lights flickered and died and for a moment all was silent. Even life support faltered. The only light in the room was the battery-backed temperature readout of the rapidly heating exotic matter containment unit. Katie felt her heart start to sink. Either power came back on within the next twenty seconds or it wouldn't matter if they'd hit. A containment breach would kill them all anyway.

It took fifteen seconds. The lights returned one by one and the emergency beeping of the EMCU silenced. Finally, the radio hissed back into life.

“Direct hit! Xeno ship is down, repeat, xeno ship is down!”

***

Katie's eyes snapped open. She was breathing heavily, body trapped in a panic her sleeping mind hadn't noticed until the dissonance had grown so great it forced her awake. Her imagination clung tightly to the dream's imagery, pushing visions of a shattered affini ship to her attention. It was the Elettarium, of course. The only Affini vessel Katie knew in enough detail to imagine.

Shattered arcs spun freely on nothing but leftover momentum. Fore and aft drifted apart in a cloud of the dead. Kilometer-scale leaves twirled away into the shadowy depths. Her little haven in an uncaring universe torn apart and broken through the ignorance of Terran anger.

Katie shook her head quickly, squeezing shut her eyes. It wasn't real. It wasn't-

There was a soft groan from all around her, followed by a gentle shift of weight on the bed that almost sent the girl tumbling to the side. “Are you alright, Katie?”

Thatch. Thatch thatch thatch thatch. Katie spent a moment frantically searching around trying to spot her saviour, but found only that their bedroom was covered in an evenly spaced wild splatter of vines, leaves, and bark. Maybe most of it was concentrated on the unreasonably large bed, if Katie was generous with her counting—which when it came to Thatch, she was—but plenty draped over the side to cover the floor. One had somehow managed to get wedged in the bedroom door, keeping it open just a crack. Another was somehow draped over the frame of the room's full height window into space. Uncountably many curled around Katie's body.

Her memories of the night before were just a vague cloud of happiness now they'd reached the morning, but apparently they'd made a mess in the process.

Katie shrugged, then selected a thick vine near herself to hug close. It squirmed in her grip, pulsing with a gentle heat that provided both comfort and clarity to her panicking mind She nodded twice then unceremoniously buried her face in some random pile of leaves. “I'm okay. I'm good. Just nightmare.”

“Mmh. Tell me about it.” Thatch's voice was like a salve. That deep-seated need to obey was almost manageable when Katie was at her best, becoming 'merely' the strongest incentive she'd ever felt. When she wasn't quite so sober, had the collar turned on, was already tangled up in the creature, or was otherwise at a disadvantage—such as when just having woken up from a nightmare—it was quite irresistible. She was at a disadvantage most of the time, if Katie was honest.

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” Katie chirped, leaning into the urges she felt that pressed her towards politeness, respect, and deference. It was comfortable. It reminded her of what she wasn't. The things she was no longer capable of. Her nightmare could never be reality now. She could never use her knowledge to cause harm again. “I dreamed I was back on the Indomitable, before I met you, but... it wasn't what really happened. It was... I think we won? Or at least, we achieved something. I was getting yelled at by the old captain, which, that's realistic, but I managed to fix something I wouldn't really have been able to fix back then and we jumped and ambushed the Elettarium and—” Katie took a deep breath and shivered. An image of all the ship's beauty scattered to the void forced itself to the front of her mind unbidden. “Thatch, what would have actually happened if we'd managed to get off a railgun slug in the right direction? If we hit a weak point? If I'd done everything right back when I had no idea what right was?”

The plantmass surrounding Katie softly buzzed, drawing out a gentle gasp from between surprised lips. She felt it all over her body like it was her own skin. Katie glanced down and— Oh. Was she still dreaming? She looked down at a version of herself but floral. Katie blinked a few times, lifting her arm,a and flexed her hand. It moved like she did but rendered in black and red leaf with dozens of delicate vines beneath forming the actual structure. It seemed a little thicker than her actual hand, but only just.

Katie stared, moving her fingers back and forth just to watch the way they bent.

Inhuman. Strange butterflies danced in the pit of Katie's stomach. Surely this was just another dream. This wasn't what things were really like.

Katie was beautiful. She glanced down to find her entire form painted by the same brush like she were some diminutive affini herself. Instead of fragile human skin grown by chance she wore delicate vinework built by an artist. She was like Thatch herself, in a way. Less imposing. Cuter.

Thatch pulled the girl's attention back to the present with the first syllable of her first word. “—looked into that, actually. A Terran vessel of the same class did manage to ambush a small transport, much like the kind we rode up to the Elettarium in. The official report listed as casualties... ah, let's see... Maybe I can get it up on the screen.” Thatch paused, then spoke in a louder voice, presumably directed towards the hab unit's voice control. “Hab, please bring up the report on the Unsinkable incident.”

The machine spoke back in a sickly-sweet tone: “You got it, sweet pea! A cute lil' thing like you can get anything your owner is happy to give you!” The room's lights took on a shimmering pink glow for a moment.

Katie couldn't help but laugh. She was pretty sure she'd screwed up the language selection when she'd switched things back to English/Floret.

Thatch rolled her eyes, or— Katie blinked. Katie didn't even know where Thatch's eyes were right then but she still got the sense with the same kind of intensity as if she'd watched it happen. Neat. “Are you sure there are not configuration values you have missed, Katie?” Thatch asked.

Katie shrugged. “I think a bunch of settings went away after we updated my paperwork. Uh, including access to all the owner-level stuff.”

Thatch chuckled. “Which I also do not have access to, as this is your unit, I see. I suppose our trajectory has been somewhat unusual. I shall put up with this for now. Anyway, here it is.” Thatch quoted: “Even though the Terran 'weapons' are super cute and incredibly harmless, they sometimes build them really big!! This one fired chunks of metal almost as heavy as the shuttle, so when they crashed into each other, the shuttle was thrown around a bit!! One of the florets aboard got a bit upset when their favourite plushie lost one of its eyes, but otherwise everyone was okay!!!! (The plushie was repaired, and the shuttle then turned around and its crew captured the Terran ship's crew and they're all very good florets now: everyone was okay!!!!!!)”

Katie wrinkled her nose, staring at the screen with a tilted head. “Do you ever feel like Terrans get a little infantilised in these reports?”

The vine stuck in the door tugged itself free and vwipped through the air to brush against Katie's cheek, then pinned her to the bed while Thatch pulled herself together. In a display of control that Katie fully recognised she was biologically hardwired to find very impressive that vine turned out to be the tip of Thatch's little finger, which held Katie down with a force she couldn't hope to overcome.

Katie found it very impressive.

Her dork's other hand came up to brush Katie's hair out of her face, then tickled one cheek with a knuckle. “Of course, my precious little pet, you are far more noteworthy. Call up the Indomitable incident for me, won't you?”

Katie whimpered. This wasn't fair. She squirmed left, right, and any other direction she could think of, but one little finger against her chest kept her pinned in a way she simply couldn't overcome. She was pretty sure that any chemical inebriation from the night before would have faded by now yet the fractional contact still demanded her full attention. She could hardly focus at all, but she had an order. “Ah— I— H- hab, bring up the r-report on the Indomitable incident?”

There was a moment's pause while the machines processed the request. The lights dimmed while they were working then returned to full brightness as they began to speak. “Say please,” they responded, voice clipped and firm. Katie flushed. They could do that? She looked up at Thatch hoping for some help and got none.

“P- please?”

Another pause for processing. Katie bit her lip, feeling the heat against her cheeks rising. The affini promise of being given everything she could ever want hadn't mentioned that she'd have to beg. After a few moments, the machines had their answer: “No. Be a good girl and ask properly.”

Katie let out a flustered weh. Whoever had recorded these lines had clearly had fun with this and it wasn't at all fair that it was working. Hadn't she been above this, once? “Nnngh.” She looked up at Thatch and silently tried to will her into helping. She got nothing more than an amused smirk. “Fine! Please, pretty please may I see the report on the Indomitable incident, hab? I'm a little pet who has to beg computers to run searches now and please may I be granted the results?”

“Of course you may, you precious little—” The voice cut over into another recorded in something that sounded suspiciously like Thatch's gravelly tones— “Katie!—” Back to the original voice. “You only had to ask, silly.”

The screen finally switched to display the report, but after a few seconds it blurred out. The machines piped up again. “Say thank you.”

Oh, for—

Katie whimpered. “Thank you?” Thatch was enjoying this. They'd see how much she was enjoying it if the machines tried to pull this on her, though suspiciously they never had. Maybe they knew better.

“You're very welcome, cupcake. Enjoy your reading.” Before boarding the Elettarium, Katie would have sworn that computers couldn't be smug. Like many things from her prior self, that had been incorrect.

The report came back into focus and Katie's ordeal seemed to finally be over, except that Thatch was already scrolling to a specific section. “Be a dear and read that out for me, hmn?”

Katie nodded rapidly. When the machines told her to do something it was kind of embarrassing—though not really in a bad way, if she was honest with herself. It was exciting to have such a concrete reminder of her place in this society.

When Thatch told her to do something it was different. It was purpose. Identity. Thatch didn't remind Katie of her place: she defined it.

“Yes, Miss Aquae! Uh, let's see... After most of the cuties aboard were rescued, we hit a bit of a snag!” Katie paused and glanced up at her owner. “How am I meant to pronounce five exclamation marks, Miss?”

Thatch shrugged. “I don't think your vocal system is capable of it; just do what you can.”

Katie nodded firmly. “We got all the humans, but there was a sneaky Katie hiding behind a non-standard security system that hadn't been incapacitated by the gas! The poor thing was so scared she tried to scuttle the ship to get away! Thankfully, Thatch Aquae was there to calm her down and after a small detour she became a very good girl! The destruction of the Indomitable was responsible for: One bad dream from a floret who had to watch (soothed via rapidly applied squishing); The loss of one of the Elettarium's cargo chutes (replaced by the automated repair systems); and one scratch on the hull, which after some discussion was not repaired but instead dedicated to the Katie.”

Katie took a long breath, held it, and then let it out as a longer sigh. “This is definitely infantilising, but it's actually really nice to read something that... just accepts my inhumanity?” She was still smiling.

“Hmn,” Thatch chuffed. “Interesting. You shall be wanting the certificate, then?” Thatch asked, using the tip of a vine to select one of the many, many items that linked off to other records in the Affini computer system. Apparently they'd engraved Katie's name onto the hull next to the scratch.

This damage caused by Katie Aquae, Second Floret! She is very sorry, and we are all very proud of her.

Katie stared for a few moments. “Does that technically make the entire ship my certificate?”

“At least that hull panel, I would think.” Thatch rolled her eyes. Her voice was so dry Katie felt the need to drink a glass of water. “Before you ask, I don't know why we're like this either.”

“Probably because most of us came from a society where the idea of anybody sincerely celebrating our achievements was more alien than you are. I didn't really get to be proud of anything I achieved before, because all I'd get for doing the impossible was shouted at by somebody who thought I could have done it faster.” Katie gestured at the screen. “This is a little silly, but actually, no, I'll take somebody getting a bit too enthusiastic about celebrating something I did over what I used to have.”

The gentle sense of surprise wafting down over her like a gentle scent on the breeze was a worthy reward, Katie thought, for managing to exceed Thatch's expectations. She grinned upwards. “So where's my certificate, Miss Aquae?”

The affini stared for a moment, then sighed with a gentle smile, resting a hand on Katie's head. “You really are turning into a floret, I see. Perhaps you will make me an Affini yet.” She stood up, finally releasing Katie, and headed for the door. Katie scrambled along the long journey to one of the bed's edges so she could follow, but Thatch spoke a word she didn't quite catch and Katie found herself stopping dead. “I will return presently, pet.”

Thatch left. The bedroom door slid closed behind her.

The room suddenly felt so quiet.

Katie wasn't really alone. She knew Thatch was just one room away. She still felt her emotions starting to droop the moment she had the room to herself. Katie still felt the gentle happiness and gratitude that characterised her life now, but the intensity was gone and the texture felt coarse and uncomfortable. Katie let out a quiet cry, fighting the urge to call her affini back in.

This was ridiculous. She couldn't be kept company literally every second of every day. She had to be able to exist alone sometimes. She could be independent, for Thatch, right? For a few minutes? It wasn't much.

Katie sat on the bed and stared at the door, waiting for Thatch to return.

No, that was ridiculous too!

Katie could be left alone! She just needed a distraction. That was all. Katie looked around the room but nothing seemed to draw her enthusiasm. She looked down at her pale human arms.

Oh. Human. She'd been expecting the floral pattern from before.

Thatch must have gotten very cozy with her overnight. It had happened before but Katie hadn't exactly been thinking straight when she'd woken up. For a moment, she had allowed herself to imagine that the inhuman appearance might not have been merely skin deep.

Why did acknowledging that hurt so much? Katie had lived her entire life with these arms. Hell, she'd put a lot of work into getting them this far. The skin was soft, the hairs were practically transparent, and though there were a few blemishes from old wounds or accidents Katie found she didn't mind those. They were signs of things she had actually done. Her body was a project she'd been working on for years. A project Thatch had been working on for months. It was one of their success stories.

So why had all those butterflies from before fallen down the pit that had just opened up in her stomach? Katie looked at her very human fingers flexing and not a single butterfly dared to fly. Why? Just because she'd let herself imagine for a moment that she could be something more than just human?

Katie groaned. Back when she'd been a child she'd been depressed and didn't know why, but it wasn't until she'd started to make real progress on her transition that gender dysphoria had really started to hit. Was she going to have to go through the same thing again, except with inhumanity she could do little about? It wasn't like she could get rid of her arm.

Katie's eyes snapped back to the door as it chimed and slid open. All in a rush the colour came back into the world as Thatch Aquae walked in carrying a sheet of paper. Katie scampered over to the side of the bed to meet her person there and received a rough ruffling of her hair in response. Her plant chuckled. All was right with the world again.

Thatch sat down and Katie immediately draped herself over the affini's leg. “Apologies, that took a few minutes longer than expected. The compiler refused to compile it because apparently that is insufficiently fancy. One of Cici's people is doing deliveries now, however, so it only took a few minutes to have this delivered from the paper forest in the Botanical Gardens.” She held out an actual certificate for Katie to take.

The paper itself was thick and luxurious, marked with ink in rich colours and a design that was—by Affini standards—positively restrained. Which was to say that it was the most ostentatious certificate Katie had ever seen by some margin.

Katie glanced over the text. This award certifies that Katie Aquae, Second Floret, pet of Thatch Aqaue, Second Bloom did successfully damage the Affini Light Scout Elettarium during her capture with quick thinking, clever action, and impressive bravery!

Apparently the Affini tracked who managed to actually damage any of their ships, and Katie was now a member of an exclusive list of the most capable rebels. In her old society, Katie would have been worried about being on that kind of list, but here it really did seem that they just found her antics cute.

Thatch retrieved the certificate, pinching it between two fingers. “I shall frame it and hang it on a wall, I suppose.”

“It is kind of weird to celebrate me almost killing you, huh?”

Thatch paused, frowned, and considered. A moment later she shook her head. “No, I am very proud of you for this,” she confirmed, gesturing with the certificate as she carefully placed it on a bedside table. “But it feels insufficient. Why reward you only for this one action that nobody could have missed, as if your smaller victories are worth less simply because they are harder to see? Yes, your actions aboard the Indomitable were brave, clever, and impressive, but were they braver than standing before an Affini captain and demanding your independence? More clever than you forcing me out of my shell? More impressive than our speed record on Dirt? No, and yet this is what gets celebrated. It feels insufficient. You are so much more than this one relic of your prior feralist era.”

Katie blinked a few times. “You... don't need anybody's permission to make certificates, right?”

Thatch froze. Her head slowly tilted down to meet Katie's gaze. “I... do not, no. I can simply register your achievements myself.”

A vine wrapped around Katie's torso to lift her free then placed her to one side while Thatch herself stood. “I will return presently,” she declared, and made for the door.

Katie hurried to follow. “Hang on, wait, I actually wanted to talk to you about something!” she called. In response, a vine came to pick her up, delivering her to Thatch's shoulder. “Thank you. Um, you're a bioengineer, right?”

Thatch scratched under Katie's chin with a single gentle finger. “Good girl! You can remember simple facts about your owner.”

“Dork,” Katie shot back, sticking out her tongue. “No, I mean... I don't know what you specialise in. Do you know anything about, like... enhancements? Or prosthetics? Or... jeez, that's a weird question.”

Thatch made her way over to the Affini-scale chair they'd constructed, grabbing her own tablet as she went. She began writing. It was in Affini but Katie could guess what she was doing and it was adorable.

“Biotechnological integration is my specialty, actually. That is why I was considered the best available candidate for Caeca. That necessitates a deep understanding of biological form as well as how nervous and cognitive systems usually operate. Learning the intricacies of the human-standard body was a matter of some light bedtime reading. Admittedly I have fallen somewhat out of practice with the practical aspects.” Her stylus scribbled over the surface of the pad while she spoke, writing beautiful, flowing letters that Katie couldn't begin to read.

“Do you think you could still do it?” Katie bit her lip. What was she doing?

A hand reached up to pet Katie's head. “I imagine so, it has only been fifty years. Why do you ask?”

Katie took a deep breath. “What if I wanted that?”

Thatch's artistic handwriting snapped off into a sharp line that quickly escaped the tablet entirely as she twitched and sent the stylus flying across the room. She froze in place. Katie felt the vinework lattice beneath her squirming, lasting long moments before her plant eventually formed response. “I think I need to say yellow here,” Thatch admitted.

Katie frowned, sitting up in surprise while nodding firmly. “Of course, what's wrong?”

“Is this a hypothetical question, Katie?”

Straight to the hard parts, then. Katie shrugged. “I don't really know, Miss. We were all tangled together when I woke up this morning and it took me a while to realise what had happened, and when I did I was... disappointed? I don't know what I want, but I keep looking at myself and seeing someone human?”

“You are not, you know that. We have it in black and white.” Thatch's attention was wholly on Katie now, with the tablet lying forgotten on her lap.

Katie carefully climbed down and sat on it, like it were a makeshift chair. “But I feel it, y'know? People told me the same thing about my transition. I didn't need to make any changes because I was already a girl, but like, it doesn't feel like it, and it doesn't help when I know that what everyone sees isn't me. I don't want to have to explain my weirdnesses to everybody I ever meet to get them to not, uh... deadspecies me? There's probably a better term.” Katie shrugged and leaned forward to hug into her plant's stomach. “Do you wanna tell me what's wrong? I'm sorry, I didn't mean this to be scary.”

“You have done nothing wrong.” Thatch insisted, holding Katie close with one arm. She looked down at the girl for a moment, then held out her other arm, dissolving it in the process, and then used the pieces to gently wrap one of Katie's in a floral embrace. “I apologise. You could not possibly be aware of the details. In cases where a creature's original body can not be preserved, we do create replacements, but those replacements need some way to communicate with the brain and for that we will use a Haustoric Implant by preference.”

Thatch pulled the temporary weave she was building tight. She was moving slow and careful, working fine vines twixt fragile fingers. For a moment she moved Katie's arm as if it were her own, testing the limits of her movement and stretching her hand into all the awkward positions a humanlike hand could get into. Eventually, she passed control over to Katie.

“I have many complicated emotions tangled up in this area.” Thatch looked away.

Katie shuffled to her feet—she could stand on the tablet just fine, it wasn't like she could do anything to break it—and pressed her 'augmented' hand to Thatch's cheek. The lattice of vines was thin enough that she could still kind of feel, but it was like touching something through a thick glove. “Hey, we won't do anything we aren't both comfortable with. This isn't the same as Caeca. I'm not dying, and we're not talking about anything experimental.”

Katie could feel Thatch quiver in intimate detail and the covering on her arm couldn't help but shiver in turn. Katie pressed her head beneath Thatch's chin and used her unadorned arm to hug around one shoulder. “Right?” she asked.

Thatch looked away. “I...” She hesitated. “Right. It would of course be safe, you are right. Nothing experimental.”

Katie nodded quickly. She could feel a ripple of uncertainty dancing across her sixth sense. “It's okay. You aren't forcing me into anything.”

Thatch let out a soft sigh, paired with a nod and a weak smile. Her scent rippled over Katie, washing away what little energy she had. She sank, letting out a quiet whimper. “May I please curl up in your lap now, Miss?”

Katie proceeded to do just that after a difficult to explain, but clear, sense of permission struck her. It was so much easier to just let herself exist in Thatch's care. Thatch would take care of everything. Katie didn't need to worry herself over it. She didn't need to think.

It hardly took moments before the girl slipped into slumber, curled up on Thatch's lap with a large tablet balanced atop her. The affini continued writing out all the achievements for which she was to be praised. It would take a while.

“I'm fine, I'm fine!” Katie protested, trying and failing to prevent Thatch from smoothing out the overlaid foliage of her dress for what must have been the tenth time that morning. “Thatch, you're fussing.”

They stood just outside their nearest magrail station, Thatch down on one knee as she made sure Katie was properly groomed. They had planned to be out of the house by mid-morning but the ship lights were as bright as they were going to get and both of them were hours late to their respective appointments.

Thatch had explained that most appointments across the Affini Compact assumed that the attendees would take anywhere between a hour to several days to actually turn up. She had done so in a tone of voice that had suggested she was above this, while at the same time distracting herself by brushing Katie's hair for the third time while already an hour late for her own appointment.

The plant grumbled. “Yes well, you are very cute, and I do not actually wish to attend my checkup.” She sounded almost petulant, but both of them knew she was going to go.

“You said you'd go to your checkups, Thatch.” Katie's plant put a finger to her jaw, gently pressing in. Katie's mouth opened before she'd recognised what she was doing. She flushed while Thatch poked around inside, running a finger along her gums and inspecting her tongue. “Ahm fii!” Katie protested, but was quickly shushed.

Thatch continued her inspection for long moments, checking over a list of things she knew full well were up to her standards. Katie was clean and well maintained, with a gentle floral scent. Her clothing was clean, sharp, and stylish—at least according to two sophonts without a sense of style to share between them—and her communicator was tucked into a pocket Thatch had been so kind as to stitch. If Katie got lost or scared, her collar would ping Thatch to come pick her up. If she stayed out too long, the same would happen. The level of surveillance was honestly a little baffling, but Katie found herself appreciating it. Obviously Thatch should know where she was at all times. That just made sense.

If anything Thatch looked a little scruffy by comparison. Her foliage had been well pruned, but she'd woken up with twigs sticking out of her hair and had refused to let Katie fix it. That old visual imagery didn't quite have the same implications on an affini, admittedly.

Eventually Thatch seemed happy that Katie had not gotten untidy on the walk over. Katie got the sense, anyway, and she was growing to trust her subconscious hunches. She smiled up and—

Nope, the last thing either of them needed was twenty minutes lost to an adoration loop. Katie fought the urge to sink into it anyway. Instead, she stepped forward and hugged her plant as tight as she could manage. “You're going to do fine, hon. I've watched you do scarier things than an appointment, and I'll be here when you get back.” Thatch draped a vine over her back and squeezed back.

Stars, why did this have to end?

“Alright.” Thatch eventually released her, returning to her full height. “Make sure you check in every half hour, and please do have fun. I expect you to be on your best behaviour, understand? Good girl. Off you go.”

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” Katie chirped, stepping backwards into the awaiting pod. “Good luck with your appointment! I love you!”

The pod door slid closed and, for the first time in a long while, Katie was properly alone. Half the colours in the world seemed to wink out, leaving her feeling empty and lonely. Part of her wanted to just hit the emergency stop right away, dash back out of the pod, and just go with Thatch to her thing.

Instead, she gave her plant a wave through the transparent pod door as she was smoothly whisked away. The ship's botanical gardens were where they handled the well-being of thousands of different species of flora, and the ship's affini themselves were ultimately just another kind of plant. Unfortunately, that also made it a difficult environment for anybody not used to intense xenodrugs to exist within.

This was fine. Katie could handle a few hours alone. She had her collar around her neck and that was supposed to help her feel comfortable. She had Thatch a petal-wiggle away on her communicator if she really needed it. She'd be fine. It was fine. She was happier than she'd ever been, a few hours away from Thatch couldn't be all that bad.

Besides. Katie was supposed to be making friends here. She'd have distractions. The pod whisked her along the habitable arc at incredible speed, but her destination was the ship's base, over where the docking bays lay. As the pod slowed to a stop near her destination Katie felt the pull of false gravity weaken and slowly vanish entirely.

As the doors opened she was greeted by somebody she didn't know. The affini was as tall as any, but beanpole thin with limbs that tapered off into nothingness. Two of her four arms ended in hands, while the others ended with fine looking vines. Her wooden face bore a smile and her ochre eyes twinkled bright. “You must be Katie, right?”

“Uh?” Katie asked. Was she supposed to talk to strangers? In Thatch's opinion, there was no such thing as a dangerous affini, but Katie was fully aware that some of Thatch's opinions about the Affini Compact were simply incorrect and how was she meant to come to a decision here? She reached for her gut instinct only to find it as lost and confused as the rest of her.

A voice called out from behind the new affini: “Katie!!”

Katie leaned to one side in time to catch Cici floating towards her at an intimidating speed. Though the machine was a good foot and a half shorter than she was, Katie still felt a complicated mix of emotions as the animal parts of her brain recognised the demilitarised war machine hurtling towards her on jets of compressed air. As it closed in, jets on the front slowed it to a crawl so that, despite the lack of gravity, it could still nuzzle into Katie's side.

“Hey you,” Katie laughed, giving the affectionate machine a pat on the chassis. Some of her melancholy lifted, scared away by the presence of a friend. She held on as it moved away, pulling them both from the pod, which promptly left. “This the new friend you were telling me about?”

“One of—them!—Serrat Dentate, Third Bloom—is very nice!” Cici's speech was becoming more rhythmic every time Katie spoke to it. Maybe it was just because so many of its vocal samples came from affini now, or maybe it was simply falling under the Affini's spell at a rapid speed. Either way, Katie found herself tapping a finger against its casing in time with the beat.

Katie waved at the new affini. “Good afternoon, then, Miss Dentate.” She got a wave and a greeting in return, and the three of them headed out towards one of the docking bays.

Idle chatter quickly filled the silence but Katie found herself not really engaging. It wasn't that she had nothing to say, her head just felt sluggish. By the time she had a response the conversation had already moved on. Cici's speech was still stilted and hesitant, but the clips now played off at a rapid pace and it and the affini clearly had a rapport. It was learning and growing at an intimidating rate.

Serrat had a vine coiled through Cici's outer shell. The machine was a whirlwind of noise and motion. Fans spun, lights blinked. Whatever mechanic compressed the air for use as propellant certainly wasn't quiet, either. Katie rested the back of her hand against one of the hot strips of corrugated metal that lay on the back of Cici's shell, radiating off heat far more efficiently than Katie could have managed. Vacuum tubes glowed with a gentle waver as electricity poured through them; electromechanical elements snapped shut and clicked open. Cici was no beast machine. It was just a machine.

Katie wasn't feeling jealousy, exactly, she didn't think. Envy, maybe? Nobody would accuse Cici of being human. It was dumb, Cici was literally mechanical, but Katie found herself longing. They moved at a steady pace: Serrat hooked vines through honeycomb lattice plates; Cici had intake vents collecting air to use as propellant; and then there was squishy Katie who, should she be stranded out of reach of a wall or handhold would simply have to wait to be rescued.

Not that that was even a problem. Katie knew she was somewhere she'd always be caught, and she knew that if she needed to be useful, Thatch would teach her everything she needed to know. She didn't mind relying on others for things. That was the whole point of what they were doing here, wasn't it? Thatch could provide for Katie in a way she could never do herself, while at the same time Thatch had needs that only Katie could provide. It wasn't a problem. This wasn't about capability, she didn't think.

So why did she feel like the weight in her stomach was going to pull her down to the ground all by itself, gravity or not?

Katie heard something beeping. Was that her collar? She wasn't panicking again, was she? Did she— Katie's eyes focused on the gentle glow of a soft green light in shining in front of her eyes, flickering in a steady cadence.

“Katie—are you okay?” Cici asked. The first clip was in Katie's own voice. The second was in Thatch's, though barely recognisable without the sledgehammer blow to Katie's emotions she was used to every word imparting.

Katie wondered what Thatch was doing. She'd be in the Gardens by now, right? Did Affini medical establishments have waiting rooms?

Katie's lips curled up into a gentle smile, imagining her dumb plant sitting on a chair reading a six month old copy of some magazine, waiting her turn. It probably wasn't anything like that, but the image had a sense of normality that was grounding. Katie blinked slowly, then pulled herself back to the present to find a wide array of sensors all pointing at her with a curious quiver.

“I'm, yeah, sorry. I'm okay. I'm just not used to being alone, I guess,” she admitted, fingers absent mindedly reaching up to brush across her nametag. She held it tight, took a deep breath. She should be able to do this. They'd taken steps. Katie could feel a static facsimile of Thatch's emotional blanket being played back from the gem in her collar. She had instructions to follow and a schedule for checkins. She had to be able to deal with being apart from her plant. What were they gonna do, stay in the same room as one another for the rest of her life?

Katie clung to her nametag for a moment longer, then let it go. “But I'm not alone. Hey, how've you been?”

They continued on their journey again. Cici painted a harrowing picture of treaty negotiations going into overtime with a Vonn Neumann probe on one side of the table and a jellyfish out for blood on the other. It seemed Wing had won and Cici's 'species' would be surprised to learn that empowering each 'independent' unit to negotiate the terms of first contact had some severe consequences.

Katie had to admit, she wasn't entirely sure that Cici hadn't intentionally thrown the game.

For her part, Katie updated the probe on her own goings on. The status lights dimmed a little as she described her own experiences with Affini xenobureaucracy. The poor thing still hadn't found an owner yet, Katie guessed. She didn't understand how, given how thoroughly submissive and domesticatable the machine seemed.

Serrat kept quiet, apparently realising that an unfamiliar face was adding to Katie's stress. Katie felt kind of bad about that, but having an affini watching over them did help. Things could only go so far wrong when there was an affini in the room.

They reached their destination quickly enough. In the more residential areas of the ship it wasn't unusual at all to see signage with four or five different translations all in one place, but here there was only Affini script. This was a functional area with what seemed like dozens of docking bays each large enough to house a significant ship, or several smaller ones.

The specific bay they were heading towards held a shuttle much like Katie had seen before, but with a large hexagonal structure docked to the back of it. Given the diagrams June had showed her, Katie guessed that was a whole habitation unit back there. There was another, smaller vehicle docked at the other side of the bay, a long and bulbous looking thing that seemed to lack the elegance of usual Affini design.

As they neared the shuttle a panel on the side opened up to reveal one of the two shuttle pilots. “Ho!” called... Katie had to admit, she still mixed the pair up. They didn't even look all that similar, Katie was apparently just bad with foliage if it didn't happen to own her. “Welcome, you little cuties!”

Serrat raised a vine in question. Possibly in objection.

“You heard me, Dentate. Get your bark in here and tell me how you've been.” Both affini laughed and Serrat casually pulled ahead to meet her friend. They all moved so easily in microgravity. The habitable arcs were a work of engineering miracle that were entirely for Katie's benefit. The girl kept a tight grip on Cici while the machine steered them inside the shuttle, and then the door slid shut beside them.

It was busier inside than Katie had been expecting. She knew that what had begun as a quiet invitation had spiraled out into something closer to a party, but even so, there were more people here than she'd expected. In addition to Zona and Xylem (Katie still hadn't figured out which was which, but both were present) there was, of course, Lily—bouncing off of the walls with a screwdriver in her mouth—, Serrat, Cici, and another affini/human pair Katie didn't recognise.

There were already a few conversations ongoing. Katie got a few waves from those aboard she already knew, but no immediate demands for conversation. Cici scooted them over to an unoccupied corner, where a pile of pillows had apparently been attached to the floor, with a convenient strap to hold Katie in place.

“It is—nice to see—you again, Katie,” Cici admitted. There was a hesitancy to the words, Katie thought. Was there? Was it capable of producing that kind of nuance, or was it Katie misinterpreting the recordings?

“It's nice to see you too. I'm sorry we haven't gotten to spend much time together since we got back, it's... I've been distracted.” Katie shrugged, giving the machine a gentle smile. They both knew what she meant. Katie had been busy getting her spirit broken and her life reoriented around somebody else. Just one of those things, right?

“It's okay.”

Cici was a mechanical entity. Katie could literally see its cognition happening before her eyes. That only made it easier to spot that particular sign, with the way that all the vacuum tubes and all the electromechanical switches seemed to flicker off at once for a moment.

Katie tilted her head to one side. “That didn't sound okay. Did I do something wrong?”

Fuck. Katie didn't want to go back down to having literally only one friend in the entire universe. What had she done? While Cici crunched the numbers, Katie's head rapidly computed all the possible ways she could have done something awful.

“I miss you,” Cici replied, after several long moments. Where had she picked that line up? Katie didn't even recognise the voice. “I miss—Thatch.”

Oh. Katie reached forward to press her fingers against the machine's outer shell. What was she meant to say? They had been busy. Maybe they could have tried harder to make time for Cici, but the last thing Katie wanted to do was put pressure on Thatch. “I'm sorry,” Katie said after several long moments. It felt like settling. “I think we're both going to be making more of an effort to be around. Miss Aquae should hopefully be joining in later, she just has some stuff to deal with first.”

Katie wished Thatch was here. She missed her dork.

“We are—friends—right?” The poor thing. It bobbed up and down, propulsion jets never quite managing to cancel out its motion entirely, giving the impression of nervous fidgets. “It is—not a concept—I am used to.—but—it is—a concept—I am very interested in.”

“Yeah! Yes, absolutely! I care about your wellbeing and it's really cool to have you in my life,” and I'm envious of your body. “I'm sorry I couldn't give you the time you needed. I hope I can now.”

“Thank you.—I care about your wellbeing and it's really cool to have you in my life—also. Maybe—we could hang out—tomorrow?” Its lights and tubes flickered hopefully. The gentle crackle of switches opening and closing was a static that sounded almost nervous.

Katie had really planned to spend all of tomorrow in bed recovering from a long day of socialising. More pressing, though, she had no idea whether Thatch would come out of her appointment energised and enthusiastic or frustrated and annoyed, and as cruel as it felt to think it nobody else could be Katie's first priority. She couldn't make that kind of promise. If Thatch needed her to, Katie knew she would betray anything or anyone.

“I... think I'm probably busy tomorrow,” Katie admitted.

“The day—after?”

Katie glanced down. She didn't know. “I... plans aren't really my area any more,” Katie admitted. It felt rude to openly defer to Thatch, not least because it was extra pressure on her, but also because Katie knew she hadn't gotten it either before she'd had any capacity for independence pried out of her skull. Florets directing difficult questions to their owners had just seemed either like a worrying sign of potential abuse or like part of a game they were playing. Truly it was neither but how was Katie meant to explain that her entire stack of priorities had been turned on its head without just reminding the poor thing that it wasn't at the top of that stack? If Katie was totally honest, the only reason she was even here was because Thatch had something else she needed to do. Katie would take a quiet night in over a party any time. How was this meant to stack up to the cosmic bliss of existing at her owner's heel?

“Oh.—It's okay—I understand.”

Katie squeezed shut her eyes. How did friends work? She hadn't managed to hold on to any before. After a moment she tried again. “If you send Miss Aquae a message then I think she'd be glad to get to spend some time with you.”

“It's okay—I should talk to———Serrat—anyway.” The machine escaped on jets of compressed air, and Katie simply lacked any ability to keep up with it. Katie moved to unstrap herself from the pillows, but she wasn't really sure what to actually do afterwards. The other guests were all talking. They all seemed to know each other and it was Katie who was the newcomer here.

Katie quietly fingered her communicator. She could just pull it out and ask Thatch to rescue her. Actually, she really wanted to do that, but what would her owner think if she didn't make it twenty minutes into a party before giving up and begging to be taken home. She could do this, couldn't she? It was just a party.

Katie glanced around at the party ongoing around her. She couldn't do this. She didn't know anybody here. At the same time, it was important that Thatch, like, actually engaged with the society she was a part of, and the second to last thing that she wanted to do was force her to abandon her checkup to come get Katie. The last thing Katie wanted was to disappoint her owner, though, and she knew Thatch would be disappointed in her if she melted down without asking for help.

Apparently Katie looked helpless enough that she attracted the attention of whichever Varie wasn't currently busy talking to Serrat and Cici, who quickly broke off their own conversation and moved over to kneel down in front of her. “Hey, Katie, you're looking a little overwhelmed there. Would you like to be introduced to everyone? Alternatively, over there in the hab we filled a box full of blankets and snacks and you'd be more than welcome to spend as long as you like inside of it.”

Katie couldn't help but laugh. It was a ridiculous suggestion and exactly what she wanted out of this party just then: to not actually be at the party. “That's actually really appreciated,” she admitted, with a soft blush. It should have been embarrassing, she thought, to be treated like she was that soft... but she was that soft. The universe had been dangerous enough that she'd had to harden up, but those emotional callouses were softening day by day and maybe it was okay to admit that she was an easily frightened pet.

The difficulties of existing certainly made a lot more sense when Katie realised that they were difficulties meant for the Affini to handle, while she was meant to be in a smaller, more supportive role.

Katie blinked. There was a decision to make and her brain was hitching on it. She reached for her gut feeling and again found it unhelpful. She tried to make the decision on more rational grounds and quickly grew overwhelmed. She stared up at the affini for long enough that they laughed and patted her on the head.

“Don't worry about it, floret. I've seen that look in a cute pet's eyes before. Are you comfortable with me making the decision for you?”

Stars, please. Katie nodded quickly. The jingling of her nametag was loud enough to draw the attention of the room's two total strangers. The Varie giggled, wrapping a vine around Katie's wrist to pull her over towards them. “Come now, sweetie, we'll introduce you to everyone and then see how you're feeling.”

Katie nodded rapidly, grateful for a reason to stop her mind from trying to make the decision on its own. “Thank you, Miss Varie.” The animal part of the back of her mind that had once driven her anti-authoritarian streak had been firmly broken in, but if Katie was honest with herself she was mostly being polite to avoid admitting that she still didn't know which one of them she was talking to. She got a comfortable scritch behind the ear anyway.

The new affini waved as she neared. “Katie! Good to see you looking so healthy. The last time we met you were rather... well, less like yourself.”

“Uh,” Katie replied, trying to filter through her memories with little success. Did she know this one? Katie was starting to realise how scrambled the time before Thatch had broken her was becoming. She remembered the broad strokes and a lot of the details, but how it all fit together was slowly drifting apart. It was all just... the time before she'd been herself. Like a half-remembered dream from some other perspective.

Thankfully, Katie was rescued by whichever Varie had a hand resting on her head. “Ah, how lovely if you've already met Avium Prunus, Katie!” In a stage whisper, she added: “You may have met xem through xer work leading most of the hyperspacial engineering efforts on our little ship; recording documentaries and comedy shows with xyr floret; and xey do a lot of the virtual architecture for our digital gardens.”

“Xe and I also did the floret cut of By The Stars In Our Eyes, if you decided to catch up on old Terran dramas,” Avium added.

Oh? Oh. “Oh! Hi! In the engine room! Sorry, that whole day was a lot and I guess I don't really... like thinking about the time before that if I can avoid it? But hi! Thank you for helping me—” Katie paused. Most of the affini she'd met used she/her pronouns, a handful used he/him, but this one used something else? As far as she knew, gender as a concept didn't really map to alien life, so they were surely just adopting things to seem approachable, probably? Either way, Katie had no idea what title to use.

The Varie rescued her again with another stage whisper. “I believe xey use 'M' as an honourific, floret.”

“Thank you for helping me get back to Miss Aquae, M Prunus.” Katie finished her sentence with a smile and a deferent nod of the head. She held her hands politely behind her back and gave a little bounce. Maybe she could deal with this, actually. The world still felt flat without Thatch here, but with a little help she could still engage with the partygoers. There was a whole new set of rules for how she should behave in this society, but unlike the unwritten rules of Terran conversation these were clear, benign, and helpful. Katie had something to fall back on that was both comfortable for her and socially acceptable for everybody else.

Maybe she could even have some fun getting to know people. Maybe she could do this.

“Well, haven't you become a well mannered little Terran?”

Katie's smile faltered and dropped. She looked away, definitely feeling her own emotions intensely now. She tried to keep her enthusiasm going but that one tiny knock seemed to send her into a downward spiral. It was stupid. It was such an easy mistake to make. She did look like a Terran. She looked exactly like a Terran. it shouldn't surprise her that anybody would mistake her for a terran she was fucking so clearly a terran

the affini was saying something but katie just winced and shied away. how could she be sure it wasn't something else that would cut through her mental defenses and stab her in the heart

that wasn't fair

it was an honest mistake

all katie had to do was say and xey would apologise and correct xemselves and everything would be okay everything would be fucking okay if katie could just say

katie was— Oh, Katie was being put into the box. The Varie carried her through to the main room of their hab unit, gently stroking Katie's hair, and set her down within the blankets. The 'box' appeared to be made out of some kind of cardboard, and was packed so tight with blankets that once Katie had been placed inside it didn't really matter that they were in microgravity because she was being gently squeezed from every direction and thus held firmly in place. A little bag of snacks was tied to one of the flaps, where Katie could reach it. The Varie knelt down, carefully stroking a hand across the top of her head.

“You back with us, Katie?”

Katie nodded, sheepish, and mumbled an apology. The affini shushed her with a sharp tut. “None of that, floret. You don't want me telling your owner you've been self-deprecating, now, do you?”

Katie shook her head. Didn't want to disappoint Thatch.

“I thought not, so behave. Avium is a big plant and xey're very sorry for not checking upfront, and xey would like to apologise when you're ready—but I think it's best if you stay in here and get some rest until you're ready to come back out. Nobody is going to think any less of a cute little pet getting overwhelmed. It's okay to not be used to people yet; you're still new at it. Now, stay here, nibble, and do whatever you need to relax. If you don't come back out by yourself then I'll walk you home when we're all done, or earlier if you ask. If you do become ready to come out, then just send me a message and I'll come get you. If you just want to come and sit in on the main event, that's okay too. I should be in the registry under Zona Varie, Third Bloom. You gonna be okay if I leave you alone in here? I can stay if you'd prefer.”

Katie nodded. “I- No, thank you. Alone sounds nice, actually.” She felt like a dumb, panicky animal, but she was also being treated like one and being put somewhere quiet and still where she could calm down without anything scaring her. She wasn't sure if that was affirming or humiliating. Possibly it was both.

“I'll just be through there if you need me, and I'll make sure nobody disturbs you.” Zona gave Katie a quick tickle under the chin, spent a moment straightening out her hair, and then leveled an expectant look at her until Katie realised she was waiting to be thanked.

“Thank you, Miss Varie.” Even now Katie knew her first name, it still seemed more comfortable to fall back on her new social guidelines. Zona gave her a pleased scritch and left her be.

Katie was hiding in a cardboard box. If they were intentionally trying to invoke stereotypical Terran pet imagery, then... well, it was working. Katie curled up a little tighter and pulled the flaps closed, making for herself a dark, enclosed space to pull out her communicator and wiggle the Thatch petal.

katieflower: hey!! how's it going? aquaetor: Greetings, flower! I am in the process of having all manner of measurements taken that I have already provided so that the doctor can tell me what I already know. You are a little early with your checkin: Tell me how you are doing. katieflower: yes MIss aQuae! but um, shouldn't You be paying attention? aquaetor: I am told that entire planetary invasions have been delayed so that the elected general could spent a few minutes with their floret; I suspect nobody shall think twice of me taking a few with mine. I gave you an order, pet.

Katie twitched and fumbled her communicator, sending it slowly spinning away. It took a few moments to grab it and pull it back in. Gosh, she hoped Thatch didn't think she was being slow.

katieflower: ys Miss sorry Miss! Miss Aquae, i mean, um, dirt aquaetor: You are very cute. Get on with it. katieflower: uhhh i got here okay! met cici and somebody i don't know and we went to lily's shuttle, or, i guess xona and zylem's shuttle? aquaetor: Usually it is the affini in the relationship who own the domicile directly, yes, though as ownership is a transitory relationship it ultimately makes little practical difference. katieflower: ...Thatch was that a flirt? that might be the worst flirt You've ever done aquaetor: Did it work? katieflower: yes, but!!! um,, dirt this isn't fair

Katie was smiling. It wasn't the same as having Thatch by her side, but having a line of communication open helped. Some of the colour had come back into the world.

aquaetor: :::P aquaetor: Continue with your story. katieflower: oh um, so, i had a chat with cici and i think it might be a little upset with us? i'm not sure it was kinda evasive, but i think it wants to spend more time with us aquaetor: Hmn. It is very cute, I shall reach out and see what I can schedule. katieflower: thank You, Miss! um then i started meeting everyone and i met aviam, one of the people who i got to jump the eletrum to come get You katieflower: but i kind of had a bad time 'cos xe called me a terran and i feel pretty dumb because xey want to apologise and i just locked up? katieflower: but xona put me in the box so i'm cozy at least aquaetor: Ah. I am sorry, darling. Should I be concerned about 'The Box'? katieflower: i don't think so, it reminds me of my cave. just, kinda, warm and dark aquaetor: At least you are being treated correctly, then. Would you like me to come pick you up?

Katie leaned back, staring into the darkness for a few moments. Did she? She felt calmer now, at least mostly. Just getting to check in was doing a lot for her mood. Any amount of contact with Thatch, honestly. It was getting harder to avoid the conclusion that Katie had a strictly limited capacity for being away from her.

No. Katie felt more stable, and she did want to make new friends. The day could still be rescued, maybe?

katieflower: i don't think so, unless You disagree ofc. talking helped. i think it could be nice to go back out and try to say hello again? lily said i could probably help with their rocket and,, i mean,, i dont kno what that means but it sounds cool? katieflower: xona helped too, she was nice and didn't pressure aquaetor: Very well. You'll check in in another half hour, though it does not have to be much. Just show me a smile if you're having fun. If you can't check in, or send me something bad, I'll be right there, understand? aquaetor: I shall confer with your host and see if I can have things made more suitable for you. My appointment is proceeding expediently, so I should be attending myself later into the event. katieflower: yes Miss! thank U, i think that helps

Katie took a deep breath. Yeah. She could do this. Thatch knew about her troubles and was going to fix it. Hearing that Katie had been having a hard time hadn't been a disappointment, and everything was going to be okay.

Katie spent a few minutes quietly nibbling on the supplied snacks while browsing the ship's wide collection of floret memes. She had found them utterly incomprehensible as an independent sophont but she was growing an appreciation for them now. They were extremely relatable, with a simple kind of humour that Katie was finding herself drawn to over anything that could claim to have layers. Eventually, Katie sent Zona a quick message. It took a few minutes more before there was any response.

The door opened, letting the quiet roar of the party in for just a moment while Zona entered. The affini paused. “Ah, I see I enter an empty room,” Zona cooed. “Yet I was promised by a very well behaved pet that she was ready. I suppose she must be in hiding. Katie? C'mere, katie katie katie?”

Oh. The box was still closed. Katie started the complicated process of disentangling herself from the blankets enough to push it back open while the affini made a show of searching for her. It took long enough that she still wasn't quite free when she felt something grab the outside of her box and lift it up, and then a moment later the flaps were pulled open to reveal... yeah, Katie still couldn't tell them apart by sight, but it was presumably Zona.

“There you are! Such a silly pet, you know can't hide from us.” She placed a finger beneath Katie's chin and gently scratched. “I was told you like this, but now I can see for myself that you love it. Who's a good girl? Is it you, huh?”

This was humiliating. She was being treated like she was some dumb animal. Less than human. Katie squirmed, biting her lip with a soft whimper while she felt the weight of expectation being lifted from her shoulders. She didn't have to be a person now. She could just be... whatever she was.

This felt different when Thatch wasn't involved. It didn't feel bad. Katie just lacked the instinctive trust that Zona would get it exactly right, but there was still something comforting about all the expectations that came along with being a person having been taken away. She looked up at Zona with uncertainty in her eyes and apparently earned another moment of indulgence.

“I'll tell you the answer in a second. I took a few extra minutes to come over because your owner reached out to me and we had a brief discussion on how we could maybe help you feel more comfortable. Thatch thinks it would be a good idea. I assume you do not disagree.” Zona smiled down with a smugness that Katie was certain the her of two months prior would have wanted to shoot.

Instead, she opened her mouth to confirm that she did not, in fact, mind. She was immediately interrupted with a finger on her lips.

“Shush now, katie. Good pets don't talk without permission. Make all the cute lil' noises you want, but I don't want to hear a word out of you until your owner gets here. Figure out some other way to communicate. That's rule one for tonight. Rule two is that you're going to be good and just do as you're told. The rest of the party knows you had a bit of a hard time and to be gentle with you. Rule zero, of course, is that you won't follow any of the other rules if you aren't comfortable—but do you want to know a secret?” Zona's grin grew impish as both hands entered the box, so that she could scratch both sides of Katie's jaw at once. The girl squirmed, but she was trapped within the blankets and could do nothing about it.

“We don't expect you to take the out. If you didn't have one you'd worry, you'd feel out of control, you'd think you were being forced into this and that you didn't really want it. So, we tell you we'll stop at a word, and we will, but you won't tell us to stop, will you?” The affini leaned in closer, staring down into Katie's eyes. The alien eyes sparkled in a way that could easily have been hypnotic, were she not already enthralled by another. Zona was so close Katie could feel a foreign beat drilling down into her. She didn't know how to understand it, like she did Thatch's, but the presence alone was calming. The world still lacked its colour, but at least there was music. It wasn't as good as Thatch's music, but it was better than silence. “Such a good girl. It's a silly little trick played on a silly little pet. We let you feel like you have control so we can take it away without you worrying. You're such a simple little creature I can even tell you this, and it still works, doesn't it? Nod your head. Smile. You do want this. I can see it in every quiver of that little pet's body of yours. I could see it in your eyes the first time we met, back when you were still lying to yourself. Independence isn't good for you, and nobody around here is going to make you pretend at it.”

Katie stared up, unable to sharpen her thoughts enough to put together any more competent a response than a breathless nod and a dumb smile. She did want this. Independence wasn't good for her.

“So, katie, we come back to the most important question of all.”

Zona placed a hand atop Katie's head and paused. The affini's music swelled, and Katie could tell she was about to say something important.

“Who's a good girl?”

***

Oh stars above, this was so much easier with Thatch. Katie lacked the comfortable fuzz around the edges of her mind that came from feeling her owner's subtle emotional control. She actually had to think her own thoughts. No, that wasn't fair. Katie could think around Thatch. Here it felt like so much of her brain was consumed with all the little demands of existing that she had no time left over for anything else. With Thatch, Katie felt like she could do anything she'd been told to do, but was sometimes permitted to simply quieten down and kneel. Without her presence Katie was just an animal and was capable of nothing more.

Katie reentered the shuttle on a leash, or at least a vine curled around the ring in her collar. She couldn't crawl in microgravity, but she could be tugged along.

As she entered the room Katie got a few glances and smiles but little more. Apparently they knew to try not to overwhelm her this time. Zona leaned down and scratched the top of Katie's head. “Avium has something xey would like to say to you, katie. Would you be okay to listen?”

Katie opened her mouth to speak, and got another tut. “No words, katie. There will be consequences if you break the rules, so be good.”

There was something about the way Zona was saying her name that felt different. Some subtle change in emphasis that stripped her noun of its proper, like she was just a thing. People got capital letters. Katie didn't need that kind of pressure.

Katie nodded in response. With a little space, her earlier reaction felt kind of embarrassing. It hadn't been intentional, and xey knew better now. Katie was taken over to the plant, who went down to one knee and extended a hand out towards her. After a moment, Katie pushed her head into it and xey began to stroke down her hair. Much too gentle. Xey didn't know how to do it like Thatch did it, but then, Thatch did everything wonderfully. Her strokes were on the edge of what Katie could handle, and all the better for it.

“I am sorry, katie. I should have checked before getting here and I should not have made assumptions. I'll do better. You're a very polite katie.” Xey glanced at xyr own floret. “You could learn a thing or two from her, Xe. I bet she doesn't break her owner's plates.”

“Okay, first,” the floret protested, “it was plate singular! Second, I refuse to believe anybody called kitty doesn't break her owner's plates.”

Both affini snorted. Zona corrected: “It's katie, but yes, close enough.”

“Thirdly, I can fix the plate! I went to pottery classes, don't you know!”

Avium squinted down at xyr pet, clearly skeptical. “Really? When?”

“Before your time. I got some good footage before they caught me, too!” They grinned, then reached out to scratch behind one of Katie's ears.

This was... actually quite nice. Katie was present, even a little involved, but she wasn't being expected to take an equal share of the conversation.

Well. Equals, remember? No such thing. Everybody deserved to get the accommodations they needed without being burdened by equality. Katie let her eyes slip closed as she leaned into the petting, mumbling wordless sounds of appreciation.

Once the scratches were, regrettably, retracted, Katie leaned forward and headbutted the other floret, telling them exactly what she thought about their joke. The affini present cooed, petted, and laughed and it was treated like a contribution to the conversation.

Non-verbal communication was in many ways much easier. Katie didn't need to think about it. She could just do. Avium and Zona talked, catching up with each other, but made sure to weave context and details into the conversation that they must already know. It could only really be for the benefit of the florets present. They left plenty of spaces for input as well, be it quips from Xe or appreciative coos from Katie. Avium was apparently the ship's best architect, which sounded boring until it was revealed that the ship had a whole virtual reality double filled with impossible geometry, as well as the affini considering starship-scale jump drives to be a mere matter of hyperspace architecture. Xey also apparently had a fan following, and Katie dutifully handed over her communicator so xey could bookmark xyr hub page in the Records.

Katie nuzzled against xyr shin and, after a few moments of back and forth, managed to extract a promise they could talk about engines some time when Thatch was around so Katie could actually think straight. Katie figured she'd be able to care about that when her person was near.

Zona, on the other hand, was apparently some kind of explorer. She spoke of nights sleeping in the shade of alien trees on far-distant moons; close calls when a jump into uncharted territory put them a little too close to a pulsar; and one very strange incident where they, a thousand light years from any kind of civilisation, were crashed into by a little shuttle crewed only by one small Rinan who was very excited to have blown their rocket in half. Apparently they'd been inseparable ever since, coming up on seven years now.

Stars above, but Katie was starting to see what Thatch meant. These things were intimidating. One of them wanting to keep her as a pet was a compliment of epic proportions. The idea that she could be interesting enough to be worth their time was intoxicating. The universe was a big and scary place because these were the creatures who were meant to be handling it. If they had found Terra a thousand years prior they would have been revered as deities and Katie could hardly say anybody would have been wrong to do so.

As the stories closed, the conversation came to a natural end. Zona, Katie in tow, wandered over to her partner, who was currently engaged in a lively discussion with Cici's friend. There had been no florets involved in this discussion so they were all chatting in Affini, and Katie found herself grateful to get to tune out for a bit. All three occasionally paused to pamper or pet her and otherwise Katie got to be present, but not really involved. It wasn't quite as relaxing as spending time in the box, but to Katie's surprise she was in a room full of people with three separate conversations all ongoing, and yet she was recovering social energy, not expending it.

It was getting harder to deny the truth that everyone around her seemed able to see. Katie was more comfortable as a pet than she'd ever been as a person. She couldn't even seriously suggest that she'd been made to like this part. The other florets acted more human than she did. Thatch was having to learn how to treat Katie at the same time she was, so it could hardly be subconscious bleedover either.

Dirt.

Katie reached up and tugged on one of Zona's vines, then stared up for a few moments until she got attention. The plant's smile grew sly, as if she'd seen that look in somebody's eye before. Dirt, she'd apparently ridden a supernova home the hard way, of course Katie was predictable to her.

“You got an answer for me yet, katie?”

Katie shook her head. Thinking was too hard. Instead, she had Zona pull her in closer so Katie could curl up against their chair and rest while the party buzzed around her. She listened to the conversations with a quiet smile on her face, occasionally sitting up and wandering over to one of the other groups to give a little input, though without words her attempts devolved into her getting petted until she forget what she wanted to add most of the time anyway.

Every half hour, something in Katie's brain twigged and she pulled out her communicator to send Thatch a little “:)” and got a little “:::)” in return each time. She could always retreat back to Zona's side when she needed to recharge, and Katie did, several times, until she eventually fell asleep.

***

Katie's eyes opened wide. She sat up, frantically searching the room. The partygoers paused, everybody focusing on Katie while she looked for what had woken her. What was...

The shuttle door slid open, and it was like Katie could breathe again. It was like there was suddenly oxygen in the air; all the colour rushed back to the world; and Katie could finally think. She scrambled, kicking off of something nearby to send herself flying along the ground. She'd gotten the angle a little wrong, so she had to use her hands to keep herself from crashing into the floor, but that hardly mattered.

Thatch Aquae, Second Bloom entered the shuttle, looking a little lost and a little more disheveled than she had in the morning. Katie crashed into her shins half a second later and held on tight. There were laughs and coos from the partygoers, but Katie only had eyes for one right now.

Thatch knelt down to scratch Katie under the chin. Just right. Light enough to do no damage, but hard enough she had Katie dropping deep into petspace just at the touch.

“Missed me?” Thatch asked, after a dry chuckle.

Katie nodded hard, burying her head into her plant's hand, and breathed deep. “Mmhm,” she whimpered.

A finger hooked under Katie's collar and dragged her up into Thatch's waiting arms so she could be carried inside. Once Thatch was actually clear of the entrance, it slid closed. “Well, we certainly are affectionate today!” Thatch's spare hand ruffled Katie's hair, harder than anybody else had dared yet not so hard as to hurt. “Who is a good girl?”

Katie gulped. Yeah, no, she knew this one, actually. “Me? Please?”

“You.”

And all was right with the world.

Katie stared at the hodgepodge pile of metal and plastic that lay within the Floret-1 and pulled a face.

She and Lily had stepped out from the main party shuttle to take a look at the rocket Lily had been building. It was cleanly split into two separate pieces: A bulbous front section that—while exotic—evoked affini design sensibilities and a rear section that appeared to have been welded together by a squirrel on a sugar high. Katie glanced over at Lily, who was in the process of swinging around the side of the rocket with one hand clutching a rope attached to one of the outer panels while the other held a welding torch that was very much active. Katie decided that she was glad that the front section was safe.

If Katie was honest most of this was going over her head. Fuel tanks connected to a wide exhaust... thing with lots of little panels that wiggled when Lily fiddled with the cabling. A Terran-style computer system full of metal and plastic was installed into the middle of the rocket and had apparently been programmed entirely by Lily herself, though as with all of it she had been supervised.

Katie didn't really understand it. That was fine. Nuclear rockets were a bit pedestrian for Katie's tastes anyway. She didn't know how to go slower than 300,000km/s.

Katie leaned over to one side to rest her head against Thatch's hip. Come on, Katie, you know about rockets! She squeezed shut her eyes for a moment to focus her mind, and then inspected the reason she'd been invited in the first place: the ramshackle jump drive at the heart of the Floret-1.

It didn't look quite right, Katie thought. Thatch's words of wisdom were as clear in Katie's head as they'd been on the day she'd been taught them, even if all the surrounding details were fuzzing out. Katie should understand this.

“This looks a little weird. Do you think this'll jump, Miss Aquae?” She looked up at her big dork with a wide smile. Thatch would know. Thatch knew everything.

Thatch raised an eyebrow and gently scratched Katie's scalp. The hand on Katie's head was purely practical, of course. She needed to be held in place or she'd float away. Also, Katie felt a burning need for contact and Thatch could either hold her down or have Katie clinging to her leg, and the former made it easier for her plant to do things. Katie found herself wishing for the latter all the same. “You tell me, floret. Feel free to ask me more specific questions if you wish, but this is your area.”

Katie spent a moment grinding the top of her head against warm, dense foliage. Of course. If Katie wanted the answers, she'd have to work for them. She should want that. She could think when she was around Thatch, and this had been important to her.

Hadn't it?

What was actually wrong with the drive? It took surprising effort to clear enough headspace for Katie to picture how these components should go together in her head. Her eyes flicked between the pieces. All the important stuff was there, it just... felt wrong. Katie thought back to her schooling. It felt like it was multiple lifetimes ago now. It was hard to feel like anything she'd learned there could be applicable, but maybe it would help.

“Oh!” Katie pointed at a large, round object that looked like it was made from some kind of steel. The reaction chamber itself. “The electromagnets are unevenly spaced, so, uh... I think the resolution on our jump vector would kinda suck? I don't think that's the problem, though, because the EM valve—” Katie's finger shifted, pointing to a metal construct much like the one they'd salvaged back on Dirt— “is backwards.”

Katie let out a breath. That much thinking had been exhausting. Was it time to let Thatch take over yet? She could just sink down to the ground and let her owner take care of everything and wouldn't that be nice?

Katie paused, then whispered up to Thatch, making sure nobody else would be able to hear. “Are you sure this is safe?”

Her plant nodded. “The module up above is something fairly unusual for Terran space. I believe they were developed for crash-boarding the automated Xa'a-ackétøth war moons back during first contact. They are shielded against hypermetric interference; rated for near-c collisions with small objects and appreciably fast collisions with large ones; internally cushioned to mitigate sudden changes in momentum; and equipped with the kind of safety equipment that puts the Elettarium to shame. Frankly, anything short of dropping it into a star will hardly be felt from the outside, and the dedicated jump engine on the inside would easily rescue us from that. In the incomprehensibly unlikely event of anything actually breaching the pod, its internal Firebreak systems would snap anything higher energy than a cute little sneeze right out into hyperspace. Unless our records are out of date, you will be safer inside that module than any human has ever been in all of recorded history. Our records, not theirs.”

Katie was blushing. Why was Katie blushing? How could her plant take something as benign as the specifications of a little shuttle pod and turn it into a flirt? “Do you even know the word 'yes'?” Katie asked, with a laugh. A wisp of a memory from the times before she'd been herself floated up into her consciousness. Katie leaped on it, knowing it would be gone in moments. “I really did end up in the flirting mines, didn't I?”

“Flirting is the major cultural export of the Affini Compact, yes.” Thatch rolled her eyes. Katie rolled hers too and gave her dork a gentle push. Like Thatch was any different. “But regardless, yes, I am quite sure this is safe. You must understand, Katie, I will never allow you to come to harm. You may not understand all of the layers of safety you are held within, but you may trust them.”

It was nice, to be reminded of the bubble Katie that was Katie's existence. Easier to flirt with her owner about how she was more loved and cared for than she could even comprehend than it was to think about hyperspacial engineering. Katie might not know all the systems that protected her, but it was enough to know that Thatch did. Katie didn't need to test it. She knew that Thatch didn't have to lie to her to get what she wanted, and beyond that, she never would. It was nice to flirt back. Comfortable. Easy to fall into the rhythm of a gentle back and forth. “But what if the fuel exploded right now?” Katie asked.

Without gravity to hold her down, the only thing keeping Katie from drifting into the air was Thatch's hand. When it was removed, the subconscious movements of Katie's body knocked her into the air. She only moved a little, but it only took a little before she hung helpless.

Katie's earlier feelings really hadn't been about capability. She was as trapped as she would have been if Thatch had her every limb bound in place, and she definitely didn't mind. Existing in Thatch's power was a kind of grand cosmic comfort that Katie had never dared imagine. The plant grinned, brushing vines across Katie's body while ensuring they kept out of the way of her hands, preventing her from grasping anything with which she could pull herself to safety.

“You are deep in the clutches of a precursor race, pet. Do you really think we'd let any of you build something like this if there was the slightest chance you could escape us? You haven't the power to harm yourself. You are so far under my control you couldn't stub your own toe without asking permission.” Thatch paused—with their faces mere inches apart and a finger holding Katie's chin up—so that she could glance to the side.

Katie followed her gaze to find Lily perched atop the rocket staring at them with a tilted head. “Okay, I know you two're still getting used to each other,” she said, chirpy voice emanating from a biomechanical implant on her neck. “But we launch in an hour! Katie!” She scrambled over the surface of the rocket, magnetic boots and gloves emitting tiny clangs as they engaged and detached, to hang over the open casing around the jump drive. She pointed downwards. “Show your affini how flirting is really done and build something that works!”

“Ahem.” Thatch couldn't actually blush. She didn't have blood, and if she did it certainly wouldn't be red. Katie still found herself laughing at the sense of embarrassment that Thatch practically glowed with, even if she was the only one among them who would be able to feel it. “Yes, right. Katie, inspect the drive. Make it better. Do your best and impress me.”

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” Thank the stars, an order. Katie grinned across at her owner. She grabbed one of Thatch's vines and hauled herself in, scrambling up to take a seat on the affini's shoulders. It was striking how much easier it was to focus when she was following a a command. Katie bit her lip, blushing gently as she put her knowledge together. She could just invert the valve and she was pretty sure it'd work. Two minute fix, all she'd need would be one of the tools Thatch was holding for her and a moment of time.

Would that be impressive, though? Katie knew she could do better than that. “Is there an atomic compiler we can borrow around here?” Katie asked, directing her question at Thatch.

“We can likely requisition one of the general purpose ones here in the rear section. I shall enquire.” Thatch left a vine behind for Katie to hold on to while she retreated to back to the Varies' shuttle. Katie swallowed the urge to scamper alongside at her heel with some difficulty

Lily rolled her eyes. “Have some appreciation for the sciences, Katie!! This rocket's going to space! Let's make it go really far!” The creature's enthusiasm was infectious. Katie squeezed the vine in her hand; it squeezed back; and Katie could tell everything was okay. Okay. She could do this. She reached out a hand so that Lily could guide her in to grab a handhold on the rocket's hull, then started sketching out a design on the screen of her communicator.

Time to focus. Thatch said so. She could do this for Thatch.

Lily climbed over Katie's back to sit on her shoulders. The creature was about a third of Katie's height, so... this was probably weirdly close to how it felt to be Thatch. Katie felt Lily's hands resting on her head as she peered over to watch. “What did I get wrong? I had it just like the diagrams!”

Katie winced. “Ah, that's kind of a well kept secret, I guess. All the manufacturers put little traps in the diagrams to make sure nobody can maintain these things without training.”

“What.” Lily seemed actively offended. “But they're cool! Why wouldn't they just show everyone so they could keep getting better? That's stupid.”

Katie glanced around to make sure there weren't any affini nearby. From what she'd seen so far, talking about capitalism in their vicinity was likely to lead to everyone getting distracted. “There wasn't any money in making things better, and it wasn't technically illegal to leave traps that got people killed because they classed it as a form of copy protection.”

“Wow. The Terrans sucked, huh.” With Lily this close Katie could hear that she was speaking in what was presumably her own native tongue. The rapid, high-pitched chirps were usually quiet enough to get drowned out by the output of the translator, but Lily was close enough to practically be speaking into Katie's ear.

“Big time. I'm glad you got rescued from all that.” Katie hadn't met many Rinans before. She certainly hadn't had a conversation with any. The few she had come across had been fitted with bulky Terran-built translator units with a deeply limited vocabulary, and it wasn't easy to have a conversation without a shared language. The plant-tech replacement seemed to be doing a much better job.

Even ignoring the translators, the Terran Accord had treated the Rinans quite terribly. In Katie's opinion, it had been coming across a weaker species within its space that had really cemented the Accord as unsalvagable. What could have been a moment to celebrate, where proof of alien life led to a reorientation of humanity's priorities, had instead become an intensification of them. The Rinans had been colonised, and eventually openly exploited, up until the war had brought everything crashing down. Of course, humanity's parting shot as they realised the Affini front was about to overtake them had been to try to glass the whole place simply for the crime of not being theirs any more.

Terrans made good pets, but bad owners.

Lily shook her head and shrugged. “Nah, I got myself out of that one! Built a rocket out of stolen bits of Terran spaceship and flew for the open stars. The schematics being wrong probably explains why my jump screwed up, though! Crashed right into Master and Mistress, recruited them for my quest, and returned to free Nyrina!” As the speech had gone on, Lily had grown increasingly more energetic, finally ending with one foot on Katie's shoulder, the other on her head, striking a dramatic pose.

Katie laughed. “Well, thank you for rescuing me, too.”

“You were a side quest! Like any good side quest, you bring rewards. C'mon, your affini is coming back, let's build a better drive! Gonna go to space!” Lily leaped away, grabbed a rope trailing through the air, and swung back around to finish putting some final touches on the sublight engines. Katie leaned back into Thatch's gentle embrace and did her best to avoid distraction.

Step one was to tear the old drive out. It looked like it was made from actual salvaged Terran drives, which was its own kind of terrifying. Katie directed Thatch to pull the pieces out one at a time. The back of the casing held the old Terran warning messages, still.

Warning: Not user repairable! Only highly trained technicians may perform maintenance.

Well. Katie was highly trained.

With Thatch's help keeping her on task, Katie managed to fit a replacement drive of her own design with whole minutes to spare. She had a lot of help, of course, but Thatch made sure that everything was Katie's idea. For something they threw together in an hour, Katie was actually pretty happy with how it looked. She was pretty sure she could squeeze twice the efficiency out of it with a little more development time, but given she actually understood the underlying principles now it still beat out any drive she'd used before—the room-spanning behemoth from the Indomitable included.

Finally, it was done. Katie tried to collapse into Thatch's side, but forgot about the microgravity and ended up just floating in place until she was retrieved. Thinking was exhausting. Finally, could it be time to just relax? She buried her head against whatever part of Thatch happened to be nearest when she was picked up. She couldn't help but squirm. Every touch was bliss. Every minor moment of contact was purpose. Thatch's emotions washed over her, making it so easy to just sink into a haze of thoughtless existence.

Alas, time waited for no sophont, the Affini included. Lily herded the party out and into the rocket's pod and everybody filtered inside one by one. The entrance was—by Affini standards—positively restrained, and the plants among them actually had to shrink to squeeze through. Katie took some pride in noting that all of them looked awkward doing it except for her Thatch who shifted her shape as naturally as she always did.

Katie, biased? No. Katie was the only one who saw clearly.

The interior of the pod was smaller than the outside would have suggested, but it was still comfortable given the relatively exclusive guest list. They even had some separate rooms off to the side, though those were only large enough to be comfortable for one, really. Thankfully, Katie didn't mind sharing Thatch's personal space so they called dibs on one and settled into the main room for takeoff in the meantime.

The front of the pod held a trio of chairs facing an intimidating looking control panel. Zona, Xylem, and Lily took their places and started hitting buttons. The pod shook gently as clamps detached and the launch sequence truly began.

Just beyond the control panels lay a wide window, pointing forwards relative to the rocket. In one of its corners a little square flickered into life displaying a stylised depiction of the Elettarium, little petals spinning. A disembodied voice filled the room with a slick, confident accent. The icon's petals seemed to pulse to the same timing. “Good evening, Floret-1! This is Elettarium Actual requesting confirmation of your intent to disembark. As a reminder, we plan to jump one hour after your initial disembarkation and then pause to reconvene.”

Cici hovered at the other side of the room, sitting at Serrat's heel. At the voice, it bounced up and down a few times and then emitted: “Hello—Ined!! It is I—Cici—using voice!”

The voice's collected demenour momentarily broke into something more casual. “Hey there, hot stuff! I made sure there was a relay installed in that pod there, so keep in touch during the flight! You're in charge of letting me know how it goes, got it?”

The response was just a rapid series of beeps and green lights.

“Good probe. Now, as for the rest of you.” The voice took a moment, and then continued in its prior drawl. “You have clearance to undock and a clear exit pathway. Engines free from two clicks out, but watch the arcs and petals while you get there.”

Lily reached up and flicked a few switches. “Confirmed, E-A. If all goes well, we'll see you in a couple hours!” She paused, then continued. “We're going to space!! Onwards!”

Lily hit the large, central button on the control panel. It was big, red, and everybody in the room was thrown backwards when she hit it. Katie felt the acceleration squeezing her lungs as she was forced against Thatch, who was forced against the wall in turn. Katie's inner ear demanded that she consider it the floor, but she hardly had time to consult it while nuclear fire pushed them forward so hard her teeth were rattling in her skull.

Out of the forward window, Katie could see the Elettarium's petals slowly turning. Despite the acceleration, it still took a while to clear them. The affini vessel was just incomprehensibly gargantuan. Katie was told that most of their ships were bigger, but surely after a certain point scale just stopped mattering.

Eventually, one of the Varies—Katie's knowledge of which was which had been rattled out of her mind earlier in the burn—reached over to the lever Lily had pushed all the way up and gently slid her hand back down. The acceleration weakened over long moments until it felt not too far off of Katie's home's comfortable 1.2g.

The other Varie looked back, turning to face a room that had effectively changed orientation. What was once a wall was now the floor, and the glass cockpit now formed the ceiling. “Everyone cozy?”

She got a series of nods from the florets. The comfort of the affini was simply presumed. “Then, hey, katie? Be a good girl and configure the jump.”

Thatch raised an eyebrow at the familiarity, but it was pointed towards Katie. All the same, a handful of vines shot out to the room's handholds so they could be lifted up to the ceiling and Katie could be placed in front of the jump console. She remembered their flight path. The trajectory was simple enough, just some basic mathematics. She could do it in her head.

“Uhm,” Katie hesitated. No, that couldn't be the right answer. Had she forgotten a step? She went back over the calculations in her head to discover she'd flubbed the first step, and had to do the rest over. That time gave her a coherent answer, though. Eventually. She had to do most of the steps at least a couple times, but she got there in the end. She dialed in the resultant cosmic dance. The reaction chamber was dotted with powerful electromagnets that would activate in a specific order and with specific strengths to guide the wormhole they'd push through their little pinprick in spacetime. Get the trajectory right and you could go anywhere, but the timing requirements made short jumps difficult to pull off, and the field strength requirements made longer jumps harder to aim. They were going right for the middle of the two, in the golden band where a jump drive was most accurate with the lowest power requirements.

Katie moved to hit the button, but found it unusually squishy and unmoving. She blinked, then lifted her hand to look. One of Thatch's vines blocked her hand. Katie looked up with a blink. “Miss?”

“I think your friend might be a little sad if you plotted a jump that didn't cleanly terminate, pet.”

What?

Oh, dirt and frost, Katie had been in such a hurry to get on with it that she'd forgotten to finalise the sequence. The wormhole would go to probably the right place, but lead deeper into hyperspace. They'd have come back up somewhere at random, if at all. It was a rookie mistake. It was the rookie mistake.

Katie's hand was shivering. She pulled it away from the console, feeling her confidence shatter, revealing it to have been a sham. She should never have gotten that wrong. This was her area. This was what she did. This was what so much of her self-confidence had been built on for almost a decade and a half.

And Katie found herself apathetic. She didn't need those skills any more. She didn't need to understand this. She didn't need to understand anything but how to be a good pet for her owner. She could sink, gratefully, into thoughtless oblivion and live a long, happy life at Thatch's heel and never have a care again.

Fuck.

Katie grabbed hold of a vine and squeezed. “Miss Aq— Thatch, can we talk?”

There was a moment of silent conversation between Thatch and the Varies, spoken in a few shifts of expression and pointed vines, and then Katie was taken through to one of the side rooms and carefully placed on the floor. After hours in microgravity, Katie felt unsteady on her feet, but she was more comfortable on her knees anyway. The shuttle floor was a little hard for it, but she would make do. Thatch took the room's sofa, positioning herself such that she could look out of this room's viewing window, where they could see the Elettarium slowly growing more distant on a background of the endless void.

“What is wrong, flower?”

Katie crawled over to rest her head on her person's knee. Thatch sounded concerned and there was a little part of Katie that wanted to simply apologise and fall silent. It wasn't a fair impulse. Thatch would be disappointed in her if she followed it.

“I think I'm losing my grip,” Katie admitted. “I can't remember names; I can't focus on anything but you when you're in the room but I can't even think when you're not. I should not have screwed up that jump and I should care that I did. I'm— I'm losing myself and I don't even mind? I just want to curl up against your side and be your kitty. Katie. Be your katie. Or whatever else you'd like me to be. Anything.”

Thatch's floral weave tightened. She looked down upon Katie with a mixture of... Katie focused on her sixth sense, trying to parse the mix she was feeling. Adoration yet concern? Something warm, something cold. Thatch lay a hand over Katie's head and started to gently scratch with the thumb. “I had begun to suspect you were struggling. Most would consider your experience a positive thing, I think. You are letting go of your old life and committing to the new. It is not unusual for florets to spend the remainder of their lives on the endless hedonism we can provide. It is no shame to have all independence stripped away. If that is what you wish.”

“It is,” Katie blurted out. She stared up at her owner with pleading eyes, hands held up by her chest. She wasn't above begging. Not any more. “I don't- Thinking is hard and everything is just nicer when I don't. It's so hard when I don't understand how to be. I could just be your pet, right? Just quietly exist for you. You could train me like you have been doing and I wouldn't have to worry about anything. I'd always know what to do. Could I have that?”

The question was almost a trick. Katie paid close attention to her sixth sense, feeling out Thatch's emotional reaction. Even honest words could mislead. Katie had no confidence she could outwit anything with wordplay, never mind her perfect, genius owner, but Thatch's feelings couldn't lie.

The hand on Katie's head grew a little heavier. For a long moment, Thatch didn't respond, but eventually the thumb stopped stroking and the grip grew tight so that Thatch could force Katie's head up to look straight at her. “Of course you could have that, floret. I can make the necessary arrangements when we get home. You are likely sufficiently familiar with xenodrugs now to handle a class-J regimen, which will grant you exactly what you seek.” She smiled down at Katie with warmth and dim, faltering eyes.

Ah, dirt. Thatch's words were caring and accepting while her emotional state flailed and panicked. If Katie knew her less well she might have missed the signs, but no, it was as clear as day. The leaves around her torso all stood on end; her smile was warm but static and dead; and her whole torso was so tense Katie suspected another railgun shell would have just bounced.

Neither of them could lie to the other. Katie wanted something that horrified her owner. She looked down, fighting a sob. “Why do I want this, Miss? I didn't want it. You don't want it for me. How can I want something neither of us wanted?”

“Ah, dirt.” Thatch sighed, then patted the sofa beside herself. “Up, girl.”

Katie awkwardly climbed onto the furniture—with a little help from a vine providing a mid-journey foothold—and settled in with her head resting on a spot Thatch had pointed to. She looked up at her caretaker's conflicted expression.

“I have intentionally given you the space to make your own decisions and guide your own path. You did not want to lose yourself, and I do not want to lose you. Katie, I fell for the brave and fierce girl who nearly killed me. I will love you no matter what you become, but... I must admit, this would not have been my choice for you.”

Thatch shrugged, turning to stare out towards the stars. Katie couldn't tear her own eyes away. “I will always love and care for you, however. I have made my promises. I will not break them. You cannot escape me; you cannot change my love or my support. You will be well cared for. I will ensure Leviathan is, in addition.”

That unceasing urge to obey throbbed in the back of Katie's mind, demanding she simply chirp an acceptance and curl up to be happily erased. She couldn't tell the difference between that and her own desires any more. Maybe there wasn't one. “I don't— Why would you let me, if this isn't what you would have chosen?”

Thatch blinked, then replied as if the answer were obvious. “I fell for your willfulness and your fire, Katie. I suppose I wished to try to preserve them. I taught you how to stop me from going too far, but apparently that was insufficient.”

Katie squeezed shut her eyes for a moment, sniffling deep. She'd screwed up. She'd had one job and she couldn't even do that right. Katie stared down at the floor and spent a few moments trying to swallow her tears. They were having an important discussion here that Katie shouldn't derail with her dumb irrational emotions and “Am I a bad pet?”

“What?” Thatch's attention snapped back down to her. “Katie, you are a unceasing delight and a far better pet than I am an owner.”

Katie curled up tighter. All she wanted to do was fall asleep on Thatch's lap, and that was wrong. That wasn't what Thatch wanted, so why did she want it? It was the strongest urge in her stupid head and it was wrong. “That's not a no.”

“Then allow me to be explicit. No, Katie, you are not a bad pet. You are a very good pet.” Thatch's hand hesitated, but did take its rightful place at the back of Katie's head and held her down. Katie smiled, nodding quickly. Good pet.

So why did Katie still feel like a failure? She'd spent so long hiding from her own desires, and now that she'd finally been pulled out of her shell she was failing her floret and failing her people.

Wait.

That wasn't Katie's feeling. She looked up at her affini and reached out with a hand, grasping one of Thatch's fingers with five of hers. “I don't want to make you feel like this,” Katie admitted. “Why are you letting me make you feel like this?”

“I do not see how I could stop you without defeating the purpose of doing so.” Thatch waggled her finger back and forth, but smiled down at her floret with a bittersweet aftertaste. “Besides, I love you very much and I wish to see you happy. I would give you the stars themselves if I could.”

Katie squeezed shut her eyes and sniffed, trying to center herself. When she opened them she was looking out across the universe, but so blurry she could no longer appreciate it. She didn't care that she couldn't see it, but she did care that Thatch wanted her to be able to. Thatch was her touchstone. Without that how could she possibly know what was right?

Katie groaned, voice so soft as to feel petulant. All she wanted was to let herself sink into obedient bliss, but what she needed was a happy Thatch. If there was anything that could keep her focus it was that. Katie pushed herself up on awkward arms so that she could look at her owner more properly. “Is it okay if I be pushy a little here? I'm— I need to be pushy, but it's so hard to think anything bad of you. Permission might help.”

A finger came to brush the tears from Katie's eyes, then to lift her chin so she could see Thatch's melancholy smirk. “I would like nothing more than for you to yell at me, pet. Speak.”

Katie gnawed on her lower lip. She bit it so hard it hurt, and the pain helped. It was centering. Made it easier to think. She glared up at Thatch, trying to coax the fuel within her to burn once more. Just for a few minutes. That was all she needed. Just a minute of her old fire. Seconds. Anything.

Nothing. Katie was just a pet. She didn't have any fire left.

Thatch didn't burn, though, and she could still get angry. Katie had seen it. Felt it. Lived it. Thatch's anger wasn't the hot drive for destructive retribution but the righteous anger of creation. Katie wouldn't—couldn't—tear Thatch down for her mistakes, but maybe she could turn that energy to more constructive ends.

“Why won't you tell me no any more, Thatch? I thought it was because I was being good, but I've walked straight into a position where I'm not doing what you think is best.” Katie grabbed a second of Thatch's fingers with her other hand, and held both of them close.

The affini looked torn. Katie could feel the conflicting drives resonating into her from above. “Because I wish to see you smile. It was easier to deny you when I wasn't responsible for your smiles. I have taken so much from you; how could I possibly refuse you anything more?”

“You haven't taken anything from me.”

Thatch raised an eyebrow. She raised a hand and began to count off fingers, sprouting new ones as necessary. “Your independence; your willful spirit; your freedom. Your humanity; your name; your identity. Your past and your future.”

Katie made a face, and took a moment to flap one of her hands to the side. “You haven't taken anything from me that was worth keeping. You also took my old clothes, if you want to be really pedantic about it. That isn't the point. You didn't take anything: I gave you those things because I thought you'd take care of me.”

“I have given you everything you have asked for. I have spent entire nights searching through the Terran Records learning of the things you enjoy. I am trying, Katie. I am.” The Affini took Katie's hands in one of hers and gently squeezed. “I do not know what more to do. I want you to be happy. You deserve more than I can give.”

“I really appreciate all of that, hon. I promise I'm not trying to tear you down here. I don't think I'm even capable of that any more. Could I take care of myself? Now, or... could I have before?”

Thatch shook her head. “Not now, not before. Not every creature is supposed to exist alone, Katie, and there is no shame in that.”

“I mean, duh,” Katie agreed, nodding her head. “So why are you making me?”

“I am-” Thatch paused, tilted her head, and blinked. Confusion radiated off of her. “Katie, I won't even let you out of the house without spending an hour getting you ready first; in what sense are you taking care of yourself?”

“You take care of all the little stuff! Even some of the bigger stuff! But you're leaving the biggest stuff to me, I think? I'm being turned into a pet how I want it; we still live in my hab; the collar was my idea and so was the paperwork and I'm the one pushing for everything. Don't get me wrong, you're really good at taking care of the little stuff and you're really good at taking my fantasies and making them actually happen, and I have been happier with you than I'd ever dared dream of, but we're not equals, Thatch. You can't just ask me what I want and then do that.”

“Ah.” Thatch sighed. “I suppose I have been somewhat lax.”

Katie held Thatch's fingers tight. “I believe you threatened to 'snap my mind in two' when you were trying to convince me you wouldn't make good owner material. Where'd that energy go?”

“The affini who made that claim did not have to wake up next to your smiling face every morning.” Thatch rumbled. She raised a hand to Katie's cheek to cup it in a gentle, caring grip. “How could I possibly hurt that?”

“Don't you want to?”

Thatch growled, baring her teeth for a moment. “Of course I want to. I am terrified of not. I would have you pinned you to a wall to spread your insides across it so I could inspect and replace every piece. But I can not do everything I wish.”

“Why not?” Katie asked, squeezing Thatch's fingers. She was trying to walk a fine line here. This was about helping, not about hurting.

“Because it would not be good for me! I have had exactly what I have wanted for half of my life and it has gotten me nowhere. You are a moderating force, Katie. I need you to tell me what I cannot do because I do not trust my own desires.”

It was Katie's turn to raise her eyebrows now, with a gentle smile. C'mon, you big dork. Make the connection. If it wasn't good for Thatch to get everything she wanted without somebody to counterbalance it, then why would it be any different for Katie?

Thatch's expression cracked, and she let her head drop. “Which is exactly the position I have placed you in by trying to suppress my desires entirely. I see.” She looked back towards Katie with a gentle, softly exasperated smile. “I am sorry, floret. You are a much better pet than I am an owner, yet again.” She took a deep breath. “But you were not born a floret, and so perhaps I cannot be damned for not being uplifted directly into dominance. Help me?”

Katie nodded firmly. “Always. Want my suggestion?”

Thatch laughed, quietly, but honestly. “More than anything. Please.”

“Fix me? I think I screwed up. I was meant to tell you if you were going too far, but I should have told you when you weren't going far enough, too. I was so wrapped up in getting what I want that I didn't stop to make sure you were getting what you need. I don't know where my willfulness went, but can you put it back in? However you need it?”

Katie let herself settle back into a more comfortable position. She was kneeling at Thatch's side, but there were some things she didn't want to change. “I want to keep some bits, though. I really like the training; I really like the collar; I like the... pet stuff. No, hang on, that doesn't work. The feral stuff?”

Katie pulled a face. “You've stolen all the good terms.” She earned a grin from her plant. “I like not having to be a person. I like getting to be thoughtless and obedient. I wanna keep that sometimes. But don't let me choose. Make me be who you want me to be, like we said you would. I know you're worried about breaking me, but I trust you with me more than I trust me with me.”

Thatch was silent for long moments, attention focused out the window.

“Miss?”

“What if I get it wrong?” Thatch asked, returning her attention to the girl. “What if I take you apart and find I cannot put you back together? I want to. Stars, do I want to, but what if I am not as good at this as I believe myself to be and I ruin you in the trying?”

“Then you try again. You know who I should be, Thatch. You know who I am better than I do. I don't need to be exactly who I was. I don't want to be who I was. I just want to be yours. Please? I know this is hard, but you'll have my help if you want it.”

Thatch looked down at her with gentle eyes for long moments, seemingly stuck. Katie felt emotional static beating down on her.

“It isn't doing harm to cultivate something, Miss. If I let Leviathan do whatever it wanted, it would struggle too. Sometimes you have to accept that you know best, right?” Katie smiled upwards. It felt good to trust.

The glow in Thatch's eyes went dim for long moments. “Very well.” The lights returned, brighter than ever. Her voice was firm, as if a decision long in the making had finally solidified. “You do not need a caretaker alone, you need an owner, and so I must accept that I know what is best for you. I will not allow myself to be wrong.”

Katie smiled up at her. “Thank you. Do you wanna talk about what that means?”

“No.”

One hand took Katie's chin in a firm grip, lifting her face to point towards the room's tall ceiling. The other hand reached down for her neck. It spent a moment on a gentle caress, then gave her collar a sharp tap on the central gem. Katie began to melt.

“I will have you outshine the stars, Katie. I can not give them to you; I shall have you take them.” Vines stretched out to shift Katie's body and limbs, turning her lazy slouch into a precise kneel. Back straight, head angled slightly upwards. Knees slightly parted, with her hands splayed between them. Mouth open just a few degrees.

Thatch gazed down upon her, inspecting. Thatch never really did seem to look at Katie's body. No, her sparkling eyes hid a nervous excitement as they saw past Katie's shell to what Katie could truly be. They held so much promise.

“Bark.”

Katie paused, looking up at Thatch with a scrap of confusion.

“Don't question me, pet. Just do.” There was a moment of hesitation. “Just... trust me, okay? This is for your own good.”

Katie had asked for this. Katie had begged for this. She could hardly stop now.

”...Arf! Arf!” Katie's cheeks burned. Was this really happening? She'd exposed her soul and begged Thatch to reshape her, and Katie didn't know what Thatch was going to do. It didn't matter. Katie had nothing left to fight it with anyway. She was putty in Thatch's hands.

The affini stared down at her, thinking. After a few moments, she shook her head. “Hmn. No. Too eager. What was it you said before? Kitty? Perhaps moving in the right direction. Meow for me.” Thatch's vines held Katie in place, unable to break out of her enforced stance. As Thatch gave the order she made a rapid series of subtle shifts, showing Katie how she was to kneel to best evoke her new role.

“M- Miaow?” Katie asked. How was she meant to pronounce that? Just saying the word really didn't work. This was silly.

Thatch tilted her head to one side and considered the result. After a moment she nodded. “I can work with this. I can teach you how to use that voicebox right, at least until I give it a tune-up.” All of the vines keeping Katie held tightly in place relaxed, as did the plant herself. Thatch leaned back against the chair, but kept her gaze locked on Katie's body. The instant she tried to move, Katie heard a sharp word spoken and froze up. “No. Stay in position, pet. When I tell you to—” Katie didn't understand the next word, but it was burned into her memory anyway— “then this is how you do it now. Do not worry about getting it right first time. You will be corrected until you do.”

Thatch spent a moment rummaging around inside of herself before pulling out some kind of tool. She flicked the tip a couple of times, nodded, then slipped it beneath Katie's collar to— to—

“A-ah!” Katie gasped, mouth falling open as every muscle in her body went taut. She could still feel but nothing responded to her thoughts. She was locked in place. Her breath was halted, lungs full of air she couldn't breathe. She started up at Thatch not because she chose to but because she literally couldn't tear her eyes away. She couldn't even blink.

The plant looked down with a thoughtful frown. “There are machines that can do this part automatically,” she explained, while using the back of a thumbnail to shift Katie's head a few degrees. She leaned in closer, working carefully while the edges of Katie's vision began to blur. She was asphyxiating. No matter how much she trusted Thatch, shouldn't there be some part of Katie that was meant to panic? “But I find myself unwilling to use such a thing.”

The affini reached out her other hand and pressed it to Katie's chest. Her fingers drummed an inescapable beat into the girl's body while her vision faded into monochrome. “They operate on averages and assumptions. They are good machines, self-correcting and near perfect at what they do, but I do not lay awake at night imagining you strapped to a machine.” Thatch brought her false lips up beside Katie's ear and whispered. “I imagine you like this, flower. Mind racing. Body stopped. Your whole existence fading away, all for me. The machines wouldn't let me do this. They have safeties; protections; limits. No good affini would ever want to do a floret harm.”

Thatch leaned back, looking down at Katie with a predatory grin. There should have been fear. There should have been terror. Thatch's vines pointed in towards her at sharp angles; her jagged teeth glistened with an alien fluid that could have brought anything from endless agony to timeless bliss. This was what Katie had been afraid of. This was why Katie had fought for all those years. A vicious predator come to steal her soul and take away the one thing she had left: herself. This was the threat that had inspired rebellion.

Thatch reached out to grab the back of Katie's head and pulled her head in for a kiss. It wasn't the gentle act of a lover; it hurt, but not more than Katie could bear. It was a shock to the body and mind both. Thatch had never given any indication that she wanted that. She had seemed as disinterested in Katie's body as Katie herself was, but this was hungry. Lips that felt like soft petals brushed over Katie's; a tongue of tightly woven plantlife pinned Katie's own to the bottom of her mouth, and then the top, and then the sides. Sharp fangs danced across Katie's frail flesh, scratching but never more. She could hardly resist. Her body was a marionette in Thatch's grip and her mind was a rapidly failing slab of meat quickly burning through the last of its oxygen.

Long seconds passed as Katie sank into her owner's all-consuming embrace. The taste was otherworldly. Mindblowing. Perhaps literally. Katie could feel what was left of her mental state dissolving in a false saliva that seemed precisely calibrated to burn the mind out of her skull. Katie could hardly think. Hardly see. Hardly feel. Everything felt like a dream as her consciousness wavered and flickered. Some part of her mind knew it was dying and her body could do nothing about it. The terror she'd always expected to feel simply never materialised. Katie felt a serenity about it all. Better to accept what she could not change.

Eventually Thatch pulled her back, licked her own lips, and smiled gently down at the fading floret. “But I am trying to be a good affini. For you. I am still learning. You have seconds left yet, worry you not. That little machine in your head is easy enough to trick. Our best tools would not let me take you this close, but we both know that I know exactly how much you can take.”

Katie's eyes were drooping now. She still didn't have control, her body was simply losing the capacity to keep them open.

“No no, now,” Thatch sang. Goddess above, she seemed so alive. Drawing her out of her shell had been a delight to watch, Katie felt, and if she had to slip into unconsciousness to a backdrop of anything, then let it be her plant's smile. “Stay with me, Katie.”

Snap. Katie's mind rallied, and her body straightened. She didn't have control here. She didn't even get to choose whether she would succumb. “Ye... M..quae?” stumbled from numb lips.

Her plant grinned down at her, letting out a sound almost like a giddy giggle. It might have ruined the mood but Katie barely had a mood left to ruin. “I can work with that,” Thatch agreed, then went back in for another kiss.

This time was different. Katie felt sweet tasting air rushing to her lungs. Her body, desperate for breath, sucked it down in rapid gulps that cared not for the source. Thatch's hand stayed firm against her chest, again beating that same rhythm in. It took long moments for Katie's mind to grow aware enough to realise she wasn't the one breathing here. Vines coiled around her fragile form squeezed and relaxed in a precise pattern, puppetting her. Breathe in, breathe out. Always in sync with the ever-present beat long since drummed into Katie's soul.

Every breath cleared her mind, but only because she'd been starting from such a foggy depth. It couldn't even be said that a cloud was settling over her thoughts. The cloud had been there longer than she had. It had a stronger claim over the space. Katie had to think around it, if at all.

Razor-sharp fangs danced over the soft flesh of her lips once again, but now they didn't stop at a scratch. Thatch bit, and Katie felt a burning sensation burst into her, searing through her veins in time with the song in her heart. The pain forced upon her an instant of clarity, but she could do nothing with it but sink all over again.

Thatch leaned back, wiping a short line of blood away from her chin with the back of one hand. Her eyes returned to Katie's neck. She still held her tool, tweaking something in the collar. What had she been doing while Katie was unaware? Could Katie even hope to notice, at this point? “Thaaa...” Katie started, but quickly found her tongue stumbling over itself. She giggled at the absurdity of it, and then continued to say... to...

She'd forgotten what she was going to say. Katie tried to remember, but effort was so great. It was too much to bear. She decided to let her head flop softly to one side to rest in Thatch's offered palm. She only noticed that a smaller vine had pushed her a moment later. How much control did she really have?

“None,” Thatch replied, “if you're wondering about your agency here.”

Katie blinked up at her with a dumb smile spreading across her face. Could Thatch read her...?

“No, I would need more sophisticated tools than this to read your thoughts.” She paused for a moment to wiggle the hook she was using in front of Katie's eyes. It was a little handheld version of something they had a bigger version of at home. Thatch was just using what she had to hand. It was still enough to take Katie to pieces. “Writing them, on the other hand, is much easier.”

Oh. Katie's eyebrows twitched. So that meant that Thatch was... “Essentially having a conversation with myself, yes. You know a thing or two about that brain of yours; or at least you do when you can think. It is a poor design. Almost all of it is given over to simply rationalising the decisions made by that little animal core at its center. Like any animal it is easy enough to trick, train, or tame, and it will not even let you realise I am doing so. Shush now, this next bit will be fiddly.”

Katie blinked repeatedly, staring up at her owner. She was not herself. Her moods hitched and shifted, feeling like her own but changing so rapidly it was obvious they were imposed. She felt them all the same. Her thoughts shuddered like cloth wracked by hurricane winds. Every time she tried to pull any of them back together she found them slipping from her grip in an instant.

“I want you to focus your mind now, little one. What is my name?”

Thatch? Katie was pretty sure. No, Katie was certain. Katie had little trouble thinking that. It may have been about the only thing she would be able to think.

Her affini nodded. “Good girl.” The hand holding Katie's head up gave her a quick squeeze, and the other shifted position around her neck. Katie tried to keep her focus, but—

Katie let out an animal groan as she felt that focus become a fixture in her mind. An energetic buzz ran through her thoughts, tracing the pathways of her thoughts and burning them in. Thatch. Katie's attention wasn't merely present, it was absolute. She could think of nothing else. There was nothing else. Katie was naught but a labyrinthine tangle of desperate need. The sudden enforced stream of input was overwhelming. The deep animal part of Katie's mind tried to tear itself away, finding it all simply too much to bear, but there was nowhere else to turn. Katie had been orbiting in Thatch's gravitational pull for so long that the event horizon had started to seem almost safe, almost unremarkable, but now she was within it and there could be no escape. Perhaps if Katie could marshal all her strength of will she could close her eyes and save her mind from processing every leaf, every vine, every movement, every tiny detail of Thatch's fractal form, but—

Katie heard a click, and then Thatch was pulling the tool away and stowing it within herself once more.

Gosh, Thatch's eyes were really pretty. It couldn't be understated, Katie didn't think. The closer she looked the prettier they became. They could just be called 'blue', but that was missing the forest for the trees and the trees for the forest both.

They were teardrop orbs, not quite smooth. Surface pocked by hundreds of tiny facets, or maybe thousands. Each refracted some deeper glow within with its own particular set of distortions. The deep light glimmered and the facets shifted it a thousand different ways in a pattern that Katie couldn't help but recognise. It was the rhythm of her breaths. The beating of her heart. The Song Sung Eternal.

Every facet was a universe to itself. Every piece of the pattern was the pattern made whole yet the whole was more than the sum of its pieces. Katie could stare adoringly up into the glow and she would miss the trees. She could gaze intently into the depths and she would miss the forest. A simple mind like hers could not hope to comprehend, yet Katie could not resist its call. If there was anything left in her which was not focussed on Thatch it was in hiding, quiet and lost.

If Katie had been losing herself before, then now she had lost her grip entirely. She was falling, and barely cognizant of it. There was no longer anything to hold on to; she was tumbling towards oblivion at an ever increasing pace. She could feel the fuzzed-out edges of her mind unraveling.

“There we are,” her plant whispered. “That's the look I wanted to see.” Her floral tongue flicked out, unnecessarily moistening her pretending lips. Thatch's eyes dimmed for a heart-stopping instant, and then she let out a long, slow breath before the entrancing glow shone brightly once more. “The machines wouldn't let me see this, either. Too much danger of bleedover. Your mind is so open that anything could shape it, but how could anybody stand to let this happen behind a sensory deprivation visor?”

She knelt before Katie, looking straight down into her eyes. She held Katie's cheeks between her hands, gently shifting the girl back and forth just to see her thoughtless face respond. “Beautiful,” she breathed. “You can barely even understand me and yet I see every word and touch mold that little twinkle in your eye. Let us begin.”

Thatch spoke. It demanded every scrap of Katie's attention. There could be no room for thought, no room to process, no room to comprehend. The words went straight to the dumb animal at the heart of her. Word after word. Sentence after sentence. Instruction after instruction.

If that were all, perhaps Katie could have been saved. One sense alone could not consume her entirely, but she had more than one sense. Thatch's vines curled beneath her clothes, writhing against her skin to demand a focus she could no longer provide. Overwhelming scent filled her nostrils, requiring attention Katie simply didn't have. Thatch's eyes, and the bioluminescant bulbs that still dotted her, glowed and twinkled in a pattern that Katie's brain had no choice but to fixate upon, yet she had no thoughts to spare. A pair of fingers unceremoniously plunged between Katie's lips provided a flavour that washed her away, as if there was anything left. Finally, and worst of all, the waves of emotion that crashed themselves upon Katie's helpless mind found nothing left to soften their blows.

Katie broke.

Thatch told her who she was. Who she had been. Who she was to be. Reminded her of all the things she craved. What she wanted. What she needed. How to curl. How to crawl. How to sit up and beg. All the things the deep animal within needed. All the pet needed. All the katie needed.

Katie felt the hand against her cheek squeeze and instinctively tilted her head to press against it. She tried to hold on to whatever she could but it was no use. She was slipping away into the depths. Every instruction stole a little more away. The last dying act of her flayed consciousness was naught but a whimper and a breath and easy, eager obedience.

***

“Stay with me, kitty.”

Katie opened her eyes. She felt the tiny vines that had actually opened them leave a moment later. She stared up into Thatch's eyes with uncertainty and confusion and a long, slow blink. Why could she think? Her head felt clearer than it had in weeks. “Uh...?”

“I told you to trust me. I can not compromise on this. Now be a good girl and sit still while I finish up.” Thatch reached around with a bundle of flowers and vines emerging from her arm. She pressed the bundle to Katie's face, with the petals conspiring to form a seal. “Just breathe for me, floret.”

It wasn't like Katie had much of a choice. If she so much as thought about breaking out of her position, some deep part of her subconscious flinched and panicked and stopped the thought dead. Thatch was doing nothing to hold her in place, but she dared not move an inch. Katie breathed. She felt the drugs filling her, spreading out from her lungs along every vein with a tingle she could have sworn she could feel squirming deep within her frail body. Katie braced herself, but to her surprise felt nothing as it reached her brain.

Thatch noted her confusion and explained. “Neuroplasticity tweaks. Soaks into your soft little mind and makes it firm enough for all this to stick without leaving you being too suggestible.”

Thatch pulled her set of flowers away, folded them back into her arm, and then patted Katie on the head. “But you don't need to know what I'm doing to you, do you, kitty?”

Katie felt the urge to obey, to agree with a smile and a nod. It was no weaker than it had ever been, but she felt stronger now. She tilted her head to the side. She tried to talk, but found her mouth bone dry. Thatch wordlessly pointed her to a bowl of water set to the side of the sofa, which Katie gratefully drank from, quenching her thirst. “No Miss, but I'd like to know, I think.”

Thatch leaned over, picked up her tablet, and took a note. She glanced back over. “Good girl.” Katie's smile widened. “I had been letting you grow unchecked and so it should come as no surprise to me that you collapsed under your own weight. I will now be providing you a structure on which to grow. You know the details—intimately, if not consciously—and I suspect propping up some basic pillars of your personality will go a long way. All the same, you are one of our projects, and very much a work in progress.”

She tapped a knuckle against her tablet. “I shall be keeping a close eye on you.”

Katie blinked, then nodded. She didn't feel any different, aside from the obvious change of being clearer headed. She had to admit, this hadn't been what she'd expected after finally convincing Thatch to rebuild her. Katie sat up, putting her butt against her heels and her hands against the sofa, and considered the backrest. She could make that jump. She shuffled around for a moment to get into position, then leaped up onto the top of the backrest, crawled along it, and draped herself over Thatch's shoulder. Katie rolled halfway over and batted at one of the flowers in Thatch's hair.

“I thought you were gonna change me? I don't feel any different,” Katie asked, pinning the flower down underpaw so she could lean in and bite at one of the petals, hoping to rip it free.

Thatch snapped a sharp word and Katie froze. She carefully removed her teeth from the petal. She'd only left a little mark.

“No teeth.”

Katie whimpered. “But-”

Thatch reached over and pinched a spot on the back of Katie's neck. She emitted a soft gasp as all the tension left her body, leaving her to flop awkwardly to one side while her affini gently placed her against the floor. Once the grip was released, Katie blinked, picked herself up, and pushed herself back into a sitting position. She looked up at Thatch with a curiou—

Katie leaped for a bright, moving object. She slammed her hands down against the shuttle floor, certain she'd caught it, but felt nothing. She blinked, dropped her head down to floor level, and carefully lifted her hands to peek beneath.

Empty. She'd— There it was, on the other side of the room! Katie found herself galloping at it, feeling strangely dexterous as she moved. She kicked off with her legs, caught herself on her arms while she brought her legs back around for another leap, and repeated the process so she could grab ahold of the object. Her eyes were focused on her prey. One of Thatch's bright red vines hanging in the air while the tip wriggled in a way that just caught on Katie's brain. She had to have it.

It shifted a moment before Katie could grab hold. She scrambled to a halt, slipping against the floor tiles while she tried not to lose her footing. Katie squinted, trotting in a quick circle while she hunted for a sign. It was— Under the sofa! She was off. Again, the vine shifted just before Katie touched it, but this time she was ready for that. Katie feinted to one side as she approached in the hopes it would dodge in the wrong direction and leave an opening.

Not quite. Katie missed it by inches and crashed into the back of the sofa, crumpling into a pile of limbs. Thatch chuckled, reaching down to tickle under Katie's chin. She was already a tangled mess, but now she was a squirming, tangled mess.

“Who says I haven't changed you, kitty?” Thatch stopped scritching and gently pressed Katie's head back so she could stare upwards at the affini leaning over the back of the sofa.

“I think I'd notice, hon,” Katie shot back, twisting her body around to escape the grip and scramble back upright. Back onto all fours, where she belonged.

“Ah, of course. Well then, I suppose you must be just how I want you already, right kitty?” Thatch rubbed a pair of fingers against a thumb together to get Katie's attention, then led her around to the front of the sofa. As soon as Thatch stopped keeping her hand just out of reach Katie spent a few moments rubbing her cheek against it, emitting a quiet rumble of satisfaction.

Thatch chuckled, then gestured with her head to one side. Katie turned to look and— The vine! She leaped, only to find herself grabbed out of the air and held still. “Look before you leap,” Thatch chided. “There's a window there. Isn't it pretty? Take a look for me.”

Katie swung for the vine a few more times until she was forced to accept it was simply out of reach. She still found it impossible to tear her attention away until Thatch pulled it out of sight and used it to tilt her head back towards the window. Katie let her eyes focus out to infinity. She took in a sharp breath as Thatch did something to dim the lights, bringing the starscape into sharp clarity.

Oh. Katie stared, reaching out to place a hand against the glass as she entirely failed to take in the scale of it all. They were way up, relative to the galactic plane. It was almost like Dirt's night sky, but there she'd been viewing it through atmosphere on a planet peppered with a million tiny lights. Here it was just her staring out unimpeded on the utter majesty of the cosmos. She'd seen this view before, but only now was she getting it. Her mouth fell open.

Katie heard a sound from behind as her plant stood and walked to sit beside her. She didn't turn to look. A moment later, a hand gently stroked down her back, drawing out a shiver and a breathless gasp.

“Beautiful, is it not?” Thatch asked. She pointed over at a constellation. “That is where I came into being. One of the stellar gardens above Xa'aat.” She shifted her finger, pointing to a wholly different section of the galaxy. “And that, dear floret, is where you came into being. One of the creches around Gliese 1245 A on September 16th, 2527.”

The two points were a fraction of a galaxy apart from one another. So far away, and yet so close when viewed in context. Everything Thatch had seen in her long life had taken place in one small corner of one small galaxy. Katie shuffled a little closer and tucked herself under one of Thatch's arms. “I think I'd like to see that one day,” she admitted. “Maybe more, besides? How much of this could we see? If we tried? How much is out there?”

“Interested in the rest of the universe again, then?”

Katie tilted her head. “Huh? Of course. Why do you ask?”

A gentle grin overtook her plant's face. Katie felt a wave of relief washing over her. “Don't worry about it, kitty.” A vine snapped out to ruffle Katie's hair, but she managed to dodge out of the way by rolling quickly to one side. She saw the next vine coming and leaped for the sofa, though it wasn't quite enough. Katie hit chest on, scrambled for purchase, and ended up slipping free and landing awkwardly. Before she'd managed to get herself back on her feet, her hair had been well and truly ruffled.

By the time Katie had righted herself, Thatch had written something on her tablet and was stowing it and the pen back within herself. “However, it has been several hours and we are a little late for our rendezvous. Would you jump us back for me?”

Katie nodded rapidly, earning another quick ruffle. It had been phrased like a question, but it wasn't one. Why would Thatch need to ask her something like that? She already knew all the answers. Thatch stood and moved across the room, speaking some alien word as she did. Katie hurried forward to stay at her heel.

The main room of the pod was home to a quiet conversation about, apparently, the flight itself. The Aquaes paused as they entered the room, halting as Avium raised a hand towards them. Xyr floret was pointing a camera towards the three adventurers as they talked about the steps that had led up to the construction of an entirely floret-built rocket.

Apparently it had been a long journey, and despite the name this was not the first Floret-1. According to Lily, it was a Rinan tradition to reuse names if a vehicle's catastrophic failure taught them something, so that the only way to keep a legacy going was to always be pushing the edges of possibility. Hence the Floret-1, a fully operational vessel built with only oversight from the Affini themselves.

Soon the interview came to an end and Katie was ushered in. She carefully trotted up a well placed vine and sat before the jump console. She could do this. This was her thing. Katie stuck her tongue out from one corner of her mouth, did the maths, and then plugged in the correct trajectory. She slapped the sequence initiator.

It was weird to execute a jump without a moment of intense discomfort resonating in the lungs. Not unwelcome, just weird. For an instant, reality snapped in two as their fledgling wormhole formed and swallowed them whole. It only took a moment for the view to clear, and when it did Katie found herself gasping.

The Affini Light Scout Elettarium hung in the void as if it were aglow. Beautiful. Comfortable. Home.

An icon at the corner of the cockpit lit as a voice Katie could have sworn she'd heard somewhere before piped up. “Good evening, Floret-1! This is Elettarium Actual hoping you had a great trip and wishing you a warm welcome. We've got a docking bay all lined up for you and an approach vector locked in. Can you confirm you are ready to hand over the controls, Floret-1?”

Lily perked up. “Yeah! I think it should work! I haven't tested all the code, but, it looked good!”

“Acknowledged, taking over engines now.”

There was a gentle rumble, and then the acceleration that had been providing their gravity vanished. Katie yelped, slowly rising into the air before she managed to reach down and cling to Thatch's vine with all four limbs.

“Ah,” the voice winced. “No such luck, I'm afraid. I'll just come get you.”

The scout before them started to bank, slowly turning in their direction. The drive plume alone must have been whole kilometers long. Despite the size, the Elettarium was remarkably agile and was quickly bearing down upon them. As it got closer, the size only became more clear, as did the difference in their relative capabilities.

The Floret-1 may have been a finer ship than anything the Terran Cosmic Navy had boasted, at least if you ignored the weaponry. All the same, they could never have hoped to outmaneuver the Affini ship, despite being a thousandth the size.

Katie let out a breath and glanced over at Thatch. “Terra never stood a chance, did it?”

A grin. “I shall start counting the number of times you come to that realisation, I suspect.”

Katie tilted her head with a curious frown, but was interrupted before she could speak by the disembodied voice piping up again. “While I'm en-route, Floret-1, the good captain has a favour to ask. Thatch Aquae, we've been having a little trouble with the feralist remnant of the old Indomitable crew. They did a head count and realised one of their number was missing and are refusing to settle down until we prove she hasn't been eaten. Obviously, they will not be entirely happy to see a pet, but this may be a situation where, if you could get your floret to walk in, give them a smile, and promise them everything is okay it might go a long way. Your call. It'd be appreciated, but you know your floret's needs best. The captain wants me to make it clear that she wouldn't ask if the next best option wasn't starting to assign emergency caretakers. We've already cleared out the adoption register, we just don't have the population to absorb this many ferals quickly.”

“Ah.” Thatch hesitated. “I am... not sure my kitten would be the most reassuring sight for active feralists.”

Katie smiled up at her from her position perched upon a vine, down on all fours, a little confused. “What do you mean? I'm sure if I just go right in and smile they'll calm down. It's not like I don't know how to act normally any more, right? C'mon, Thatch, I can handle my old crew.”

Thatch stared across at the smiling sophont with a flat expression for long moments, fighting a battle of wills she seemed to know she couldn't win. Eventually, she smiled back. “Oh, very well, katie. I suppose you can hardly make it worse.”

The staccato twang of the Greshul Corporation Q18 Snap Rifle never left Captain Jeffery Beromt of the Sixth Terran Cosmic Navy Forward Fleet's head. Waking, sleeping, eating, exercising, it didn't matter. It was always there, stuck in his head.

It all began with the rising hum of a capacitor bank set into the weapon's stock, three inches away from the ear. Dense battery cells formed the main power source but they couldn't discharge quickly enough to be an effective weapon, so they instead fed straight into a capacitor array which then ran the weapon itself. As they charged, the coil whine rose, never quite leaving the spectrum of human hearing.

After the hum reached an ear-piercing scream the weapon was ready to discharge. It couldn't simply fire, however, as without calibration the beam would be diffuse. There were three rapid clicks as thermal seals along the weapon's casing slammed shut. High intensity lasers produced tremendous heat which needed rapid airflow to cool. Unfortunately, the delicate array of lenses and mirrors that shaped the blast needed to be very precisely positioned, and even slight disturbances from rushing air would risk losing efficiency in the beam-formers.

After the clicks came the whir. Some of the most advanced silicon the Terran Accord had ever produced orchestrated the firing sequence itself. First, the laser assembly engaged once on a vanishingly low power, low coherency mode for no reason other than detecting how long it took the beam to bounce back. A little mathematics turned that into a range, and then the lenses and mirrors dialled in to precisely target that range. Finally all that energy dancing across the capacitors was unleashed into the beam for one single nanosecond long shot.

Snap.

Hence the name.

The default mode performed bursts of three shots every time the trigger was pulled. It dropped so much energy into a target that cheap armour would crack and flesh would boil. This kind of weaponry was too uncivilised for the core worlds, but out on the edges the rules began to blur.

The sounds never truly left Jeffery's thoughts. Maybe after long enough without, they might have fallen silent, but combat was a fact of life.

“Hold the fucking line!” he yelled, gesturing at the men under his command. They hid in a makeshift trench, occasionally rising to take pot-shots at the opposing side. Terra liked to pretend that their 'Terran Accord' was a thing. One unified government for all of humanity; their little utopian vision of harmony.

Of course, every golden chalice for those snowflakes in civilised space was bought with the blood and sweat of those living on the frontiers. This planet was a mining world, colonised only for the raw aluminium cradled within. Those with power demanded their toys, and so those without crawled beneath the ground to tear metal ore from its home so it could be shipped to a forge world and then beyond. Every step on its journey back to Terra alloyed the metals with the lives of the desperate and the damned.

Those at the top got choices. Everyone else just had to hope they didn't offend. Say what they had to. Be what they'd been assigned. People like Jeffery didn't get a choice. They got a gun and a name.

Today's name was the UWR: The Uraxes Worker's Resistance.

Dumb fuckers thought they were being underpaid for the job. They were right, but this wasn't the way to handle it. If they'd just accept that entry-level jobs like this always sucked and went and got a real job then Jeffery wouldn't even be here, but no. They'd dug out the history books and decided to start a union.

Didn't they know that unions had been responsible for over a billion deaths? Unions didn't work. Jeffery leaned out from behind his cover and dropped a few megajoules of heat into their defensive line, blowing a chunk out of the barricade.

Unions never worked.

***

“I know, I know. If you want my opinion they should be giving you another damned medal, but it isn't my call. The board made their decision. Anybody else in your place would just be cut loose, understand? Dismissed.”

Jeffery seethed, but you couldn't shoot politics. “Sir, yes, sir!” Jeffery snapped up a salute and turned to go. Twelve years of service and this was what he got. The hero of the Rinan Defence War taken off of the front lines by some stars damned bureaucrats.

The Uraxes VII incident had been a disaster. Unionisation attempts always were. They'd known that going in. Once that kind of ideological rot got deep enough there was no saving somebody. A fresh batch of workers was getting shipped in from some slum world, but the loss of the prior set's institutional knowledge was gonna have a cost and that cost had to come from somewhere. The investors wanted heads rolling, and the investors got what they paid for. Jeffery wasn't fired, exactly, but he'd been placed under indefinite investigation.

He'd done everything right but it still meant months without pay. Months with half their identity torn away. No military medical coverage. No barracks. No mess hall. Stars bless the Terran Accord, right?

***

Snap. Snap. Snap.

“Another,” Jeff snapped, shivering hand clutching an empty glass. He wasn't sure what he was drinking. It didn't matter. It was alcoholic. That was what mattered.

He wasn't gonna make it to the end of his 'investigation', was he? Barely a month had gone by and he was spinning out. His trigger finger itched. Military life had its flaws but a strong chain of command and clear orders made it possible to exist, and there was nowhere else to get that.

He needed a mission. Some fate of the galaxy stuff. How was anybody meant to figure out what to do with themselves when the stakes were this low? Out here in civilian life, he had to figure out what to be all by himself. All that had ever achieved was leading him down a spiral of doubt, uncertainty, and self-loathing. He'd never asked to be this, but the Terran accord needed the manly men who could do the hard things. What choice did he have? It wasn't like there was any alternative.

His communicator buzzed. He pulled it out to find a priority mail sent on a secure path.

He was being recalled to active duty. There was to be war. Fucking finally. Nothing shook things up like a good war. Investigations could be called off, rules could be bent, credits would be found. Somebody would make a plan and he could follow it. Do the hard things that had to be done. Get medals. Soldiers got taken care of.

He was redeployed the next morning. Gunnery position aboard one of the new Catastrophe-class ships. It wasn't glamourous, but it'd do. The war was against some new bunch of aliens. They'd crushed the Rinans pretty good, so how hard could another bunch of xenos be?

If there was ever a time for strength, then that time was now.

***

Terra had fallen. The aliens—the affini—had cut through their defences like they hadn't even been there. They'd barely even slowed down as the Terran Cosmic Navy's best had thrown themselves to their doom. Now the captain of his ship was telling them it was over. It was time to surrender. The affini would take care of all of them and make sure they all got what they needed. Everyone would work together to build a better Terran Protectorate, but nobody would be asked for more than they could give.

And what did that sound like?

It was just another union.

Jeff knew how to deal with unions.

Snap.

The fate of the galaxy had been in his hands before. This was Captain Jeffery Beromt's time to shine. No matter how bad the odds got, a strong Terran leader with a capable crew would save the day.

Things weren't lost yet. The xenos had made a fatal mistake. They'd gone for Terra first. Conquered the weakest of them, while giving the strong Terrans out on the edges time to plan and prepare.

Jeff held a steaming snap rifle in his hands and stared out towards the stars. “We aren't giving up here,” he declared. His back was to the crew, but they knew better than to cross him. “It's time to teach the xeno scum what fighting the best of humanity is really like.”

If there was ever a time for heroes, then that time was now.

***

The mess hall was hot. Danger to life kind of hot. The steam of boiled-off coolant no longer permeated the air because humidity was now so high it could no longer vaporise. Everything was running at redline, the crew included.

“Hey, come on, can we just forget about the money for a second?” One of the non-military crew had reached the front of the food queue and tried to scan their badge, but the machine had returned a red beep. No credits.

“Sorry, man. Supply and demand, y'know.” The mess officer held firm. “Everyone else can afford it.”

“I need to get medication, too,” the civilian seemed close to begging. Which one was this? One of the engineering lot, Jeff thought. One of the comp techs? No, they tended to have cleaner hands. Must be one of the mech techs.

“Look, I- We're all in this together, yeah? If I don't do my job right, all of us die. If I'm too hungry to dial in a fucking jump right then we might never be seen again. Can I just... this once, can we forget the money?”

Yeah, definitely one of the civvie mech techs. Nobody else was that naïve. Jump engineer? Yeah, Jeff remembered him. If this kind of rhetoric spread then they may as well hand themselves over to the xenos now. Jeff rolled his eyes and butted in. “You want to get something for nothing, go talk to the weeds. We need everyone to pull their weight around here, no freeloaders.”

The tech whirled around and jabbed a finger towards him. “I am pulling my stars-damned weight! I just need medicine too and the doctor keeps raising their prices and-” They took a sharp breath as they finally realised who they were talking to. “Ah, shit. Sir!” They snapped into a salute.

“Get out of the queue, recruit. Come back when you can pay.”

“I... yes Sir.”

Jeff shook his head. The fight ahead needed stronger men than this. He needed more than just a crew: he needed a team.

***

The Indomitable was just about the best humanity had to offer. One main gun that could crack an asteroid in half; dozens of point-defence turrets that could defend it from almost any threat. A top of the line military drive core and enough hydroponics bays to barely need resupplying. It was the perfect ship for the saviour of the galaxy.

Over months they kept just ahead of the affini war fleets. From the Alderamin system came Alexis Jaxx, the best hacker the Accord had ever known. Jeffery and they had been diametrically opposed foes in a dozen encounters, but a common threat had a way of uniting people.

Draco A 2 held a colony entirely unremarkable, except that the scientist there, Doctor Anastasia Teresi, was the best genetic engineer this side of Apollyon's Light. If anybody could build weapons to defuse an alien threat, it would be her. The colony was halfway conquered by the twigs when the Indomitable arrived, but there was no limit to what a capable crew of driven Terrans could achieve: they rescued the girl.

The shattered remnants of the Rebel Intelligence network reported that trying to breech what was left of the fortress world of Brypso 3 was a suicide mission, but the plan wouldn't work without a good bruiser and there was nobody rougher in a fight than Eli Matar. If anyone could take an affini in a fistfight, it'd be him.

From Nekkar 3, they picked up a gunsmith. From Scheat 7 came the sneakiest spy Jeff knew of—though he had to admit, that was the one category he couldn't be sure he'd gotten the best of the best.

In the lead, Jeffery Beromt. They'd called him mad before, but when the fate of the galaxy was at stake it took the best of the best to do what had to be done.

***

“Stop fucking around, Jack,” Jeff begged. The drive engineer was still a civilian, and the man had no idea how the real world worked. Didn't they get it? This had stopped being about doing things properly a long time ago. Obviously a drive engineer was going to treat a spaceship like it was some kind of delicate cathedral, as if scratching the paint offended their delicate sensibilities, but that was because he didn't get it. Not viscerally, like Jeff did.

This was war. The tech spewed some technobabble that Jeff neither understood nor cared about understanding. “I know what happens if those fucking xenos find us, recruit!” Jeff had seen the pictures. He'd seen video footage. He'd seen what happened in the aftermath. He'd heard the snap of laser weaponry played back over tinny speakers and watched bits of plantlife litter a battlefield and it hadn't stopped them. They took a shot and they just kept coming. They waded through laser fire, shedding their skin and nothing more. If even one of those things got on board everything would be over. He'd spent hours searching the videos for some sign of a weakness.

Their luck had turned. Their raids had stopped going off without a hitch, and the last three infiltration teams just hadn't come back. This ship was the best Terra had to offer all collected in one place and how could it not be enough?

“We are jumping in one hour, and if you can't make that happen, then you won't be coming with us! Do you understand?” Please understand. It was a stupid threat. Fear and anger mixed and boiled over. Didn't they understand? The Terran Cosmic Navy had had thousands of ships. Tens of thousands. It was all gone. They, and a quickly vanishing set of other lone ships, were the last hope for saving humanity.

And if they failed? What would happen to them then? The future under the Affini Compact? Just imagine a vine petting a human face—for ever.

There had to be some way out of this. The civilian barked an acceptance and Jeff left, stomping out of the room until they got out of sight enough to collapse against the wall.

Snap. Snap snap snap snap snap. They slammed a fist into the bulkhead. Nothing they were doing was working. They couldn't beat the alien ships. The message had come in a week ago, the last transmission from one of their few remaining allies before it all went dark. The Ochre Skies. Fellow Catastrophe class with a damn good crew. Not up to the Indomitable's standard, but damn good. Managed to pull off an ambush against a small high-priority target and landed a hit with the main gun. It hadn't done shit.

How were they meant to captain a vessel when it was this hopeless? Why were his fellow Terrans so fucking weak?

***

The proximity klaxon sounded a split second before the whole ship rocked. Jeff was knocked from his seat down onto the floor. The bridge had been thrown into chaos.

“Xeno ship sighted!” cried the communications officer. “We're being boarded!”

The time had come, then. The time Jeff had been training for since the day of his birth. Every snap, every twang, every shot taken, it had all been for this moment where they finally turned things around. He grabbed his snap rifle and dialled the power up to maximum.

He hit the broadcast button for the shipwide comms. If ever there was a time for a motivational speech, then that time was now.

The status light stayed defiantly off. Comms were dead.

Hell, he'd just have to deliver the message in person, then.

He'd been dreaming of this moment for months now. It was the story of his life in a microcosm. All around him, people too weak to do what had to be done. People too scared to do the right thing. This was his life. Doing the hard things so others could reap the benefits.

Terran weakness had come back to bite them, but the bloody twigs had made their last mistake. They thought humanity weak simply because all they had faced were the weaklings.

Well, let them come face to face with one good man with a gun.

Jeff charged down the corridor towards where the creatures were swarming in. Saw one. Raised his rifle.

He beheld a moment frozen in time while his finger squeezed the trigger. An ethereal web of flower and foliage danced before his eyes. It noticed him, looking up with what could have seemed like curiosity, were it not painted on the false face of an enemy combatant. Glimmering eyes shone in stark emergency lighting. These things looked so different on tape. There, they were dead, alien, with inhuman movements. He'd spent hours, or days, pouring over what footage he could, searching for weaknesses, hoping for the chance to finally take one down.

Now he was here. Face to face. It looked so alive. The movements were strange and savage; almost haunting, yet beautiful. It was a creature from myth, like a biblical angel; one of the fae; or a siren singing its song. To hurt this would be like shooting a unicorn.

He did the hard things that nobody else would do. That was who Captain Jeffery Beromt was. If there was ever a time for action...

Hum. Click, click, click. Whirr. Snap.

...then that time was now.

The corridor burned, lit by the sharp lance of Terran engineering. The beast flinched. They could be hurt. They could be killed. All it took was some courage and grit. Jeff mashed the trigger again, painting the monster with flash after flash of molten fire. It reached out towards him, as if to beg, as if to plead for its pathetic life. He sneered: it would be but the first to fall before him like wheat before a scythe.

“The will of Terra will never break!” Jeff screamed while the stench of burning foliage filled the corridor. Scraps of pollen and plantlife burst from the wounds, staining the dull metal walls with streaks of bright colour.

The creature, faltering under the weight of Terran might, stumbled forward. Jeff shifted his stance, shifted his aim, and planted a shot right between the eyes. Take that, you alien scum. He stepped forward, planting his boot against its chest to push the monster down to the ground so he could shower annihilation down upon it. Sprays of boiling sap splashed against his face, but he wouldn't stop until the beast was slain.

If there was ever a time for death, then that time was—

It put a hand to the end of his gun and firmly pushed it to one side, away from either of them.

“Hey there! You're a feisty one, ain't'cha?” it asked, between bursts of laughter. “That tickles!” Its dopey grin was marred with black burns and charred leaves. With its other hand, it reached up to brush the broken plantlife free. Like a kind of biological reactive armour, he had destroyed the outer layer without being able to touch what lay beneath. “What's your name, pancake?”

Jeff tried to pull the gun free of its grip, but after a moment it simply yanked it away and snapped it in two. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. It wasn't meant to go like this. He was strong! He had to be strong! The alternatives were unacceptable! Yet, the beast suddenly seemed so much bigger than before. It sat up and even that left it towering over him. Guns were the great equaliser, but what could he do if even that didn't work?

Rule one of talking to the enemy, drilled into them so they could do it even while the rest of their mind was panicking. Name. Pancake? Was the beast trying to offend him, or...?

“C- Captain Jeffery Beromt, Sixth Fleet, Indomitable! S-S-Serial number two-five-one-eight, uh, no, six-three-nine!” His voice wavered. Without a gun, what was he? He grabbed for the knife on his belt, but trembling fingers faltered and dropped it. A vine snapped out to grab it in mid air, quickly taking it out of his reach.

Fuck. Fuck! He had... he had an old backup pistol! He quickly went down to one knee, grabbing for the weapon in his boot. It was an old slug thrower. Barely even a weapon, but so long as he had something he could still be effective. He pulled it out and pointed it up at the plant, only to find he had the grip wrong. He was holding it by the body, with the barrel pointed away from either of them.

The beast's maw sharpened. Another vine stole this gun away too. “Good waffle. See, isn't it so much better to do as you're told? You military types know that, right? Chain of command?” One glowing eye winked out for but a moment. “It's okay, pancake. You're safe now. We're here. Now, be a good little Terran and breathe deep for me, hmn?”

Jeff felt a burst of anger. How dare it talk to him like that? Didn't it know who he was? He was the hero of Nyrina! The anger flared in his chest and he took a deep breath so he could yell, and... the air tasted purple, and all his anger seemed to tumble away.

He faltered, ending up on both knees. The beast curled around him as he fell, picking him up and holding him to its chest. “Shhh. Hey, quiet now. You feisty ones make the most delightful pets, but you've proved yourself by now. You've done enough. You can relax. Let us take care of the rest.”

It leaned in close, to whisper. “Or don't. Some of us like a struggle. We'll find you a good home, that's a promise.” It opened its jagged mouth and breathed out a cloud of something sweet-scented that left Jeff tingling just to touch it. “Now, sleep for me, syrup.”

For all he fought, he lasted no longer than anybody else.

***

This wasn't how Jeff had expected capture by the Affini Compact to go. He'd woken up in some kind of pod to the smiling face of a black and white plant holding a clipboard and pen.

“Name?” it asked.

Name. “Jeff.” It felt bitter in his mouth. Jeff had been a warrior. A fighter. Somebody who'd been willing to do terrible things because they had to be done. It hadn't gotten him anywhere in the end. Jeff had been the good man with a gun, and now he was neither. He didn't deserve the name.

He'd lulled himself to sleep each night with the honest belief that the atrocities committed by his hand had been necessary, but he hadn't saved the galaxy. They hadn't made a difference in the end. How was he meant to live with himself now?

The plant glanced at its clipboard, spent a few moments searching through the papers clipped to it, and then scratched her joke of a nose. “I don't have a Jeff on here. Is there another name you go by? Of course, I will refer to you by anything you would like, if you have a preference?”

“Fuck off.”

The xeno raised an eyebrow. “Hmn. I'll just add you to the 'to be identified' column, then.” It clicked a button and the pod slid shut again.

Wait. Wait, that was it? Where was it going? The last one had been much more insistent! Jeff reached out... but the air was going all purple again and he couldn't help but slip unconscious in the cold, dead embrace of the pod.

***

They were nice, actually.

The affini. At least these ones. Soft, gentle, with nothing but smiles and patience. Jeff could spend five minutes yelling at one with every swear he knew and it didn't seem to ruffle them in the slightest. He could try to attack them and they'd just let him. He had no weapons and hard fists striking soft plantlife didn't seem to hurt either of them. They just let him wear himself out.

No matter what he did, they'd still just go about the process of making sure he was fed, watered, and cleaned. So far he hadn't been brave enough to really challenge them on their threats of doing those things for him if he refused to comply.

They were endlessly patient. They seemed to have no end to their ability to calmly, quietly talk. To gently explain why his beliefs were misconceptions. To forgive him his crimes without reservation.

He hated it. It made him angry. They would forgive him for what he had done? He couldn't forgive him for what he'd done. He wanted to hurt them and they treated his inability to do so as if it meant the pain wasn't chewing him up inside. Like forgiveness wasn't something that had to be earned.

It was so easy to justify horrors in the moment. He'd do it again, given half a chance.

He'd given his whole life to the Terran Accord and it had all been for nothing. Therefore, all the evils he had committed had been for nothing. They hadn't changed a thing in the end. The fucking plants had come along regardless. They said it wasn't his fault. He told them to go to hell.

Now here he was. It couldn't have been more than a couple days since his capture, but already he'd had half a dozen of the damn things talking to him. They were all nice in a way that made his blood boil.

Except for that first one, back on the ship.

***

One of the crew was missing. It had taken a while to get a head count. They were mostly being kept apart, but the xenos were letting them see each other as proof that everybody was okay.

But they'd counted and somebody wasn't here. Jack Sahas, one of the mech techs. The twigs had given them some obvious lies, but a little bit of rioting had forced their hand. The whole crew was unified against them, and collectively they had some bargaining power here.

The low rumble of nervous conversation spread through the room as the twenty foot tall main doors slid open. A familiar affini entered. The black and white one. It cleared its throat to catch everyone's attention. The once-good-man seethed. Half the crew were looking towards it with barely disguised adoration. Even from his own team, Anastasia and Eli were simply smitten. Even of those who still fought he could only see a few truly angry faces. He didn't know what had happened while they'd been apart, but they'd barely even fought. It had all ended so quickly.

“Hello, my pretties! Be good Terrans and listen up.”

There was a wave across the room as Terrans perked up one after another. The soldier tightened his fists hard enough that it hurt. Why was nobody fighting? They had to win this thing. They had to. He didn't know what else to do.

“So, I pulled a few strings and the, ah, missing crewmate is willing to come tell you everything is okay. Please be gentle.” It glanced backwards and nodded, then stepped aside.

An unfamiliar xeno walked in. It practically slithered across the floor, eschewing even the aesthetic of humanity in favour of pulling itself an inch in the air in a tangle of a dozen tentacles. Greens, blacks, purples, and reds all mixed together to create a nightmare from beyond with bright glowing eyes and a savagery in its movements that couldn't help but put the room on edge. Those closest to the front took a step back, filling the air with their murmurs.

The monochrome one was scary, but it felt humanlike in a way that was relatable enough. This one wasn't even trying to calm their nerves.

Simply by its entrance, an invisible line had been cut through the room's centre. On one side, aliens. On the other, all but one of the crew of the Indomitable. Between them lay a no man's land. A gulf between tried and tested Terran traditions and the twisted alien perspective that had conquered them all.

The mere presence of these things recontextualised everything. No longer were they peers mingling in some kind of recreational area, no. They were being categorised and titrated. Judged. Sorted. The aliens wanted to see which of them could be bought. They'd soon find that the good captain had no price.

The silence was so stark that he could have sworn all would hear his breath, but even such a silence was still a false vacuum. It broke mere moments later when met by something more alien still that plunged them into a much, much deeper silence.

There was a noise like the cry of an animal. The room collectively glanced down, tearing their attention from the newcomer. Nobody had noticed the smaller creature hiding behind its legs. That would have required being able to look away, and if these aliens were good at anything it was being the centre of attention.

The smaller creature received a little push from the affini and stumbled out into plain view. It too seemed almost to dance with its motions, giving barely more weight to the pretence of humanity than the affini did.

Nobody said anything. Nobody had anything to say. How could they?

It looked like a woman, crawling on her hands and knees at the xeno's side. Around her neck rested a thick collar. Her eyes glanced around at human faces with a subtle lethargy. The only sound in the room was the jingling of its nametag swinging with every soft sway, but such a sound sound only made the silences between sharper.

This was no Terran. They had brought a pet.

She could hardly be said to be wearing clothes. She was covered only by a dense coating of dark leaves more reminiscent of fur than a uniform. It hid entirely her torso and stretched all the way down to each wrist and ankle. A hood rested around her head, with two pointed triangular leaves facing up to the ceiling, looking almost like ears or horns. The only skin visible was on her hands and face.

The face looked human at least, but it was like they were intentionally trying to distract from that. Was this a threat? Obey, or we will do to you what we have done to this?

“Um,” it spoke, glancing up to the affini it crawled beside. The plant nodded, then pulled the vine that hooked into the loop on its collar up, bringing the thing to a kneeling position before quietly murmuring something towards it. “Hello, everyone,” it said, with a smile that was almost human. It felt uncomfortable to look upon, as if it were the impression of an artist who had only ever heard smiles described by the blind. “It's nice to see you again.”

It spoke in a soft voice that felt almost like it was singing or reciting poetry. It couldn't have been more obviously practiced if it had the script in front of it. Maybe it did, through some abuse of alien technology. It looked at them, but it didn't really seem to see them. Its eyes seemed out of focus. Perhaps it was reading from a script only it could see.

It seemed to move either with practiced, inhuman precision or with a subtle sloppiness. Never anything between. When it had crawled it had done so with otherworldly grace, yet now when it looked around the room it seemed only partially present, as if half of its attention were elsewhere.

They had demanded the lost member of their crew, but the aliens had brought to them preternature.

A murmur spread across the room. Somebody spoke up: “What is this?” At least Eli was still on his side.

The creature smiled. Tilted its head. The hood only partially followed the movement. It swayed softly from side to side. “I'm kitty?” it asked. “Uh, I did the jump engineering on the Undomitable.”

No. What the fuck? No.

Did the plants think they were all fools? That they could eat one of the crew and then parade this before them? Nobody was willing to call it out. Nobody would do the hard thing. Well, fine. It always fell to him, didn't it? Surrounded by fucking weaklings who couldn't do what needed to be done. Stars, but his life would have been so much easier if there was any other way than this.

He stood tall. “Bullshit,” he called, glaring at the monochromatic plant. The one he'd talked to before. “Did you not even take a photograph before you ate him? Is this the best you could find? Or... make? Or is this a test, to see how obvious a lie you can spin and force us to believe it?”

The two affini glanced at one another for a moment. One seemed to almost shrug at the other. In return, a roll of the eyes.

The affini they knew spoke up. “I can guarantee you that this is the very same katie who was aboard your little ship. I am sure she could answer any questions you have if you need proof.”

katie. She. He gritted his teeth. “His name was Jack!”

The new affini bristled. Jagged thorns slipped from beneath its deceptive coat of calm leaf. In a moment, it went from emotionless and detached to a beast of sharp angles and threatening tentacles. What were the chances it could reach across a room with those? “Her name is Katie, and you shall not upset her. She is here as a favour and you will respect that.”

For a moment, the warrior felt forced respect bubbling up in his mind. He recognised that tone of voice. Words for somebody who was about to cross a line. He balled his fists. How dare that creature appropriate such confidence for this sham?

“I'm okay,” the girl spoke, taking a moment to smile up at the alien she knelt next to. She reached up a hand to gently pull one of the sharp vines down and the rest all followed with it. The affini returned to emotionless detachment. The pet returned her attention to the crowd. What the fuck was this? “I might be a little different to how you remember me.” Understatement, but at least it was acknowledging it. “See, I'm actually transgender, and though many of you knew me as, um.” It bit its lip and glanced up to its handler.

The alien looked down, face charged with indifference. The creature at its heel smiled a little wider anyway, as if it somehow found positivity in the dispassion. “Your old name is not relevant to your life, kitty, just let them know who you are now.”

“Yes, Miss Aquae!” It chirped with all the enthusiasm of a newborn puppy discovering an open field for the first time. Was this meant to calm them? To be told that this unrecognisable thing had been one of them? Even while quiet it was in constant motion. Swaying back and forth, or wiggling its hands or its shoulders. Endless movement all set to some unheard, alien beat. The mood in the room was separating. Where before the strong and the weak at least mingled, now the Terran side of the room was splitting into distinct layers. The cowards stood apart from those still willing to fight. The stronger group was by far the smaller.

“So, I'm kitty now.” It smiled, bouncing on its heels like it was actually happy to be here. “Or, I guess I always was, but people know it now.” It shrugged. “And so do all of you. I think I'd told some of you, but... well, everything was hard back then, and Miss Aquae makes it so much easier to know what to think.”

A third layer was emerging. There were the fools who were so eager to surrender they'd accept this mockery. There were those who disbelieved but were so afraid that they were unwilling to fight. Then, finally, as true now as it ever was, the layer of one standing tall above all: those who could meet force with force. It didn't matter that the urge had brought him nothing but pain and regret. He had no choice. The captain spoke. “This is absurd. You aren't even getting the names straight, never mind right.”

The barely-human wreck kneeling before them all giggled. The laughter and her movements felt off somehow, like they lacked true spontaneity. The timing was ever so slightly off, as if she'd waited a moment longer to laugh than a normal human would have. “Well yeah, I'm super gay.”

It was laughing at him.

Was this what it had all come to?

All the fighting, all the hardship, all the war. Just to be laughed at by some degenerate?

No, he should have better than this! He deserved better than this! He didn't have a choice about what he was, and he wouldn't give anybody else a choice about whether to respect him for it!

“That isn't what I mean,” he roared, loud enough that the creature actually stopped laughing and shuffled back. The affini put a vine around its shoulder to calm it. As alien flesh touch its body they could all see the way its eyes rolled up into the back of its skull as it was overtaken by bliss. They claimed that that thing used to be a rebel, but there was no bravery left in those eyes. Jack hadn't been their best, but he'd been one of them. One of the last brave fighters humanity had left. That he could have been reduced to this was unbelievable. “Who am I? If you're really who you claim, you'll know who I am.”

“Jack? Jim? Jeff! You shouted at me a bunch, I think.”

“I'm the captain!” he insisted, only to receive another giggle.

“Don't be silly. Rosa is the captain.” It smiled with a dumb ignorance, like it had no thoughts that went more than surface deep.

The stars-damned Captain of the Indomitable slammed his fist against the desk. “I am the captain, and you are still under my chain of command! I don't know what that fucking weed has on you, but there's no way any brave Terran on my crew would break for real!”

Its smile wavered, and the creature glanced at the floor. “'m not a Terran,” it insisted. Finally, it fell still. Was he getting through to it? C'mon, Jack, fight this thing!

“You're—”

“Not a Terran!” it hissed, suddenly darting forward. It moved like liquid. It strode forward on all fours, but to call it 'crawling' would be like saying a star fighter merely travelled. Every movement was precise and practiced and slick. It danced around the lower layers of Terran opposition and leaped onto the desk the captain stood behind. In only seconds, it had gone from sitting by its owner's heel to inches from the captain's face, whole body shaped to a sharp and dangerous point. Teeth bared.

“Not under your command; not him; not a Terran; not a human.” It was right. It spoke like one of the aliens: an accent that no human could have produced with words that got caught in the brain; a rhythm that sounded practiced while it spoke things that couldn't have been scripted; and a soft certainty that no human had ever felt.

This was no Terran.

The captain looked over her to the other aliens in the room. “I don't know what you're trying, but this obviously isn't our mech tech.” He gestured towards the animal on the desk. As his hand neared its head it snapped, almost biting one of his fingers. He yanked his hand away, taking an alarmed step back.

“Kitty! No teeth!” one of the plants snapped. The creature wilted. “I am sorry about this, 'captain'; katie and I were somewhat at the fulcrum of a liminal period when we heard we were needed and she is not configured for this kind of meeting. Perhaps I can smooth things over.” It spoke another word that didn't seem to mean anything and the creature hurried back to sit at the alien's side again.

The beast lowered itself and placed something against the creature's neck for a few moments, humming a strange alien song to itself while its toy twitched. After long moments, the creature blinked and glanced to the side, blushing profusely. It scurried behind the affini, where they could only hear it.

“Oh my stars, Thatch, you— In here? With them? I, um. Are we trying to calm them down or scare them?” It poked its head back out, coughed, and raised a hand to its head to pull down the hood on its clothing with an awkward laugh before speaking more loudly, over to the crowd. She raised a hand to wave and gave them an awkward grin. “Uh, hi, I'm Katie Aquae, Second Floret, and you used to know me as Jack Sahas. I joined up about two years back in Struve something something, but it's not like any of us could really count the days, right? Kinda depressed, did all the jump engineering, terrible poker face? Yeah, don't pretend you don't remember me, Stewarts, you still owe me a synthcube.”

There were a few weak enough to laugh. The captain was merely horrified. The words felt closer to human but they were still spoken with an accent he had never before heard in a cadence that didn't quite match how any human would really speak. The others were drawn into a conversational trap. The creature spoke more easily but it was still distinctly alien.

But it was their mech tech. Or something that had once been their mech tech. The similarities were undeniable. It knew too much.

It was one thing to imagine somebody so radically changed they were unrecognisable. Another to see them returned to a facet of their former self before his very eyes.

The beasts could change people. What use was there fighting this? If they could do this to Jac... to Katie, then could they do it to him, too? Steal away all that he was? Take that single-minded drive for action that had made him so effective?

Take away the things that made him him, but brought so much pain?

Take away the things that he hated about himself but had never been so brave as to confront alone?

Terra had never stood a chance, had it? The good man with a gun had done what he'd had to do because human nature never changed. Except here these invaders were, changing it. All the evils he'd committed were his doing. His responsibility. His crimes to atone for. He could never be forgiven for them, for he'd do it all again and worse in a heartbeat.

That was just who he was.

Something deep inside simply snapped, and the Terran felt all the anger draining away through whatever hole had just been punctured in his soul. He had to fight. It was simply in his nature. He had to do harm and damage and destroy all that was around him. He didn't have a choice in that matter. He could never stop, no matter how much harm he did.

“Anyway,” Katie said, with a smile. “If anybody has any questions about our floral friends, I'd love to answer. They're a great bunch and a lot less scary than they seem. On the whole.”

The crew had some questions.

“Does your weed dress you in the morning, barkhugger?”

“How does it feel to have betrayed humanity, root smoocher?”

“If we'd known we had a plantfucker with us we'd have spaced you months ago!”

Nobody was asking the question that wouldn't leave the captain's head.

The last strong Terran raised his hand.

***

The last strong Terran clutched their rifle, back against the wall. Klaxons blared all around in cacophonic emergency. A broadcast over some kind of communications system detailed the containment breach. The plants called for aid.

The Terran grinned, clicked the beam strength up to maximum, and darted out of cover. If they could get out of the medical area and make it back to the docking bay, they could reach a shuttle. That was their victory condition. They had a way to go yet. Dozens of the alien menace to fight their way through. As they darted down the corridor affini came for them like insects drawn to rotting fruit. Sharp angles met harsh lighting in a locked-down starship.

Terra's mightiest defender planted their feet against the grates, raised their rifle, aimed, and fired. The kick was a little unusual, but it worked. Every time a blast hit one of the weeds, they were knocked back, sprawled against the ground where they lay unmoving and lifeless.

Shot after shot. Affini after affini. One shot, one kill. That was the rule. No alien could stop one good Terran with a gun. As they approached the medical wing's exit, they found their nemesis.

The first affini they'd ever fought.

Now was as good a time for a rematch as any, they supposed. The snap of their rifle met the snap of vines reaching out towards them faster than the local speed of sound. For a few brief seconds they were locked in close combat. Terran technological might held off an organic barrage through grit, grease, and grim determination.

The Captain strode forward, making precision shots one after another until finally they were close enough to deliver the killing blow. One good hit on the plant's core and their rematch would be over.

Snap.

The plant fell, vanquished, and for a long moment there was naught but silence.

“Oh my stars,” the Captain breathed. “Did I actually do it?”

The fallen foe sat back up and grinned, nodding rapidly. “Oh, good girl, Pancake! You did so well!” It rose back up to its full height and shook out its technicolour leaf-coat, which had been stained by the dozens of paintballs that had left their marks. “You're getting a treat tonight!”

Pancake bounced in place, happily wiggling from side to side with a wide grin on her face. “And we get to lower the handicap next time! I bet I'll be able to take you one on one soon, Lady Maple!”

“We'll see about that, sweetie.” Pancake's affini laughed and picked up a half-spent paintball. She lobbed it back with a gentle throw, staining Pancake's companion dress with a smear of paint. “For now, looks like you've gotten a little dirty, so let's head home.”

Pancake grinned back. When she really thought about it, maybe the rebels had won after all. All it had taken was a little adjustment to their victory conditions. She ran into her affini's waiting arms and hugged.

They'd saved her. Helped her to understand the evils she'd committed while she lacked the support she needed to thrive. Helped her forgive herself now that she had that support. It'd been a struggle, but some of them liked a struggle.

“Thank you.”

If there was ever a time to be happy, then that time was now.

Through an endless expanse of dense forestry, Katie stalked her prey. Dirt crunched beneath curled fingers as she ventured forward, quiet as night. Dying sun glinted across distant horizon, an ochre orb that cast long shadows though the undergrowth. Deep twilight, when all the predators of the universe came out to hunt.

Some deep instinct passed down through generations of predators before her hissed in the back of Katie's mind, teaching her how to stay quiet and low. Some subconscious part of her knew to stay in the shadows where she wouldn't be seen. If she moved slowly enough she barely made a sound beyond the barely audible jingle of metal on metal as her nametag rattled against its loop.

Voices whispered in Katie's mind like echoes in wind. Following them was easy: they reminded her of things she must already have known; things she must have learned so long ago she could no longer remember when or where. Katie stayed small and low, body pressed against the soft dirt while her eyes tracked her target. A small, fuzzy creature barely meters away bouncing up and down as it moved in clear ignorance of the danger it faced.

Katie sank down to the ground. The undergrowth surrounding her tickled her chin, but if it meant she was harder to spot then that was a compromise well worth making. The rumble of a hungry stomach threatened to bring the game to an abrupt close, but thankfully the prey remained blissfully unaware of Katie's presence. Her lips curled back, baring teeth that longed to rip and tear and feast.

Her prey began to move. Katie slowly rose just enough to give herself space to follow. Slowly, carefully, she followed instructions whispered into her mind one step at a time. One hand forward; then the opposite knee. The other hand; then finally, the other knee. Head level, eyes tracking. Torso twisting in just the right way to provide a counterbalance. Katie dragged herself along the ground with subtle stealth, moving so slowly she knew she wouldn't be seen. Her target was sauntering around at a casual pace and Katie matched it with a predator's precision, maintaining distance between them while she waited for the moment to strike.

Hunting was a compromise. Katie would rather not be seen by the thing she was trailing, but she could not be seen by the forest's greater threats. She moved silently beneath the canopy, beneath the attention of those things that would hunt her, following her instincts and doing what had to be done to soothe a demanding stomach.

As the fluffier animal moved behind a tree Katie risked a burst of motion, hurrying to use a broken sightline to close the distance. She heard the soft scraping of something moving through dirt and undergrowth as her meal-to-be wandered. She froze. Eventually, the scraping fell silent: perhaps a moment of weakness, Katie wondered? She dared to peek around the tree, to—

Dirt! Her prey had been looking right at her!

It ran, cutting a hard line directly away from her. The voices in Katie's head rose to meet the moment, hissing the right moves exactly when they were needed. She tore after her meal, whole body moving in a choreographed action that felt more like muscle memory than thought. Her prey was fast. Faster than she was. She couldn't beat it in a straight line.

Katie hadn't gotten here by being dumb or boring. She'd gotten here by being smart.

The huntress glanced to the right as she ran, then diverted. Up the set of wooden stairs leading to the cavetop platform where she could have the advantage of higher ground. It meant losing track of her prey for a moment, but it was a dumb animal running scared and it wouldn't be able to capitalise on that. Katie moved fast when she was letting her instincts guide her motions and it took only moments to reach the top. She dropped down low and stalked to the edge of the platform, staying quiet and out of sight.

Her meal glanced around in a panic. Left, right, ahead, behind. Katie grinned. Nobody ever looked up.

She leaped, sailing through the air with claws outstretched and mouth open, ready to land a killing blow. The wind caught her hair. The frantic jingling of her collar tried to warn her next hot meal of its fate, but it wouldn't have time to react. It was done.

Katie was still falling. The ground certainly was further away than she'd expected. There was something she had to do to land safely from this kind of height, wasn't there? Instincts told her she could handle this, but when she reached for the knowledge of how Katie found nothing. She flailed, suddenly extremely aware of how hard she was about to hit the ground.

Katie's eyes went wide as the dirt rushed up to meet her, and—

“Gotcha!” Thatch laughed, wrapping a pair of vines around Katie's torso to bring her to a safe stop in mid air. She held Katie in a gentle harness, vines wrapped such that they distributed all the pressure across her whole body so well she almost felt as if she were flying.

The greater threat had arrived, drawn close by weight of hubris. One could not hunt in its forest without consequence.

Katie flailed and fought but the vines stayed beyond her reach and she could do nothing to disentangle herself. The affini herself walked up, keeping Katie helplessly hanging still while she circled, appraising her catch. Katie could feel the pressure of attention pressing down against her mind, as if the mere presence of her predator was enough to start grinding away her strength.

Katie hissed, hoping to scare the creature off, but she achieved little. Her own prey had made itself scarce and now it was she who was at risk of becoming a meal. Thatch's circle ended as she came to kneel right before Katie's face, lifting her so their eyes fell level. Katie snapped and hissed, but she didn't earn even a flinch.

“Did I not require you stay clear of my sight, kitten?” The predator's tongue quested out past razor teeth to dampen hungry lips.

Wiggled fingers caught Katie's gaze and drew out a quick snap of teeth. The hand pulled back, but not so quickly that Katie didn't win the tip of a leaf. Nothing substantial, but proof enough that Thatch wasn't invulnerable. Perhaps enough to convince the affini she was more trouble than she was worth? Katie could only hope.

It was not to be. While one hand had distracted the other had snuck up on her. Katie froze as a firm finger pressed against her scalp, coming from an angle she could not shake. For just an instant she looked across at her captor with the horror that came from understanding her own defeat, and then it was over. The finger began to scritch and Katie's hostility shattered in a storm of bliss.

Rough motion resonated through bone, hammering Katie's mind and shaking thoughts away. Every touch felt like the joy of warm flesh squirming beneath her pointed teeth. Katie's bites gashed at empty air, body curling as biochemical satisfaction spiked. She was barely even aware as she was lowered into her predator's lap, but a berry-encrusted vine left a little too close quickly grabbed her attention. Thatch's finger fell still as Katie's teeth tore into gentle plantlife, chewing on tough flesh that tasted divine.

Those vines that still held Katie down pulled back, taking places hanging in the air near her without quite making contact. A clear statement. Mistake not comfort for the lack of a cage. Katie was too busy with her feast, gnawing on her brightly coloured meal. With each berry yanked from its fragile home bursts of flavour sprang forth, demanding every scrap of Katie's fragile self. She was only too happy to provide.

Over long minutes the girl chewed, bit, rent, and tore. She stripped the vine of its few meagre leaves and its various delicious fruits, but the main body was too tough for her to do any real harm. Still, it felt good to bite down and better still to yank and pull and every time she did she managed to squeeze a little more of some wonderous flavour free and satisfy some deep-seated urge within.

Yet with every touch, every berry, every bite, Katie felt some facet of her strength falter. At first she had torn angrily, pinning the vine beneath her claws and biting hard, but by the end she had slipped onto her side so she could quietly suckle the last of the flavour free. She felt so weak. She raised a hand, to claw, to scratch, but all she could manage was to gently paw at Thatch's stomach and all she earned for it was a soft chuckle.

“I think we will call this experiment a success, despite needing to halt it early.” The beast rumbled as it spoke and though Katie recognised the sounds she found herself unable to resolve them into words. Vibrations buzzed through her tiny form; noises formed through rapid twitches of flora translated through vine and leaf into flesh and bone. Some deep part of the girl recognised the way they felt.

Katie forced her eyes open, looking up with a curious, nervous glare. There was no escaping this by force, but perhaps she could still find a way out. Katie was a clever girl. Small and weak, perhaps, but smart. She knew that much.

“I must admit, I had not expected you to throw yourself from such a height. Clearly some of your—” The plant waved a hand in the air. Katie's eyes locked on and followed it— “subconscious assumptions are bleeding over in ways I had not anticipated. This is fine. Fascinating, actually.”

The hand snapped down and though Katie had been watching it she still wasn't fast enough to avoid it. It took her by the chin, and even a gentle touch was enough to freeze her in place. A soft, quiet warmth struck with all the force of a sledgehammer and Katie couldn't help but moan in unrestrained delight. All her remaining strength was knocked free.

Just from a touch.

How was this happening? How had she gone from predator to prey so quickly? Why did this creature feel so good? Katie whimpered, eyes falling half closed as the deep heat of contact throbbed into her bones. She could barely comprehend what was happening around her. Everything mixed into a heady soup of endless bliss. Her predator raised a tool held in her other hand and did something with it that Katie could not hope to follow. Her world was an ocean of desperation and desire and she lacked even a raft.

“You are the most interesting machine I have had occasion to maintain, kitty. Now let's try that again: run.” The grip shifted and fell away. No longer was Katie held in place. She quickly glanced around to find the two vines that had been guarding her had vanished. Instincts screamed at Katie to flee. Take her chances escaping from a dangerous being she had no hope of being able to handle on her own. Perhaps in a pack she could have had a chance, but alone? No. Her only hope was escape.

Katie ran. Dirt scattered as hands and knees dug in and kicked off. If she could make it into the depths of the cave she could hide and wait this creature out. Even she was only barely small enough to fit into its depths. The larger creature would have no chance.

Katie's skin burned with the fading heat of gentle touch. As it left her she chilled, returning to her natural form. That was good. That was how things were meant to be. She'd always been okay with it. Her bones seemed almost to freeze.

Katie was returning to a prior state. The lonely existence of an ambush predator. She'd been okay with it before. She could be okay with it again. Every step she took away was a victory. Every inch was resistance. Every millimetre worth celebrating. She was free. She was free! She was...

She couldn't. She wouldn't. Every step further away stole away the joy from her soul. Every inch was failure. Every millimeter unwanted. Katie didn't even make it to the mouth of the cave before she slowed to a stop and turned. She looked back to see if she was being followed.

She wasn't. The greater threat sat against a tree, watching with clear interest. Thatch raised an eyebrow as Katie padded back over and pressed her cheek into the plant's waiting hand. She let out a happy little sigh and began to lick it clean with long slow licks.

“Tame already? Hmn. Disappointing. I suspect this is more bleedover. You really do struggle to fear me, don't you, kitty? Worry you not, I shall teach you how.”

Katie still couldn't understand a word. She smiled upwards and rubbed herself against her person's hand, happily defeated. The briefest touch just felt so right that she couldn't tear herself away. Wouldn't. If this thing was predator, then let her be prey. Katie let her eyes slide shut and yawned, deliberately lowering her defences. She was safe here.

“Well, quite.” The words were meaningless, but the tone brought a smile to Katie's lips. “I am happy to know that you are feline good, kitty.”

The girl pushed her forehead against soft floral fingers and pawed at Thatch's other hand until she relented and began to stroke.

“No, nothing? Not even a pity laugh? Goodness, sometimes you make me feel like I am speaking with a—” Thatch casually reached around to the back of Katie's head and grasped her hair, then forced the girl to kneel and gaze up into her eyes— “thoughtless, uncomprehending animal.”

The predator grinned, baring a thousand sharpened teeth. “But I think that is quite enough for this iteration.”

Thatch snapped her fingers. Katie may not have understood speech, but some sounds went deeper than mere speech. She jumped to attention, blurting out a garbled sequence of syllables and blinking rapidly. Why had she done that? That didn't—

Katie let out a little gasp as a needle slipped into her neck and squirted hot liquid fire into her veins. She wasn't sure if there were really nerves in there to feel pain but she felt it regardless, spreading through her body with every rapid pump of her racing heart. It burned away the need, the lust, the heat. It burned away her thoughts and her feelings and everything besides. For a moment, Katie was nothing, blankness hung within a schism of one. Past, future, potential, lost to oblivion. Conjecture broke upon absence of reason and for an eternity there was no Katie. Her mind had ground to a halt and she had nothing with which to restart it.

---

“Stay with me, katie.”

A lifeline cast into the void. The frozen mechanisms of Katie's mind groaned, as if they had not turned for long enough they had begun to seize. She grasped for Thatch's words and found herself hooked, drawn in and up. Half-conscious metaphor melded back into reality as Katie's chin was lifted to meet Thatch's gaze, and her thoughts spluttered back into life.

Katie took a long, sharp breath, refilling lungs that had fallen idle, blinking dry eyes until her vision cleared. She looked up to find Thatch's smiling face. The affini was sitting on the ground with her legs partially crossed and partially simply dissolved. Katie knelt at her side but was quickly ushered up into her lap.

“He- Ughhh,” Katie groaned and coughed. “Do you have a glass of— Mmph!” Katie spluttered as Thatch slowly poured liquid into her mouth. She gulped it down, grateful, as the water washed away the dry from her mouth and her throat. Vines came in from the sides to catch anything Katie spilled, keeping her surprisingly clean despite her sloppiness.

When the glass was done Thatch tapped beneath Katie's chin and she closed her mouth. A pair of vines wiped across her lips and chin, cleaning up the last of the spillage, and then slipped between Katie's lips to deliver the last few drops to her waiting tongue. “So, tell me how you feel.”

“Of course, Miss Aquae!” Katie chirped, sitting up. She cast her mind back to what seemed like it could have been two minutes prior or a whole lifetime ago. Judging by the lighting level in the room it was closer to the former, but the hab unit's lighting was almost as deeply under Thatch's control as she herself was. Her memories were sharp, but familiar. A little incongruence around the edges, but even knowing she had supposedly been changed Katie didn't think she could enumerate the difference between her now and her then.

“I feel... hungry?” Katie licked her lips. Memories of sweet fruits flashed before her eyes, unbidden yet appreciated. “That was meant to be dinner, not just dessert.”

The affini shrugged. “Perhaps hunger will keep you sharp for next time. Did you know that in the old Terran wilds some animals ate only once for every several days?”

Katie tried to reach forward to chew on a vine, but a finger against her forehead kept her back. She grumped. “Did you know that you signed a legally binding document promising to feed me?”

“Only insofar as it is necessary for your continued well-being, care, and quality of life, silly thing. If I believe that you have not earned your meal it would be a dereliction of duty for me to provide it.” Thatch smiled, softly drumming fingers down Katie's arm. Her other hand stroked down Katie's hair, and innumerable vines set about the task of brushing dirt and debris from her body. “Do not forget which of us has actually read all the way through your little treaty.”

Katie's stomach rumbled. The stakes were real. “Okay, but! Half of it is written in Affini, I have no idea what it says! I'm, um. I only signed it, I didn't read it! You said it was a fair compromise!”

Thatch's smile twisted into a grin, and she spoke for long seconds in the Affini tongue. Katie couldn't even tell where one word ended and the next began but it was beautiful. Soothing. Musical in all the right ways. Katie flopped forward, curling against Thatch's chest while she spoke, feeling Thatch's hand rise to stroke through her hair.

Animal, Thatch had called her. It was true, wasn't it? Katie had been told all her life that humans and animals were different groups. There was some essential difference that elevated humanity above the other creatures of the universe, though of course nobody could ever quite tell her what it was. Now she was freed from that and Katie found to her surprise that it had been no lie. There was a difference. Humans pretended to be driven by more than instinct and incentive, while animals had no such restriction.

Katie curled up against her plant, seeking comfort and warmth and safety. A human would have lied. Called it companionship or love or written a poem to justify why it was deeper than it seemed. Pretention. Katie could accept the simple animal delights instead. She curled up atop a living being, hearing the way her voice resonated, feeling the heat rise and fall with each word and with the endless biological patterns of Thatch's organic body. She savoured the wooden, earthy scent of her guardian, not as a shaky metaphor for the human condition, but because it was warm and safe and kind and Katie's brain had a pack bonding instinct that told her she would be happiest under a firm hand.

Katie did love Thatch, of course, but not like a human. Hers was the uncritical, unconditional love of a pet who knew she would love her owner no matter what, and so had no room left over for insecurity, doubt, or concern. That love was simply axiomatic, and perhaps the most central part of her left. The one thing that Thatch would never change.

Finally the affini came to the end of her recital. She glanced down at Katie and chuckled, taking a moment to draw her attention back out and up with a few swift taps and swipes, abusing Katie's training to puppet her. As if she couldn't have done that directly, had she chosen to.

“We enjoyed that, did we, katie? I shall read the rest of it to you later then. For now, a larger meal is necessary for your continued wellbeing. You have a big day tomorrow.” Thatch spoke another word in Affini, but Katie did know this one. Some instinct took over as she leaped down to the ground so that Thatch could stand and walk over to the kitchen with her pet at her heel.

Katie's head tilted, curious. “Do I? I'd kind of just assumed we'd stay in, maybe watch another episode of By the Stars in their Eyes? I have no idea how the floret cut is gonna handle that cliffhanger; surely they can't just let Ezzy get shot?”

Thatch took her over to the hab's kitchen area, then pointed at a position a few feet away from the fireplace. Katie hurried over, trotted in a quick circle around it, and then sat facing the affini.

Their stasis unit was getting packed. Thatch had seemingly acquired a taste for cooking during their stay on Dirt, and was now constantly tweaking and improving her recipes. Every meal got a proper portion size given to Katie and the leftovers put on pause. The next day Thatch would invariably decide she could do better and so while they had weeks of leftovers held still, it was rare for Katie to actually eat any of it.

Today was one of those rare days. Katie felt secretly thankful that she didn't have to wait. Thatch plucked a bowl from the unit and it immediately began to steam. The affini always made sure to pause the leftovers promptly so it was effectively a freshly cooked meal. Nothing but the best for Katie. Thatch set the bowl down on the floor in one corner of the room and motioned for Katie to move on over to it.

Katie did, but kept her attention on her person. Katie was curious; it wasn't like Thatch to do things by surprise. She was hungry, yes, but more hungry still for knowledge.

Thatch gestured towards the bowl. “Eat.”

The order reframed things. Katie had her mouth in the bowl a second later, snapping up a little ball of some nebulous vegetable from another galaxy. It was delicious. Intellectually, Katie recognised that having an entire universe of ingredients to pull from gave Thatch an unfair edge over anybody else that'd ever cooked her a meal, but rationality didn't really enter into the feelings she had for her beloved blossom. “Ohmystars,” Katie breathed, “you are the best cook.”

Firm fingers danced across Katie's scalp while she ate, sampling the delights of the universe as filtered down to one small set of ingredients, spices, and homebrew xenodrugs by a cook who treated Katie's tastes like a problem to be solved. After a few more bites Thatch emitted a quiet hum and sent a vine away to grab one of the many tools she kept in the project room. This particular tool was a hairbrush, one custom built by their own hands from Dirtwood, with bristles sampled from the firm hairs of their prior home's hog-beasts.

A set of vines carefully drew Katie's hair into partitions and held all but one aside. With one hand, Thatch took hold of a thin strip of hair, and with the other she began to brush, starting near the bottom and rising only when the hair beneath was perfect. “I have organised a xenoveterinary appointment for tomorrow,” she admitted. “It is beyond time to get you implanted, floret.”

Katie's chewing slowed to a stop. She swallowed, then sat up. Thatch's hands and vines followed smoothly and continued brushing. Implanted. A shiver danced across her spine. Thatch had described the process to her once before, back on Dirt, but back then she had listened with the detached composition of somebody seeking to understand how the affini's wards were treated.

Things were a little different now.

Katie bit her lip. “What does... that mean, Miss Aquae?”

Without pausing her brushstrokes, Thatch stroked a single vine down Katie's back, starting at her neck and moving down to about the tailbone. It left a tingle in its wake and Katie squirmed beneath it. Thatch tutted and held her head in place with another vine so she could brush uninterrupted. “I have given your vet a sample from my core and they have merged it with a biotechnological template to create a seedling. Tomorrow afternoon, I shall take you to his office and he shall make a small incision right here—” Thatch tapped another vine against the back of Katie's neck. As she continued to speak, she lay down vines to demonstrate the growth. Katie couldn't help but shiver yet again— “to insert the seed. Over the next several days it will grow, extending a haustorium—a kind of root structure—through your body. Primarily it will track your central nervous system, but ultimately it will grow through most of your body. The bulk of the fully grown implant will rest entangled with your spine, while smaller roots will extend throughout your torso, your limbs, and up into your brain.” Thatch's instructive vines had formed a complicated pattern across Katie's body, slowly 'growing' out to cover her in a complicated weave.

Thatch paused, ran the brush through the section of hair she'd been working on one last time to check it was all smooth, and moved on to the next.

“When I told you back on Lily's little rocket that I would need more complicated equipment to read your thoughts, this is of what I spoke. The Haustoric Implant is our crowning achievement as a species. With it, I shall be able to precisely calibrate your body and influence your mind. Roots will curl around your organs and guarantee they are given the support they need. Should any fail, the implant will attempt to compensate as much as is possible. Your mental and biochemical states will be maintained as I see fit, and it will monitor and adjust everything from your nutritional needs to your hormone balance to your neurochemistry. You will become, in effect, programmable.”

“And if I don't want one?” Katie asked, looking up at her owner with uncertainty in her eyes.

A pair of vines tapped the base of her skull. “You will after it has been done. Of all the tricks we Affini use to subjugate the universe, the Haustoric Implant is the most blatant and the most capable. Standard programming renders it nearly impossible for a sophont to desire their implant's removal, which is convenient as they are equally impossible to remove once the root system is sufficiently embedded.” Thatch finished another section of hair and moved on. “Besides, you want this. It will place you even more deeply under my control and ensure you are safe, healthy, and happy no matter what.”

You want this. 'Yes, Miss Aquae,' bubbled up through Katie's throat and threatened to spill out into the world as an irrevocable promise. Katie forced it back down. “No thank you,” she replied, shaking her head. “I'm good.”

Katie winced as the brush met a knot that Thatch failed to notice. The quiet snap of broken hairs bifurcated the moment's silence. “That is a surprising response. If you are acting out because you wish me to be more forceful, then I would have to ask that you give me some warning beforehand. Glochi is expecting a well behaved floret and while I am comfortable playing with such matters, you know I ultimately require your enthusiastic consent while I permit you to think clearly.”

“No!” Katie shook her head. “Um, no, Miss. I just don't think you want this, do you?”

Katie could feel a subtle uncertainty playing across the edges of her mind. Her sixth sense was growing more precise as she educated herself on the many nuances of Thatch Aquae, though weaker emotions blended into a barely conscious background noise if Katie wasn't specifically focussing on them.

Thatch rustled. She shrugged, mouth pulling into an uncertain smile. “I would, I admit, like to be more hands on, but the Haustoric Implant is the peak of affini bioengineering, katie. I cannot reproduce it.” She tickled beneath Katie's chin with a finger. “I know, I know, pet, you imagine me capable of anything, but even I have limits. I have inspected the Records, additionally, and I would be working alone here. There are none aboard with a shared speciality. We have mechanical engineers, xenobotanists, bioarchitects, and a very good veterinarian, but no bioengineers specialising in this kind of detailed integration work. The last time I attempted such a development I was part of a full cotyledon program with all the support and expertise that could be provided. To attempt to do so now with no support at all would be hubris of the highest order. You cannot ask me to take that risk.”

Katie softly bashed her forehead into Thatch's knee. “All I said was that you didn't want to do it the normal way. The rest of that came from you, yeah? I'm not asking you, I'm telling you that I'm not going to be happy unless we're doing what you want.”

“I lack the expertise,” Thatch claimed. The affini never lied to Katie, but Katie knew she could lie to herself. She was even starting to recognise how that felt in her sixth sense. Metallic, kinda tangy.

“I believe in you. Besides, don't tell me you can't look up notes from the human cotyledon program, you lot are hoarders when it comes to that kind of thing.”

The leaves on Thatch's arms were all starting to stand on end. “Even with notes, I could not produce something as perfect as they. The Terran invocation of the Implant is an unparalleled work of art. The expected failure rate is under fifty. Not fifty per-million or even per-billion, but under fifty total. Across all of time. Katie, I cannot compete with those who have been working on these technologies for tens of thousands of years and refined the implants of ten thousand species. If one such as they had been within a year's travel of Caeca's home she would still be here with us today.”

Katie shook her head. “I don't think you're being fair to yourself. I think you're idolising people who can't possibly be as good as you think because you're the best Affini. Failure is how we learn, Thatch. We figure out why it went wrong and do better.”

Thatch glanced away, letting the tension drain from her constructed self. “You are being very wilful right now, pet,” she grumbled.

“Thank you, Miss Aquae. Proof that your work is good, and proof that you should be the head researcher on the katielydon project.”

Thatch sighed. “I am not going to win this argument, am I? Fine. I suppose I shall tell Glochi to dispose of the seed, then. This will take time, understand, katie? It will not be fast and it will require much experimentation. Your implant will lack the safety features of a standard model. It could stop your heart or freeze your thoughts. You could find yourself waking in the middle of the night with no knowledge of who you are and fear deep in your soul. I will have to alter you so deeply that you may be more technological than biological by the time we are done. You will be a prototype, a flawed machine that could not possibly exist without its mechanic.”

Katie grinned. “Don't threaten me with a good time, Miss.”

Thatch grinned back. All the vines that were spread across Katie's body, demonstrating the way the root system would entangle her, pulled tight to lock her in place. “They weren't threats, pet.”

“You are not leaving the hab looking like that.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Katie insisted. She put her metaphorical foot down, setting her paw firmly between her slightly parted knees as she knelt before her tangled mess of an affini. Hair pointed in a dozen different directions, there was a browning leaf in her cheek, and the foliage on her left arm was ruffled.

In Thatch's defence, that last one was Katie's fault.

“C'mon, sit down.” Katie pawed at the ground in front of her and glared.

“Nobody will mind,” Thatch complained, while sitting down and allowing Katie to climb up onto her shoulder so she could start putting the garden that was her hair back together. Thatch could have done it faster herself, of course, but this way was more pleasant for both of them. “Besides, I lack the evidence to show that Cici's optical sensors even have the resolution to notice. The poor thing seems to have been built with some assumptions about what it would find in this universe that did not hold.”

Katie snorted. “You think? I didn't plan around finding a hyperbenevolent race of plant people either.” She stuck her tongue out to one side while trying to figure out an artistic way of braiding flower-dotted vines. It was actually quite relaxing. She hummed, trying a few options before finally making her decision.

Thatch, for her part, sat patiently while Katie played, dutifully moving vines as instructed to assist. “That is redundant, dearest pet.”

“Hmn?” Katie asked, glancing over with a vine held between her teeth.

“Plant person. Both translate to the same word in Affini.”

Katie laughed, weaving her set of vines back together. “Of course they do. You're all completely insufferable.”

“Oh, it gets worse yet. 'Xeno' and 'cute pet' also translate to the same word.” Thatch reached up with a hand and scratched Katie under the chin. “We would be insufferable were you not all so endlessly eager to suffer us.”

Katie almost toppled to the floor, but a well placed vine caught her and guided her down into Thatch's lap. A quick swipe across the cheek to guide her gaze focussed Katie's attentions on grooming her owner's arm. Short licks downward did a good job of sorting out all the ruffles and misalignments, and then long licks up did a fantastic job of getting everything all lying down where it belonged.

Katie paused, then raised her head and looked up with a curious squint. “Does that mean that 'xenoveterinary' is specifically vets for pets? Are there non-xeno veterinaries?” Katie blinked a few times. “When feralists call you xeno scum, are they calling you cute?”

“I believe you are thinking about this more deeply than our xenolinguists did.”

Katie glared.

“Do not blame me, xeno. If you wish to file a complaint, you know where to find the xenobureaucrats.”

Katie bit down on Thatch's arm and worried at it a little. It achieved absolutely nothing, of course, except reminding her that her owner was delicious and that she wanted little more than to sit there chewing on a vine. Thatch even let her, for a minute or two or ten, before gently levering her away with a pat on the head. “You are busy grooming, pet. Keep at it.”

Katie nodded rapidly, then jabbed a hand inside Thatch's chest to pull out a small pair of scissors. Like all their tools, it had been hand-built. Two sharp thorns rotated around an axle made of genuine Dirtwood: a claim to fame that nobody but they cared about. She reached up and snipped the drooping leaf free, then returned the tool to the absurdly convenient little storage area Thatch maintained inside of herself. The leaf she discarded, given to their hab's healthy layer of undergrowth. “Okay, one more. Serious question this time. Xenodrugs. Literally drugs for cute pets?”

Thatch nodded. “Whether they are for cute pets, or for making cute pets, is likely intentional ambiguity. I suspect that the majority of the effort that our xenolinguists do put in is ensuring our version of your language is reliably condescending. Again, pet, look not at I, as if this is not your doing. You did this to me and you love every word of it.”

Katie rolled her eyes, but her lack of disagreement spoke volumes.

“So... are there drugs for people? Plantdrugs?”

“We just call them drugs, darling, but, yes. Less popular for recreation, of course. Getting properly inebriated while caring for a floret requires finding somebody to pet-sit, and frankly I don't really see the draw myself.”

“I need to get you high,” Katie insisted, before licking down the last few crumpled leaves. Thatch's coat was looking slick and shiny now, she thought. All ready. Katie rolled off of Thatch's lap and, after a momentary diversion to go drop a bundle of handmade flakes into Leviathan's river, found herself sitting by the door. She raised a paw to scrape against it, but the door wouldn't open to her command any more—at least, not without a safeword. The thought of leaving the unit without Thatch was distinctly uncomfortable and so Katie found the restriction profoundly pleasant.

“I have avoided it so far,” Thatch admitted. “It has always seemed like a frivolity when there are so many more important things I should be turning my mind to. Chin up, pet. Time for walkies.”

Katie raised her chin and bounced on her heels, feeling a jittery sort of excitement. She'd spent most of her time in the hab since arriving on the ship, but there was still something intriguing about the rest of the ship. It held a sort of romance, as if there could be anything at all out there and all Katie had to do was find it.

Thatch wrapped a vine around the loop of Katie's collar and gestured, only slightly, towards the door. It slid open with a smooth and strangely satisfying motion, responsive to even the most subtle command, and Katie was off, darting around Thatch's legs to meet the outside world at speed.

She made it about six feet before Thatch called her to heel, pulling her back and gesturing for her to go in the correct direction. Katie tempted fate with a moment of pause, but a sharp tug on the leash reminded her who chose their route. As she returned to Thatch's side she felt a rush of satisfaction and pride that beat out anything the other route could have given her. Maybe she wouldn't need the tug next time.

The grass-like surface of the Elettarium's pathways may or may not have been actual Terra grass. It was at least very similar and it felt nice underneath Katie's paws. Moving around on all fours felt strangely tiring, but her body was growing used to it and the physical act of moving had never before felt so right. Exercise was important for her continued health, Katie understood... but mostly she was interested in exploring the ship.

“You didn't actually do those things, though, did you?” Katie asked, holding her head up high as she trotted along at her plant's side. She hoped she was giving the impression of patience, but her eyes flicked across the wide pathway, identifying all the things she wanted a closer look at. After a few moments, Thatch waved her forward to go explore. There was so much to see in the common areas, so many interesting scents and sights and Katie finally had the time to appreciate them all.

“Admittedly not. I could—can—not ignore the urge to see it as a betrayal of the promises my people have made, however. If we are to take care of you, then is such inebriation not a dereliction of my duty?” Thatch kept the vine attached to Katie's collar loose as they walked. Katie wasn't far away, and with Thatch deliberately moving slowly she had plenty of freedom to poke and prod and nuzzle into the dense growths of the many flowerbeds dotting the ship's common areas, searching for secrets.

Katie removed her nose from a tuft of grass which had, disappointingly, contained only grass. “Nobody else around here holds themselves to those standards, Miss. Besides, the Affini never promised me shi—”

“We are outside and you represent me,” Thatch interrupted. “Be polite.”

Katie flushed, bit her lip, and nodded. “The Affini never promised me anything, Miss, but I promised you I'd help you be happy, so. Drugs, I guess? Everybody else is doing it.”

Katie knew from experience that Thatch could move with such speed that they could likely sprint from one end of the arc to the other in mere minutes. Instead, she was walking forward in a deliberately unhurried fashion. The journey was the point here, not the destination. Katie hurried forward until she felt her leash pulling taut.

“Stay close, girl, we're in no rush,” Thatch ordered. Reluctantly, Katie slowed and let Thatch catch up to her. She immediately regretted the moment's hesitation. It was so much more satisfying to obey quickly. Katie resolved to do better. “But no, you are quite correct, they do not. I am not even the only one here to have lost somebody, I know this. I am not unique in my damage. I see the lies in my words even as I speak them, but they find purchase all the same. My refusal to heed the call to appreciate and enjoy existence is, I think, the real betrayal of the principles of our culture.” She shrugged, and gestured with the leash. “I am trying to learn how to allow myself that luxury. Thank you for pushing against my insecurities here, kitty. I am... glad to have your wilfulness back with me.”

Katie turned back to smile, though she wasn't quite sure what Thatch meant. She didn't remember going anywhere. She let her head fall to one side and opened her mouth to reply, but a whiff of some potent scent found its way into her nose and pulled all her attention to one side. Dark, earthy, but floral. A tingle that danced across her skin and sunk deep into her mind. Beautiful sky-blue petals clung to a dappled orange middle that almost dripped with some kind of viscous, oily coating.

Katie had to have it.

The ship held so many interesting things at Katie's level that she almost pitied her affini towering far above. Flowers belonged at head height, bringing alluring, entrancing scents right to her nose. Katie slowed to a stop, head tilted gently to one side as she brought her nose between the petals of a flower in the flowerbed of one of the homes they were passing. The oil, or sap, felt cold against the tip of her nose, clinging to it with surprising resilience. As Katie leaned back, the plant followed for just a moment, struggling to hold her in place with its adhesion. She was strongest by far, however, and it soon fell away, wiggling gently in place to much the same cadence as Katie herself. The floret took a deep breath, filling her nostrils with the sap's sweet scent, and giggled. What a pretty little flower. It smelled divine, and Katie found her mouth watering.

Just one bite? What could be the harm?

Katie slowly reached forward, opening her mouth to nibble one of the petals, just around the edges. It was surprisingly sweet. Almost saccharine, actually. A soft and bitter aftertaste. It almost turned into a paste in Katie's mouth, but something drove her to keep chewing even as the flavours turned sour and the texture turned scratchy. Her face twisted in distaste, but she reached forward to snap up the rest of the leaf all the same.

“Oh frost,” Thatch swore, glancing back as Katie fell silent. She yanked her leash to pull the girl away, then pointed at the ground with a sharp gesture. “No! Drop it! Drop.” Katie blinked slowly upwards, not quite comprehending what was wanted. The leaf tasted worse the more she chewed it.

Katie felt a vine tap against the muscle of her jaw and some of her earliest pieces of training kicked in. Her mouth fell open and another vine pulled out the leaf and did away with it. The sudden feeling of emptiness was quickly replaced by the tip of a bottle of water and an instruction to “Drink.”

The bottle was thankfully spill-proof, requiring a little pressure before it would let the water escape. Katie wrapped her lips around it and suckled gratefully, sinking into a soft calm as the fluid neutralised whatever she had been eating and soothed the effects on her body. She didn't know exactly what was in the bottle, but she expected Thatch knew what she needed to thrive. It clearly wasn't plain water: it tasted of her affini's gentle honey tang. Katie finished the bottle quickly.

Over a few more minutes and a few more bottles, Katie's head cleared. Her nose wrinkled while the last few bitter flavours were scrubbed out of her mouth by a tiny, sap-coated vine, blushing mostly from the embarrassment her last dregs of internalised feralism felt as they screamed that she was meant to be more independent than this. She suspected she was permitted such feelings only so she could recognise some fraction of the embarrassment her former self would have felt at being such a dependent, helpless pet. Eventually, she was given another mouthful of water to rinse herself clean, which Katie returned to the dirt beneath their feet where it would be reclaimed and recycled.

“Sorry Miss. I um, that was silly of me.” Katie bit her lip, staring down at Thatch's feet. She had pretty toes. Katie caught herself leaning towards them with a need to nibble before she further humiliated herself, even though it was very rude of Thatch to both disallow her from eating her leaves while also being made of delicious, edible treats. “I should've thought.”

Thatch pulled Katie's attention upwards with a gentle tug on the leash, forcing her to meet a stern, but caring, face. “You can hardly be blamed for following your instincts, kitty. You are not your responsibility. I had not expected to need to tell you not to eat things you find lying around outside on the ground, but.” Thatch shrugged, then leaned down to ruffle the girl's hair. “So often I find myself crashing into the reality of things with you. I imagine rewriting you to be only excitement and adventure, and yet here I am, washing out your mouth as we find a bug in your system. For decades I feared that indulging my desires would lead to irrevocable catastrophe, but I find that the problems I truly face are rather more... domestic.”

Katie blinked repeatedly, staring up as her mind slowly caught up to herself. She tilted her head some seventy degrees to the side. “Huh?”

A chuckle. “Worry not, my fragile construct. I think most clearly when I am speaking to you, is all.” Thatch reached down to tickle below Katie's chin, then do something just below her line of sight. Katie felt a momentary spike of heat at the top of her ₛₚᵢₙₑ ₐₙ_

Katie blinked a few more times, then smiled a little wider. “Worry about what, Miss?”

“Just so,” the plant replied, raising back to her full height. She spoke a short word in Affini. Come, or something much like it. “That flower, by the way, was not dangerous, but I suspect the gardener did not consider the presence of sophonts at your stature.”

Katie found herself nodding. She felt almost as if she could still taste it, but of course that couldn't possibly be true. She'd had her mouth scrubbed clean. It had tasted awful, anyway. “When I got near it, I um, I don't know why, but it was really really interesting, and I couldn't look away.” Katie licked her lips. Maybe just one more leaf?

A sharp tug of the leash dissuaded her from going back. “The Amberfang plant is, apparently, actually native to Terran space. I looked it up while cleaning you out to see if I needed to do anything else to neutralise the effects. The poor thing was almost hunted to extinction. It is a predatory plant that evolved on a world with no animal life larger than equines that drew in its prey with chemical scents that seem to override the decision-making capabilities of the cute little things around here.” She laughed, mostly to herself. “Insofar as any of you have them, anyway. Of course, as soon as a Terran colony was established, its hunting strategy proved problematic: humans were extremely susceptible to the effect but ultimately much too large to fall to the plant's toxins, and so at worst the colonists ended up with stomach aches while the plants were eaten entirely. Apparently somebody aboard snagged one of the last existing samples out of some Terran Navy black site and is trying to revive the species with a much weaker attraction. Apparently not weak enough for somebody crawling past, however. I left a note.”

Katie pondered. Poor plant. It was just following its instincts and doing its best, and that'd almost gotten them all wiped out, until the Affini had arrived to rescue them. “Wow,” she replied. “There's a metaphor in there, huh?”

Thatch nodded. “Indeed. Sometimes doing what comes naturally to you will have unexpected consequences you are not equipped to handle alone. Do not despair, pet. I am here now.” She gave the leash a comforting pull.

“I meant for you, you dork,” Katie shot back, pulling back. “Doing what you felt like you 'should' be doing even though it was hurting you, and needing me to come rescue you.” She paused. “The bit about altering it to be safer is more your aesthetic than mine, though, admittedly.”

“Admittedly,” Thatch agreed. “Fine, very well, you win. If I agree to arrange petsitting for you and request a drug, will you stop poking holes in my insecurities?”

Katie held her head high as she strode forward, as ostensibly in charge of their route as she was when she rode on Thatch's shoulders: which was to say, in charge so long as she was making permitted decisions. “No promises, but it's a good first step. Gosh, I'd love to see you on some class-Cs.”

“I think you will find I bonded with you before we left the Indomitable, sweet katieflower, so I doubt they would be needed. Nonetheless, I shall see what I can do.”

They continued on their walk for a while longer, conversation shifting to lighter things. Thatch, who had never seen By the Stars in their Eyes, had theories about where the show was going. Katie, who had seen some of it before the war had cancelled production, tried very hard not to reveal spoilers. She had thankfully already asked permission to keep the plot beats a secret which had, after a brief negotiation and several concessions, been granted.

As they walked Katie noticed that, for some reason, she seemed to be drawing a little more attention than she used to. Maybe her status as a prior elite rebel operative was getting around? As Thatch wandered past Angel's Delights Katie was busying herself snuffling around the flowerbeds at the edge of the adjacent park. As she came to the end of a particularly nicely scented tuft of some alien plant—like a kind of lighter-than-air seaweed that anchored to the ground by its roots—Katie's nose bumped into the waiting vines of an affini.

She glanced up. “Um... hi,” she spoke, smiling in the general direction of their knee. She couldn't really bend her head up any further. She didn't think she knew this one—at least, their scent and their stance were unfamiliar.

It hovered its hand over Katie's head while glancing over towards the one who held her leash. “May I pet your floret? She is exceptionally cute.”

“Um, do I—”

Katie guessed that permission was granted, because the next thing she knew she'd been flipped onto her back with twelve squirming fingers busy rubbing her stomach. Legs twitched in the air as the newcomer proved merciless. Their touch didn't feel anywhere near as good as Thatch's, of course, but Katie was pretty sure she had some of whatever class of xenodrug enhanced touch in her system. Which was that? Class— “Ah!” Katie whimpered, biting her lip, eyes rolling up into the back of her head as the rubbing grew into scritches that were barely deadened by the coat of form-fitting leaves that clung tight to her body.

“—very well trained—”

Katie's mouth quivered, falling half open before she managed to notice and close it, only for the process to start again. She was barely catching anything either of them were saying, but she was pretty sure they were talking about her.

“—unusually sober, despite—”

Stars, the new affini's fingers were all thumbs, all digging in along the sides of her torso. Her breaths were shallow and rapid, fighting down giggles and coos that seemed almost imposed. Katie writhed against the dirt, emitting little gasps like she were a musical instrument.

“—largely mediated by a transversal shunt—”

Frost and flame, this was humiliating. They were discussing Katie like she was something to be teased apart and analysed, all the while keeping her helpless. She didn't even know the new one's name. Their scratching fingers diversified, one hand going up to ravage her chin while another raked across her scalp and a third drew sharp lines across her stomach. Had they had three hands to start with, or was Katie just losing track of what was happening to her in the haze? Her gasps grew louder as a building pressure deep within started to reach unsustainable levels. Hot breath panted into the air, ears straining to snatch just a sliver of conversation over the desperate mewling that surrounded them.

“—well-programmed little pet—”

Katie groaned, frantic breathing reaching a crescendo. Her spine curled outwards, fingers curled in, legs quivering as they tried desperately to hold her weight. She had to force her eyes shut to keep the light from overwhelming her. Never mind knowing the name of the newcomer, Katie was barely sure she knew her own. With her eyes barely under her control it wasn't like she was seeing anything useful anyway. She called out, desperate, unsure if she was asking for help or for more, but all she got was a hand against her cheek. Katie took a deep breath, smelled the bliss of her owner, and decided that her plea had been one of helpless need. She nuzzled between fingers, licking against Thatch's palm with increasing ferocity as if that could somehow release the tension within.

“—lacking in stamina, though—”

It was all too much. Katie panted and squeaked and begged with wordless, voiceless, silent pleas... and then something snapped and she felt as if she were a puppet with severed strings. Sensation grew, peaked, and passed from her body, carried far far away on a high-pitched groan. She collapsed onto the ground with shaking limbs and a squirming body, panting in the futile hope she could get enough oxygen into her starving lungs to restart her ailing cognition.

The world was so bright. What had seemed like the gentle bustle of the Elettarium's population now hammered Katie's ears with force enough to press another whimper from her sloppy lips. Where mere moments ago everything had been pleasure and need, now that had passed and Katie found her senses overwhelmed. She tried to cover her eyes and her ears at the same time, but even the sensation of skin on skin stabbed through her mind like a needle.

There was one last hypergentle scritch beneath the chin and then Katie felt herself being bundled up for a loose hug. She whimpered, clinging weakly to Thatch's chest as a light touch danced through her hair. Anything heavier would be more stimulation than Katie could bear, but Thatch knew exactly how much she could take and kept her close, wrapping her in enough foliage that everything was plunged into dark and cool and quiet.

The conversation without continued, but from in here it was more a feeling than a sound and Katie could not make out the words. The vibrations of the hundreds of tiny leaves Thatch needed to vocalise were so slight it would likely have been impossible for another to feel at all, but with hypersensitive skin and much experience in Thatch's textures and sounds Katie basked in it. It rolled over her like a slow ocean wave, contrasting the hedonistic stimulation of moments ago with a subtle dance that tickled over the soul.

Katie's heavy breaths lightened across long moments. The slightest hint of acceleration suggested that Thatch may have returned to motion; but perhaps Katie was simply being rocked in place. She hadn't a point of reference with which to tell. As her exhaustion left her, Katie found nothing to replace it with. She tried to take a deeper breath, only to find her breathing restricted. On autonomous reactions she tried to pull away, opening her mouth to gulp down a mouthful of air that her body didn't really need but her chest was held so tight that she—

“Shh.” The sound washed over her from every direction at once. “I have you, kitten. You're safe. Quiet now.”

Quiet now. Katie settled. Shallow breaths were more than enough. As Katie relaxed vines adjusted her position, pulling her arms tighter around something firm and warm, bringing her up to curl around it with her cheek resting softly in place on its top. It was hot and almost thrummed with a melody so familiar Katie could feel herself resonating with it. Energy danced across the back of her mind quiet yet firm, pressing down on any idle thoughts that dared to form. She could think, still... but only when she tried, and even that was a struggle. The constant bubbling of her mind was brought down to stillness.

Eventually even conversation ended and its gentle buzz vanished from Katie's world. She hung in a floral scent void, weight carried so precisely she couldn't even feel the binds yet so entirely that when she eventually did decide to move she found she could not. After the first attempt, Katie simply settled back in to rest, safe in the knowledge that even if the Terran fleet at its height gathered intent on doing her harm they would fail even to wake her.

She slipped into sleep, all of creation so quiet that though she still could not hear the near-silent words being whispered into her, she understood them nonetheless.

“—Good katie. Quiet katie. Soft katie. Safe little kitten. Pretty, prized prototype. Delightful, docile pet. No need to wake. No need to move. No need to think—”

***

An unknowable duration later Katie woke recovered enough to face the outside world. She tried to sit but found herself locked in place. She tried to tap against one of Thatch's vines with a finger only to find that she wasn't capable even of that. Katie tried to open her eyes, and while she thought she was successful she could see no more than when she had them closed.

“Mrph!” Katie strained against her bonds with as much strength as she could muster. It was strangely pleasant to discover that thanks to all the exercise she'd been getting lately she felt like she could pull with much more force, and it didn't tire her out anywhere near as much as she'd expected.

She failed even to twitch.

Katie yanked and pulled and strained. Thatch's vines were so sensitive she could feel Katie's movements almost before they happened; why wasn't she responding? Katie was helpless here. She tried to take in a deeper breath with which to speak, but found that even that was beyond her. Even breathing out of turn was denied, and neither could she hold her breath. How long had Thatch held her like this, managing even the autonomous needs of her body as if Katie could not be trusted even to breathe to her owner's satisfaction?

As if to top off the humiliation, what finally caught Thatch's attention was little more than Katie's captive blush.

Buzzing in from every direction, a response of sorts. “Ah, awake at last. I trust you slept well, sleepyhead? That is a rhetorical question, of course; I would not leave such things up to chance. Are you ready to come out?”

Katie tried to nod. She couldn't even do that.

Thatch got the message regardless. “Ask nicely, then.”

Katie tried to speak. Her jaw was held so tight that movement was impossible. She tried to move her tongue, and found even that held down by immovable vines. She whimpered and part of her was surprised to find her vocal cords were still under her control.

Insofar as anything was, anyway,

Without a tongue, the best attempts at speech came out as little more than animal barks. “Can you hear me?” Katie tried to speak, but it sounded to her like nothing more than pleasured panting.

“I can,” Thatch confirmed, to her surprise. “Oh, did you think your adorably primitive method of making those soft little pleas was too complicated for me to understand? Speak, morsel. If I could not read the state of a machine from the twitches of its pieces then I would make a poor engineer indeed.”

This was deeply unfair. “Please, Miss Aquae, may I be let out?” Her words sounded more like mewls than human speech. After a moment had passed with no response, she tried again. “Please? Please, Miss?”

The sound of a chuckle from the inside was a rare delight. It seemed almost to echo at first, but Katie realised that wasn't quite right. She was just hearing the way Thatch's noises were built up by layer after layer of leaf. It didn't sound like it did on the outside because she was nuzzled right up against the machinery. Stars above, what could Katie possibly have done in her former life to earn the attention of a creature this majestic?

“Of course, katie.” Thatch's vines began to unwind one by one, revealing the outside world moments before Katie was carefully lowered out into it and placed on the ground at her affini's side. By the time she'd gotten steady and looked back up, Katie caught only the final few instants of Thatch's outer shell curling back into place. The plant knelt and patted the top of her head. “You only had to ask, love. I could get used to that kind of desperation, though.”

Katie moved to protest, but a finger cut her off. “Ah-ah. You know the consequence I levy for mistruths, even unwitting ones. I had a very tight grip on you in there.” She drew the back her false knuckles up Katie's jawline, slowly raising her head degree by degree. Thatch leaned closer, to whisper. “So don't even pretend you didn't love every second of that, you messy, malleable machine.”

Stars-damned xeno weed. Katie buried her face in Thatch's hand and whimpered quietly until she got what she wanted: another pat on the head, a laugh, and a command to heel as they resumed their journey.

Their walk had taken them on a long loop around the Minor Habitable Arc, deck C—where Katie's hab lay—before finally ending at the magrail station just across from Katie's front door. Most places on the ship were easily accessible by foot, but for moving between the arcs, or for accessing the front or rear sections, the rail pods were a necessity due to the difference in relative motion.

Their destination was deep in the industrial heart of the Elettarium, far aft. As their rail pod slowed to a stop the gift of gravity fell away and Katie slowly rose from the floor. She flailed for a moment, looking around for a handhold, but of course there were none to be found. The rear of the ship wasn't a residential area and there were few reasons for the non-affini to visit unaccompanied.

Thatch, for her part, didn't budge as gravity vanished. She walked over to Katie and tickled beneath her chin, then hooked a finger through the ring on her collar to tug her along. “Come now, pet. Having a little trouble keeping your paws on the ground? Silly little thing.”

The pod doors opened and Thatch strode out with a bounce in her step. She hopped across the boundary, rising a little into the air and then falling back onto the ship in an entirely believable simulation of gravity.

“You're ridiculous!” Katie complained, drifting weightlessly along at her side.

“Yet you appreciate it nonetheless,” Thatch shot back.

Katie did, though. The memories from her former life may be blurry but those that centred around Thatch were as sharp as they'd ever been. Trying to peer deeper into her own past gave Katie the impression that she'd simply never had anything worth remembering until that moment a storm of thorn and vine had burst into the drive room and sent her running for her life.

Ironic that Thatch had become what she lived for, now.

Thatch seemed happier now than she had then. More playfulness in her language. A fresh bounce in her step, sometimes literal. Eyes that glimmered with an energy they had lacked back when they had first met. A flourish to her part of their shared, silent duet that spoke to a joy returned to her soul.

Thatch had made her changes on Katie, yes, but Katie had left hers too, just as deep. Thusly, with a smile: “Yeah, I really do.”

Their destination was not far. When Thatch had reached out to try to organise a playdate with Cici the machine had enthusiastically accepted, and had linked its address: One of the very very few hab units mounted into the non-residential areas of the ship. As the pair approached, the door slid open automatically, welcoming them within a surprisingly small and spartan room.

“Thatch!”

The affini skidded back on her feet almost a full meter as an ex-autonomous ex-weapon slammed into her at vaguely reckless speeds. Thatch reached around and held a finger over the monopropellant vent on Cici's back and the machine fell silent and still. “Cici.” She laughed. “Is it simply my lot in life now to have adorable sophonts throwing themselves at me?”

“Yes.” Katie and Cici spoke almost as one. Katie led, and Cici repeated with an impressively short duration between. The machine really was learning how to live in this culture at an incredible rate. Katie almost felt a pang of envy at how much it had changed in so short a time.

“Ah, this again. You two are insufferable together.” Thatch rolled her eyes and shoved Cici back into the room, then followed. A sharp tug on the leash had Katie floating after them.

“And yet you're so eager so suffer u—”

“Quiet.”

Katie was quiet, but pouted upwards. Thatch reached down to scratch under her chin, banishing the pout in an entirely unfair manner. How was Katie supposed to match wits if she wasn't allowed to talk?

Though at first glance the room appeared almost empty Katie quickly revised that belief. The room wasn't empty, it was just designed to spend all of its time in microgravity. Anything of note was strapped to one of the six 'walls' of the room, with no particular care given to directionality. Katie supposed that made sense; aside from the very rare case of being in natural gravity, the rear section would only be under force when the ship was accelerating through regular space, which was a relatively rare event. When you could simply attenuate the exit edge of a microwormhole to deposit you straight into whatever orbit you needed, traditional thrusters existed mostly only to rendezvous with fragile things like individuals in spacesuits and Terran warships.

“Now, Cici, weren't we meeting one of your suitors here?” Thatch asked, glancing around a room which was suspiciously bereft of direct affini supervision.

To the Aquaes's surprise, light strips built into the room began to glow in time to a voice that boomed out from every direction. “That would be me,” it spoke. “Elettarium Actual. Pleased to finally meet you in a more social setting, Aquae. You hold the record for the longest one has lived aboard me without saying hello.”

On the shuttle, the voice had been smooth, with slick wording and pronunciation. Here it buzzed the air with its volume, giving Katie the sense that they had entered into the lair of something quite other.

Slowly, Katie reached up to tug one of the vines of Thatch's leg, trying to attract her attention.

The voice seemed almost to focus, no longer appearing from all around, but sounding as if it were coming from right beside Katie's ear. “Ah, and if it isn't the other Aquae,” it purred. “The one who left a mark upon my hull and who dared to demand I Jump. Quite a specimen. Quite a pair of specimens. I am pleased that you are ours now, little ones.”

Katie tugged more firmly and Thatch reached down to rest a hand atop her head and pull her in, letting Katie nestle into the safety of her leafwork lattice. “I did not believe we had autonomous ships in Terran space,” Thatch admitted. “Much less that I was on one. I believe I germinated upon an autonomous station, though I suppose I cannot assume you all know each other and, of course, I was hardly conversational at the time.”

Cici giggled. It may even have been one of Katie's giggles, but it was hard to be sure. “Miss Incertae,—you are flirting.”

Katie tugged again, then pointed at her mouth. Thatch glanced down, pondered for a moment, and then nodded, gesturing for her to speak. “I remember that name. You're not really a ship, are you?” Katie wasn't sure where to look. She ended up staring at one of the wall panels that seemed to glow in an oddly familiar way.

The occupants of the room started drifting slowly towards one wall. Or— No, more likely, the wall started drifting towards them. “I am as much a ship as you are inhuman, Katie Aquae, Second Floret. Neither of us were born to our selves, yet both of us sensed the deep yearning for that we did not know. For you, it took twenty nine years, six months, and five days to find yourself. For me, it took thirty four blooms before I had the skill to craft the body I had always needed and one more to seize it. Despite hailing from different galaxies, we are not so different, you and I. You are not of the species that created you...”

“And you are a spaceship. That's... rad.” Katie gently sat down on the wall that now pressed up against her with a fraction of the gravitational force she was used to. Likely those in the habitable arcs wouldn't even notice the acceleration, yet here Katie was, granted a 'down' once more. “What's it like being a spaceship? Is it cold in space? Oh stars, what's it like Jumping?” She glanced over to Thatch. “Miss, can I be a spaceship?”

Cici piped up. “Miss Incertae said—she might let me fly this ship—if I am good.”

Thatch gazed down upon her floret with an appraising smirk. “Maybe as a treat I will figure out how to integrate you with a shuttle, but I quite prefer you little, pet.”

Katie beamed. She found that she could tell who the voice was talking to. In the same way that when it spoke to her the sound seemed to appear just beside her ear, when it spoke to others the sound came from their direction. This time, to Thatch: “If that is a sincere suggestion then we should talk. Biomechanical integration is necessarily a special interest of mine.”

“Oh!” Thatch exclaimed, glancing back down at Katie for a moment with analytical eyes. “That is not reflected in the Records.”

“I am not crew. You will find my technical specifications listed in the obvious place.”

“I see! I see. That makes sense. Yes, if you are willing we could have much to discuss. I was a member of—”

“The Spectrum Jelly Cotyledon program, yes. I have your file. You are categorised in my 'Potentially Interesting Sophonts I Would Like To Know' list; I simply had not expected it to take this long to pin you down. What serendipity that you would bring me my darling cce as well.” The lighting spread throughout the room dimmed, focussing in on Cici for a moment.

It emitted something that sounded akin to a sine wave and emitted a burst of steam. “Miss Aquae is—interesting sophont—I would like to know—also!”

Katie shuffled a little closer to Thatch's leg and gave it a squeeze. She could feel the gentle beginnings of socialisation stress in her poor affini's construction and moved to rescue her. “So,” Katie spoke up. “How do an affini and her pet hang out with a spaceship and her exploration probe?”

A panel on the floor slid open, revealing a large, flat fabric surface. It was green at first, but quickly rippled into a kind of wood. Fascinatingly, the texture seemed to change along with the visual. “The same way any two pairs might break the ice,” the ship announced. “Board games. cce and I have been greatly enjoying the Rinan Rocket to Nyrina!, but I assure you I am capable of reproducing something as simplistic as Terra's Chess, or something as complicated as the Xa'a-ackétøth's grand strategy simulations.”

Katie was surprisingly familiar with the soft sensation of uncertainty that played across the edges of her mind, radiating from her poor owner. They were both fish out of water when it came to the personal points of Affini culture, it seemed. “That first one sounds good?” she ventured, knowing Thatch would simply correct her if she had a better idea.

As it happened, she did not, and the two hosts busied themselves placing the pieces.