Work Text:
THEN
The three-and-a-half-meter-tall alien lets a predatory grin break across the wooden mask she calls a face. She decompresses the structure of vines and branches that makes up her humanoid form and ducks through the door, her eyes and foliage dancing with hypnotic patterns. The cute little sophont within doesn’t even manage to get a word out before it’s on its knees, entranced.
NOW
Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom, idly pets the sleeping floret in her lap as she checks her tablet.
MourningGlory (4 hours ago) We’re going after that last group of feralists down on the surface today. Wish me luck.
DistantSong (4 hours ago) Oh! Good luck!
MourningGlory (4 hours ago) If it goes well I would very much like to celebrate with you somewhere tasty.
DistantSong (4 hours ago) I’m sure it will go well! I’ll keep my evening free.
— (You have 1 new message from NewUser) —
A message from her captain is serious business. She taps it.
NewUser (1 minute ago) hey r u still busy w that thing or r u done 4 the day
DistantSong (30 seconds ago) We stopped for the day about half an hour ago. Can I help with anything?
NewUser (<10 seconds ago) get down here i want u 2 see this feralist i caught
She does, indeed, get down there, and as quickly as possible, but not before carrying the sleeping Katherine Lyrica, First Floret, to bed.
The room where the domestication candidate in question is being held is spacious but spare, containing only a large, soft bed. The lights come on to half brightness as she enters; the Captain must have dimmed them for the occupant’s comfort. The poor thing was probably drugged at least half out of their mind, especially if the Captain had been the one to bring them in.
She taps an apparently featureless spot on the wall and a simple table rises out of the floor. Another gesture adjusts it to a more floret-accessible height. By the time the soon-to-be-floret begins to stir, Acanthus has already summoned chairs in a similar manner; one suited for her, and one that should be about comfortable for her unwilling guest. She does her best to relax her body's natural hypnotic rhythms for their comfort and sat back to read through the available information on this sophont. Fascinating. She can certainly see why the Captain wants her to take care of this one.
—
Having been captured thrice in total as prisoner of war, she expected, when the tranq hit, to awake to something of a routine. A floor, restraints, pervasive dampness. Instead she comes to on the softest mattress, with full freedom of movement, and an inexplicable scent of incense. So there are still ways to throw her.
Well, if she’s to be granted comfort, she’ll make the best of it. She stretches: her muscles are torpid with whatever they shot her up with. No structural rigidity, just sluggish in a low, burning, almost pleasurable way. Stories of the perverse, sexed-up malignancy rife in all of the affini’s machinations. She fumbles for the bedsheets. “Five more minutes.”
“You’re under no obligation to get up, darling. Please, feel free to relax.”
The alien voice would have her shoot up to her feet, if they held any power. Instead she rolls on her side. Three and a half meters of wooded threat. She grew up in a mechanical desert, and had only a distant storybook image of the forest. She could construct a distant notion of what it would be like to have her heel bit by a serpent and bleed out in the depth of the woods. “Okay,” she says, testing her freedom. “What are your demands?”
“Demands?! Oh, you poor thing! Let’s make sure you’re okay first. There’s no rush. How are you feeling?”
Its voice is elfsong. “What are your pronouns?”
“I’m Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom. My pronouns are she/her or he/him.”
“Cool, mine too.” She turns around and makes to sleep. Acanthus interrupts her by giggling. She could sooner drift off in a tubful of piranhas. At least, she tells herself so: her laugh is melodious, gentling. “What are you doing to me?”
“Nothing that you have a lot of say in, darling. Would you like specifics?”
“No, I actually ask questions in order to receive charged threats. Can you point a laser at my balls and say no mister Bond I expect you to die next please.”
She giggles again. “Oh, we’re going to get along marvelously! You’re so cute!” Her tone becomes a little more matter-of-fact. “You’ve been drugged, though it should wear off in the next several hours or so. You’re also being subjected to my natural hypnotic effect; there’s nothing either of us can do to totally negate that.”
There, again, that distant suggestion of panic, fading by the second. “Okay.” Okay. “Hypnotic effect.” She can do something with this, bank on the affini’s weakness for mollifying their cute little sophonts. She already took advantage of it when she killed, or ‘killed’, her first affini, caught up in the whims of some drugged-up human. Cultural relativity is a thing, sure, but she’s yet to meet one that isn’t cuckoo with xenophilia. “It would please me greatly if you explained that.”
Her tone stays dry. “Sorry, darling, but it wouldn’t be wise for me to do that right now.”
“How about the reason I haven’t already been raped into bimbofication?”
Acanthus perks back up. “You led a feralist terrorist attack on an urban area that forced not one but two affini into critical condition– one to the point of reblooming– in the course of protecting their florets! I’m here to interrogate you and, ultimately, oversee your successful integration into our society under my careful wardship.” She pauses, audibly smiling when she resumes. “And I like to do this slowly.”
A shiver dies at the base of her spine. They’re both persistence predators. She’d always thought her least favorite enemy to face on the battlefield would be herself. Turns out it’s herself but three meters tall. “I’m going to ask you to come back when it is wise for you to explain hypnosis. And everything else.”
“It won’t be wise for me to explain how the hypnotism works until you’re formally under permanent wardship, which will happen only after our time together has been a success. I’m happy to explain quite a lot else right now, though!”
“It’s your voice. You’re doing it right now. Is it like--” She makes, with her hands, what she hopes is an evocative shape. Her vision is still blurry. “--Like a health bar?” Motioning, she depletes the space between her hands as she talks. “You have video games. You have video games? You definitely have video games. Health bar? Bleep bleep bleep and then--” she claps “--I’m under your thrall forever.”
Acanthus giggles for at least thirty seconds, accompanied by the soft rustling of foliage as she doubles over. It’s long enough for her to roll out of bed, with the delicate effort it takes not to stumble. That would make the tree worry, which would make her move, which she doesn’t want. Even sitting and folded from laughter, Acanthus is taller. She cups one of the gorgeous yellow blossoms on her hair, much more vivid in color than Terra’s healthiest plants, and buries her nose in. She almost collapses on the spot. Her knees knock. She doesn’t fall. Acanthus has one hand wrapped around both her wrists. Up close, her fine detail is mesmerizing; tightly coiled vines wound into an approximation of human form, individual components never quite sitting still.
The affini sits up, turning to face her with eyes half-leaved. “What’s your name, darling?”
It would be terribly gauche to not answer, after having smelled her. “Iulia. Thanks for catching me.” Did she just thank her captor? Hypnosis hypothesis confirmed: it’s scent, too. And she breathed quite a lot of it. Her mind plays the Pacman death noise.
Something plays a soft chime and the pretty tree picks up a small tablet off the table. “Oh, good. All of your co-conspirators have finished testifying! All I’ll need from you is one more detail. I’ll go ahead and tell you what I want to know, but I’m going to give you all night to sleep off your drugs– and my presence!-- and I’ll be back in the morning for my answer. Why’d you do it, petal?”
“It felt good,” Iulia answers, far away, watching her torn-out heart weigh against a feather. “It feels good to kill and I like it.”
“Oh, you’re a special thing. I’ll still be back in the morning, ‘kay?”
“Wait. Wait. Don’t go. Please.” Acanthus is already on her feet and Iulia’s legs are puny with venom. She drags herself behind the fibrous coils of Acanthus’ thighs, so fragrant, so intelligent in their construction, and watches her cycle out the reinforced door.
—
THEN
Gunshot. From a window, high. Fifth floor? Bad. Magnolia’s already covering the little humans, taking the shape of a wall of thorns and vines and flowers and everything she has to stop more bullets. The other two affini, herself included, scale the building in moments. They enter the top floor hallway through a window. Only two closed rooms to check. They each pick a door and break it down.
NOW
Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom, enters her hab with an eye toward not disturbing any sleeping florets. Or would it be cuter if she woke them long enough to greet her? “Hab,” she whispers, “Are my florets awake?”
“No. Both Katherine and Amelia are asleep in Katherine’s bed.”
She smiles, and goes to wake Katherine. The floret stirs in her vines, and looks up with reverence at her owner. “Hi, Mistress!” “Hi there, Katie! Did you have a good time with Amy while I was with Magnolia?” “Mmmm, I did!” “I’m glad! I’d like you to come with me tomorrow to see someone, so rest up!”
Despite being curled around two adorable florets, Acanthus can’t manage even a minute of sleep. She can’t stop grinning.
—
Iulia rips the filling from her pillow, stuffs her ears and nose, and is in the process of figuring out a long enough noose with the casing when the door opens.
“What are you doing, petal?”, Acanthus, blessedly muffled. It only somewhat makes Iulia want to throw herself on her knees and beg.
“Stretching,” Iulia answers. She wraps the pillowcase around her foot for an assisted pull. It tears like tissue paper.
“For stretches, I can get you a suitable elastic band, if you're willing to negotiate a little free will.” Acanthus is serious. “Those pillow cases aren't strong enough to bear any tension, and the foam is too porous to block airflow entirely and, say, choke yourself to death.”
“Actually, that’s so I don’t smell you. Did you sleep well?” Do they sleep? Conflicting intel.
“I slept wonderfully, curled up with my two darling florets! I look forward to introducing you to them. You're trying to avoid smelling me. Is it a sensory issue, or are you trying to preserve your health bar until later in the round?” Before the question is answered, vines emerge from Acanthus’ side and tap and swipe at a spot on the wall. A subtle air current picks up, carrying that beautiful scent away from the bed. Which means the makeshift stoppers aren’t working. Grudgingly, she takes them out. At least with the fans going she feels a little more levelheaded, or so she likes to think.
Iulia won’t quit now. She stretches the opposite leg. It’s pleasant, for a lie. The anesthetic had left her a little stiff. “We’re not going rounds. That would imply you’re my equal. You’re a boss battle.”
Acanthus crosses her legs. “Your only save point is in this room, and my stacking debuff persists between attempts. It's not a very balanced game. Is it all you're willing to play?”
Iulia scrutinizes Acanthus. Either she’s her type - long, balletic, terrifying - or her type is suffering active modification. Her imitation lips are a terrific sunlight yellow. “We call questions like that, from you, a Faustian bargain.”
“Join me at the negotiating table, darling.” Acanthus is so tall that she can't sit close; her knees rise above the edge of the table. The accommodation for human height is insulting in a new sort of way.
It looks more like a dinner table than anything political. Maybe Iulia is just hungry. She hasn’t eaten since getting here. Her stomach growls.
Acanthus immediately becomes more alert. “Oh, right! Can I get you anything to eat? No strings attached, no… additional health bar depletion, nothing.”
There, a chance to test how far they’ll go. “Buttered lobster, please. Caviar. Oh, and human blood sausage.”
The tree taps at her tablet. “Anything to drink?”
“Black coffee.” Compunction against plant juice?
Acanthus taps a little more, ending with one big tap for show. In less than thirty seconds a collared floret enters, carrying the requested meal on a tray. She sets it on the table, Acanthus smiles and pats her on the head, and she steps back out of the room.
Iulia starts with the lobster. It’s tremendous. “I thought your deal was serving humans. Not the other way around.”
“That was my floret, Katherine. She’s here to help me today, and she’s doing a very good job of it, and I know she can hear me because she’s watching and listening from outside.” Acanthus’ tablet chimes. She doesn’t pick it up, but she smiles.
“Voyeur.” The caviar will make for a polite snack after. She moves on to the sausage. A little gritty. “This isn’t human.” She’s no idea whether that’s right.
A small frown. “I had it compiled as if it used human blood. Did I get it wrong?”
“Compiled?”
“I won’t pretend to know how exactly it works. Energy goes in, matter comes out.”
Iulia twines the sausage like crumbling spaghetti. The fork is metal. She considers stabbing Acanthus through the eye analogue. Then she remembers how hard it is to incapacitate affini, having done it, and pictures herself doped up on sex drugs, drooling her life out through her cock in a padded cell. “There’s no romance to that,” she concludes. “Artificial human? Where’s the taboo?”
“I lacked the time to collect blood safely.” She looks up at nothing. “You’d donate, wouldn’t you, Katie?” Her tablet chimes.
“And if I asked for a leg?”
“You’d get a compiled one unless another cute little human happened to have just undergone an amputation.”
That’s disappointing. “So you’re just like everyone else.”
“What do you mean, petal?”
Iulia takes a mouthful, to talk with her mouth full. “Slave to social mores.” Fake human crumbles onto her plate. “I’m not gonna give you the spiel on hypocrisy. You’ve heard it. It’s just boring. We couldn’t even get conquered by like, anarchohedonists. You’re made of rules. Like everyone else.”
“Katie, darling? Could you bring me my lunch?” After a few moments, Katie returns, this time with a raw human leg dripping blood on the tray. Acanthus whispers something in her ear. Katie blushes fiercely and remains standing by the table. The towering plant lady picks up the leg with both hands and a small number of vines and takes a big bite. Blood runs down her wooden chin to disappear into her body. Her eyes dance with red and gold and green. She sets the leg back down and plants a huge, bloody kiss on her floret’s cheek. “You’re delicious as always, darling.”
Acanthus’ whole body seems to loosen up, rippling and rustling in time with the hypnotic patterns in her eyes. “Care for a bite, Iulia?”
Iulia covers her mouth with one hand, grips the table with the other. It takes her a great effort, from deep in her core, to heave out: “I think I’m full.” A wave of self-loathing hits her chest. Some sort of neural trigger against denying her hostess. Steady now.
Acanthus picks up the leg for another bite. There’s a horrible crunch of bone and connective tissue being broken in teeth. Katie makes a quiet noise. “You’re full after only a few bites? I don’t believe you, petal. It’s my responsibility as your assigned guardian to keep you well-fed.”
“Um.” Iulia reaches for the caviar, and trips it. The room takes on a brackish aroma. “Fuck. God.” Pieces of nerve stick out between Acanthus’ fangs, like dental floss. “You know in my culture it’s actually considered disrespectful not to eat what you spill on the floor.”
The tree grins, her body and eyes immediately doing that enthralling thing again. “That’s precious! Thank you for sharing it with me. However, I’d like you to remain seated and eat what’s in front of you.” Her vines push the leg tray across the table, to rest beside the lobster and what’s left of the sausage. “Or, would you prefer it cooked first?”
This is it: this is all Iulia has left in her. With no nutrition, entirely too much sleep, the unsettlement of the day, she cannot resist a second time. Pacman death noise. She grabs the leg by both ends, and caves.
Raw meat is difficult. By the time she’s done, she doesn’t even have energy to vomit. She faceplants in the butter. “Prion disease,” she groans, after a long time. “Your, your sex slave. I imagine she’s clean. But the neurons. Prion disease. Do you want a cute little victim of kuru?”, as though by protesting she could walk back what she just did.
A vine curls around Iulia’s forehead and lifts her from the butter. It looks different from the others; different leaves, different texture, tipped with a flower that doesn’t match Acanthus. A little needle erupts from the flower with a twitch, and pricks her collarbone. “There! In about four minutes it won’t be a problem.”
“Wugh,” Iulia wughs. She fumbles for the black coffee, careful, this time, not to spill. She can’t trust the devil not to make good on her promise. “We were going to sign something.”
“Are you really in any state to be signing things right now, darling? It looks to me like you need to sleep off that meal. But you’ve gotten so much sleep already…”
“Don’t jerk me off. Around. Whatever. You didn’t just drug me, did you? I would rather make a deal sated and sober than hungry and high.”
The trays are passed to Katie in a tangle of vines, and disappear back out of the room with her. “Then, let’s make a deal. What would you like from me, Iulia, that you would be willing to bargain for?”
“I would like...” Freedom, if in pieces. “I would like to walk around the ship, and to speak with your flowers. Florals. Faggots?”
—
THEN
“I keep coming back to that look on your face, darling…” She pets the human in her lap. “That worshipful terror. You wear it differently, somehow, than every other human I’ve seen frightened.”
She rolls the girl over, eliciting little noises, and continues petting. “What makes you special, hmm? How can I play with you like that without hurting you?”
The floret looks up at her with love and wonder.
NOW
MourningGlory (6 minutes ago) And she ate it? She was aware she had other options?
DistantSong (5 minutes ago) She consciously picked it over the lobster. I don’t know if she realized that. I’m waiting to tell her.
DistantSong (5 minutes ago) I might provide her with a whole Katie menu to choose from tomorrow.
MourningGlory (5 minutes ago) You should do it and send me the video.
—
Acanthus leads Iulia and Katie to a park overlooking a great window. The planet passes below as their section of the ship rotates. Other affini and florets walk by. It’s peaceful. “Anyone catch your eye, darling?”
Rows of gleaming-eyed people with flowers in their hair coo on the laps of their world-trees. Iulia had expected a sort of vacant stare. They look startlingly alive. She focuses on Katie, who is clung to Acanthus by the arm. “I ate your leg. It’s nice to meet you?”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Iulia!” Her tone is bright, cheerful, very energetic for someone who just watched a giant plant and a terrorist devour a copy of her leg raw. “I used to be in denial about wanting things like that, but Mistress helped me stop being ashamed of who I am and how I feel!”
“Does it even count if it’s a replica? I might as well have eaten raw beef at that point, right?” She’s not sure who she’s asking, or why. The memory makes a tickle of bile pool in her navel.
“It’s close enough for me! Neither of us really wanted to get into the philosophical side of if it’s really my leg or not. I’m just happy to be tasty!” Katie’s really, very, maybe ‘way too’, happy about being tasty.
“Sorry to fuck your whole life, but I want to get into the philosophical side. I don’t think it’s the same. You don’t feel abjection about it. Can you feel abjection?” Iulia suppresses the urge to tap on the side of Katie’s head and see if it makes a hollow sound. Poor girl wouldn’t find it objectionable, probably. But her mistress would.
Acanthus leans in, vines coiling possessively around Katie in ways that Iulia will never get used to. “Abjection. That’s a concept in your human approach to critical thought, yes?”
“The intrusion into the social order by that which lies outside it. Filth into cleanliness. Unrecoverable damage. You’re super geniuses, right? I’ll give you a bibliography, read it with your super-eyes.”
“I’d be happy to! Here,” Acanthus cracks her chest open and pulls out a tablet half the size of but otherwise identical to her own. That’s convenient. Iulia’s tits never even got big enough to use her bra as a pocket. Wooden ribs and coiled-vine flesh knit back together while she speaks, “You can use this to contact me anytime. It will ask you to set a username, and then it’ll work.”
The tablet is unfamiliar, but touch screens are universal. Iulia tries to hit next without inputting a name, but the prompt just displays “Sorry, cutie, but NewUser is taken!” She can look forward to a life of little indignities like so. In a fit of gallows humor, she inputs FreeWillEnjoyer.
Acanthus waits patiently. “Show me the name you picked?”
Katie speaks up. “FreeWillEnjoyer, Mistress!”
Iulia’s tablet chimes.
DistantSong (<30 seconds ago) And now you can reach me when I’m not visiting you!
FreeWillEnjoyer (<30 seconds ago) I’ve always wanted to be in round-the-clock contact with my tormentors.
Acanthus smiles down at her with those big glowing eyes. “You’re already in the panopticon, darling. Now you can talk to it!”
“You pick that one up from our books, or invent it independently?” The resistance has yet to figure out what manner of ‘autotranslator’ the affini are using. It is clear to Iulia, now, that they just learned human tongues that quick. The vastness of their intellect wobbles her.
“I read a dictionary.” Acanthus is serious. “The tricky part was making the right shapes to form your cute little words. That took practice.”
“Is there anything we can do that isn’t cute and little?”
“You’re much smaller than me, hence little, and because I’m compelled to protect and control you, everything you do is cute. I’m incapable of seeing you as anything less or more.”
“So, if I do this...” Iulia rounds on Katie. Her entire existence immediately becomes soft vines and golden flowers and not being able to move her limbs. She can count at least three distinct pinprick sensations like the needle from lunch at her chest. Acanthus parts herself, forcing– allowing?– Iulia to make eye contact with her mask-face, beautiful eyes blazing red and gold.
“I was wondering when you’d try that, petal. Sleep.”
—
It takes Iulia a day of swimming through molasses to wake. When she shuffles in bed, her naked genitals drape over her leg. No clothes anywhere in the room. Okay, the sexual humiliation part of the POW ritual, that’s a freebie. She yawns, stretches, and says into the aether: “I was going to give her a hug, you know.”
When there is no response, she gets down on the floor and does some calisthenics. Squats are hard. Her cock keeps hitting her thighs. The sight must be terribly funny to whoever’s watching, assuming the affini have any sense of humor that doesn’t derive from fussy cooing. Checks her tablet. DistantSong has filed a Notice of Intent to Domesticate for FreeWillEnjoyer.
He breaks down laughing. He has to. Linguistically it’s too good. The laughter turns to tears. When the tears run out, he lays down on the floor and waits to die.
—
THEN
A monster of vines and thorns tears open the door to the room, flowing into the space like liquid. At the back of the darkened room, a human with a wreath of golden flowers in her hair screams and finds there’s nowhere behind her to run.
The girl wakes up on a soft bed surrounded by golden flowers. As she stirs, more bloom all around her.
NOW
Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom, wakes up on the he/him side of the pronouns, makes absolutely certain that both of his florets are going to be okay with him out again, and sets off. Along the way, he stops for breakfast, talks with Magnolia, and receives several interesting but ultimately irrelevant updates from his Captain.
—
Before anything else has a chance to pass through the opening door of Iulia’s room, a leather collar soars through the air to land softly on the empty bed.
“Good morning, darling!” Acanthus practically sings it, already grinning. “Let’s change the game a bit.”
Iulia feels the warm comfort of simulated climate pass between his fingers.
Acanthus strides right by to sit in the larger chair, propping his legs up on the table when he does so. A single press on his tablet brings the walls, floor, and ceiling to life as screens. Government records (no living relatives), advertising agency demographic profiles (“Communist, 72%. Narcissist, 85%. Sadist, 91%.”), a panoply of satellite photos from before and after the Compact arrived (never caught wearing anything too flashy, which stands out all in its own way). One entire wall devoted to a sorted-by-date catalog of unsolved bombings, fires, poisonings, assaults, and plain old murders. Each has a thin green line connecting it to a satellite photo.
The tree regards his own claw-sharp fingers with the apparent disinterest of a bored teenager checking her nails. “That you avoided major suspicion or long-term incarceration for your activities, tendencies, and personality on such a heavily retributive-justice-happy world as yours, Iulia Spectacle, leaves me in awe! That, given such apparent invincibility, you would turn your attentions to the new order hardly surprises. That your attempt to kill two of my peers by forcing them out of an airlock in the upper atmosphere was able to come anywhere near fruition… keeps me up at night! I didn’t need yesterday to be able to recommend– with full confidence!– your domestication, but I must thank you for proving my case.”
He bothers to turn to look at Iulia. “I will make sure you never pose a threat to one of my florets again.”
It is a little awe-inducing to see her place in the panopticon all laid out like that. But more than anything else, Iulia feels terrible calm. She is such a speck. Her place doesn’t matter and never did. A sneeze in the wind. She counts ten breaths, and says: “You would be making two cute little sophonts very sad.”
“Elaborate.”
“That girl wants to be killed more than anything I’ve ever killed.” Talking makes her concentration break. She feels confessional. It’s the scent. She can power through, ironically, if she focuses on long, slow breaths, the rhythm of her lungs themselves. Talking makes it harder. “I’ve killed a lot. Have you? I don’t think you have. It’s not how you operate. You should’ve seen how she looked at me. She wants it. Excuse me. But I’m harmless now, anyway. I’m no good like this. Please pump me full of sex epinephrine now.”
There’s one of those pinprick injections again, on her thigh. “Darling,” Acanthus is audibly smiling again. “You understand her perfectly. In fact, I think you’re still going to make her very happy. But to do that, we’re going to have to work on you a little bit. That’s a disinhibitor in your system now. Come over here and tell me all about killing.”
Only about half of that command carried the ineffable voice, so Iulia, only just, manages to stay on the floor. “It feels good and I like it.” She’s safe for all of two seconds, and then truth peels off her tongue: “I’m not a communist. Not even a member of society. Not willingly. They just don’t take trannies in the army. I ingratiated myself to whoever would put a gun in my hands. I’m sick with hate.”
Iulia trembles. The spacious, comfortable cell feels small and cold, and she’s sweating. She has never said this to anyone. After sex she stares at the ceiling and wonders how much of her personality is an extended ruse to cover up her core. What it says about her that she trusts an obsessive rapist alien to hear it: nothing she doesn’t already know. In another reality, she’s someone else’s sexual invader. It still leaves her raw. She, finally, lifts a hand and touches her chest, to self-soothe. The motion makes her burst into tears. “God dammit. I don’t do drugs. Too many people I know died like that. Not that I’d mind. But it’s a sign of weakness. I’m being sarcastic when I ask for the drugs. I think that’s how you’re the devil. Literalism. You fucking asshole.”
Acanthus picks her up and sets her in his lap. Something pricks her other thigh. “A light relaxant to help you keep going.” He looks down at her with his beautiful eyes and beautiful face and beautiful scent. “You hold so much hate, petal. What’s at the bottom of that hate?”
It’s finally happening: the rape. Iulia should feel worse about it. She understands the fact that she doesn’t can be attributed to the drugs. That holds little water. She reaches up a hand towards Acanthus, tracing the little spaces between her coils of vines. She wants to slither in like a snake through grass. “It’s too big. There’s no bottom.”
He traces her jaw with a finger. The thin film of her soul pares off her skin. “Has it always been there?”
“It’s my first proper feeling. Everything before that was just boredom.”
“You poor thing. A human should first know love.”
Iulia seizes Acanthus by the jaw, and Acanthus allows it, because he is sweet in his neverending power. She falls into his eyes. She feels that she should be screaming when she whispers, ragged: “I don’t want to be human and I don’t want to know love.”
Acanthus holds her, the moment stretching into a torturously pleasant eternity as she looks into his eyes, following little golden sparks through the patterns. She forgets herself, and for a while that she is just another vine among the many twining around her. When she is not a vine she is the little golden spark, dancing, dancing. Eventually she realizes he is speaking, and her body wants to jump like reality brought 200 volts to the chest when it came back, but she can’t manage that convulsion, and she still can’t feel bad about it. “Will you let me separate you from your burdensome humanity, petal?”
—
Iulia brushes another vine from her face. She’s grown somewhat capable of telling herself none of the trees are Acanthus in disguise, mostly by admitting that if he’s snuck up like that, she’s fucked anyway.
Of course he’d drop her into the jungle. It’s not just the psychological effect: he has a full document of Valued Customer Data evaluating her historical performance in urban environs. Nevertheless she presses on. Her favorite Faustian bargain is the devil’s in Georgia. Something infectious about its old-world jingoism. The devil will not load your hand, he will not play you to the tune of your own law with his ancient terrible wit. He will most certainly try to take you in a straight fight. And you will beat his ass.
The rules are one-sided in her favor. All she has to do is draw blood… sap? Draw blood. Acanthus has to completely subdue her to win. And he can’t do that without getting close. He’s hard to spot in this, sure, but she has eyes and ears. Find a clearing, get the hell out of the trees, knife him when he comes to you.
Easier than getting two of those fuckers out of an airlock, but she had a bomb for that.
If she manages this relatively easy feat, she’ll be handed to another affini, one that she’s been promised acts swifter. In retrospect it strikes her as a lose/lose deal, but it made sense in the moment. And she can’t back down. Not when losing means signing her own domestication contract.
There, a clearing. Iulia steps into the light, crouched and ready for anything the affini can throw at her. Which is why it’s not the affini that nails her: she feels a sharp poke in her upper thigh, and traces its source to fucking Katie, in a nest far atop the clearing, scoping down with a big dopey grin. Right. The contract said Acanthus could not get any help from other affini.
Katie calls out, “Boop!”
Iulia’s mind plays the Pacman death noise, and not a thought more.
—
THEN
MourningGlory (2 years ago) Do you only bond with florets who think they can kill you?
DistantSong (2 years ago) Not exclusively, no!
NOW
—(You are chatting in: #general)—
MourningGlory (5 minutes ago) Not only does she only bond with florets who think they can kill her, she cheated me out of a perfectly good doll.
NewUser (4 minutes ago) skill issue wwww
—
Back in her cell, with Acanthus already sat across her bed, grinning smug. If he expects her to put up a fight, here, at the beginning of the end, he has not restrained her. She rolls over with cozy and insulting familiarity. If the tranquilizer hurt she could at least take some comfort in that.
“I have this sense that your mind-altering drugs are, well.” Iulia yawns. “You could make any of us into horned-up killing machines.”
“I prefer the genuine article,” Acanthus answers.
“So it’s like, fetishism. Do you have psychoanalysis? Critiques of political economy? You must. You’re communists, as I understand it.” She stretches, noting a small adhesive where the dart struck her, sporting a design of little yellow flowers. Acanthus’ handiwork. There’s pen and paper on the dinner table.
HUMAN DOMESTICATION CONTRACT
1. Above all else, you, Iulia Spectacle, must obey your Guardian, Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom in all things. This is for your safety, wellbeing, and care. ☐
2. Your Guardian, Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom, owns you. You are her property. You do not have political rights in the Affini Compact. ☐
3. You do have a guarantee of your wellbeing, as defined in Section 57 of the Human Domestication Treaty. ☐
4. This guarantee of wellbeing does not preclude your Guardian from disciplining you, as outlined in Section 61 of the Human Domestication Treaty. ☐
5. As the property of your Guardian, she may add, remove, or modify conditions of your wardship at any time for any reason within the limits established by the Human Domestication Treaty. ☐
6. Your full name is Iulia Lyrica, Third Floret from this moment forward. ☐
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below this line are additional terms that your Guardian, Acanthus Lyrica, Sixth Bloom, has stipulated.
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7. I do not permit my florets to swear. You must limit your language as such. ☐
8. You have voluntarily rejected your humanity. This contract will still apply to you. ☐
The collar is back, too. And the coffee. Sipping, Iulia checks off box after box. She skips over proscription number seven.
“Your political economy is largely centered around the concept of the laborer,” Acanthus condescends. “A society capable of generating spontaneous matter ill has need for that.”
“Okay, well, that’s fucking stupid,” and Iulia signs away her right to swear. “Could have used Mao, at least. This is a fine piece of showmanship but really no human has political rights under the Compact, politics grow out of the barrel of a fwip.”
Fwip is the air leaving Iulia’s lungs as Acanthus grabs her by the ankle and turns her upside down. A tendril presses some indentation in the wall, invisible to the naked eye. The room turns inside out to reveal mirrors covering every wall, floor and ceiling.
Three more of those delightful little needles prick at her veins. She tries to squirm away from them but already her body is limp. Acanthus confirms what she suspects: “A refined anesthetic. You’ll be awake, but free of pain.”
Acanthus has her by each limb now, ankles and wrists, spread-eagled in the tesseract of her own reflection. A razor-tipped leaf teases between her uppermost cervicals. No, she wants to whisper, please no, in the second before Acanthus degloves her. Oh, he lied, if by omission: pain and pleasure receptors are so close as to be indistinguishable. Orgiastic terror pools in her abdomen. She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She fears she might’ve cum. She has never been so humiliated. She didn’t think a sociopath of her caliber could be humiliated, but this isn’t social: her body, her only point of pride, opened by papercut.
“This is the haustoric implant,” Acanthus announces, workaday, as his tendrils wrap between the serrations of Iulia’s spine, and if she wanted to scream before she’s sure she’s dying now. “It’s a part of me, in a sense. It will make you detectable and pliable at my leisure regardless of distance, because there is no distance. Not anymore.”
The knot of little tendrils and roots curls around the inside of her neck, down her spine, up into her skull. It cozies up to her endocrine system, takes her somatic nerves out for dinner, pulls her sympathetic nerves into a warm embrace. Her vision blurs and words leave her for a moment as it snuggles down into her brain and rapes her optic nerve. By the time she can even conceive of sentences again it’s beating her heart and regulating her thyroid better than her own body could.
Feeling below the neck returns in time for her to realize that she definitely did cum, and she missed it. It’s an interesting experience, with the nice friendly alien implant keeping her muscles relaxed and still where Acanthus wants them.
Acanthus. Oh, how she loves him. Oh, how she already longs to go back to hating him.
She’ll never hate him again.
Before she can shed a single tear, her new best friend, Haustoric Implant, has already performed several processes human science never understood on its own to notice the related burst of electricity and neurotransmitters, catch it, give it a big kiss!, send it to a farm upstate, and replace it with something much friendlier! To make sure she understands, it hits her with a humiliating little dose of something sweet and sharp and tailored exactly to the chemical composition of her brain. The Pacman in the maze at the back of her mind runs out of tokens and dies for good.
The haustoric implant cannot be removed without killing the host under any circumstances. She knows this, immediately, much in the way that one knows that if you bend your finger the wrong way it will hurt, and that they can verify it any time they like. And even if she did, where would she get her good girl juice? She will live a long and healthy life, far longer and healthier than a baseline human, to the tune of hundreds of years more.
She’ll never forgive him, even as she does exactly that, over and over, for the rest of her life.
Iulia Lyrica, Third Floret, can’t help but marvel at her body in the mirrors. All opened up down her back, surrounded by Acanthus (oh how she loves him), a roaring maw of razor leaves and thorns. Beautiful and terrible even as he stitches her up, bloody and spent.
“I love you,” Iulia says.
Acanthus slips the collar around her neck. “I know.”
—
THEN
The girl sits at the dinner table, idly playing with a strand of the flower wreath in her hair. Acanthus brings two trays from the kitchen; his tray contains only a raw human leg. The girl looks up at him, wide-eyed. He smiles down at her.
“Why yes, it is yours, darling! I found your search history.”
NOW
Magnolia Tristitia, 5th Bloom, carefully lifts a cup of tea to the lips of one of her precious dolls as it lays, blissed-out, across her lap. Acanthus relaxes into Magnolia, his body uncoiling, twining with hers. In their native tongue, he tells her about the surgery. Magnolia blossoms, pink and purple.
—
Iulia is disappointed at how painless the scar is. But it does mean he is up and running the day after. He gets lots of wargame time, because Acanthus cares for him. Cares for Katie and Amelia, too, his new habmates, sweet as sugar both.
Amelia, he will grow used to: it’s hard not to, they share a neurostimulating response to eye contact. She has an injunction against refusing orders, so until they’re used to cohabitation, Iulia orders her to a comfortable distance. The haustoric has made him so sensitive. He can smell every dot of Acanthus’ pollen on Amelia’s hair. It eases the process.
Katie, he’s already bonded with. It takes seven attempts to catch her, and every time Iulia’s flesh is iterated on by Acanthus. He gets springier tendons, quieter footsteps, natural camouflage.
Katie never wears anything less than a full wreath of Mistress’ flowers. Following the scent, Iulia sneaks up on a little overlook, and sits just at the edge of hearing. His lovely new internal rhythms modulate a lullaby for prey. When he hears a contented sigh, he plucks Katie’s rifle, flips her on her back and raises his claw. His eyes swirl supermassively. Kate stifles a moan of agog horror. What she sees: Acanthus, come to end her at last.
Mistress sweeps them both up in a flurry of leaves and golden flowers and beautiful things. A warm sting blossoms out of her abdomen. Iulia has done good, he has done well. He is Mistress’ favorite hunter. If he keeps winning he gets to chase real prey.
With a little more iteration he scores fifty victories in a row, or so Mistress says: he stopped keeping count. She sets him upon a feralist enclave, to have real fun. Iulia’s expansive tree-mind catalogues the habits of all eight feralists within a day. He even gets to take notes: how fun! His right to the written word has been revoked since the comic revelry after the hab discovered the precise mechanics of pollination. He earns it back by pouncing on the humans, one by one, stunning them with pleasure-drug injectors and the pulse of his heartbeat, and one unfortunate eardrum-rupturing flashbang he is sure Mistress can repair.
Mistress was right: they are so cute and little all tied up. Iulia sleeps on clouds of vicarious joy, watching a feed of the feralists’ floreting surgeries.
—
Iulia Lyrica can no longer feel boredom. But she gets this gnawing sense, sometimes, that she is not doing enough. She airlocks Mistress at higher altitude than her first affini targets, and it still doesn’t take. For the next year she paces around Mistress’ garden, waiting for her reblossoming.
With a good-natured laugh, Acanthus Lyrica, Seventh Bloom informs his floret that if she ever tries that again he’ll shear her of free will. Contrite as she is, Iulia does not want that. How will Mistress experience the obliviating joy of transmogrification then? He is too vast for mere surgery, and injury only brings rebirth. No, he will have to die, if he is to experience a fraction of what his terrible hand has wrought.
They are not often far from the sun. Affini ships move like lightning on water. Iulia needs only commandeer a shuttle for a few minutes. The haustoric can’t spoof the biolocks, that would be too easy. She’ll have to prune Mistress when he’s not looking, preserve it somehow, record his voice, and there is the matter of proper piloting. She does not fear the process. Thanks to his Mistress, he has hundreds of years to learn, and nothing but the most earnest desire to serve him. Whether he understands that or not.