Chapter Text
Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—
Sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in
- Sappho, Fragment 130 (Translation by Anne Carson, "If Not, Winter")
Aimee drifts in lazy currents of stimulus and impulse, not quite asleep but deep in the tranquil dark far, far beneath where thoughts can reach her. Soft fingers brush through her hair, and she smiles and sighs. Slow strokes down her arm tell her she’s safe, and that she’s cared for. A poke in her neck makes her flinch. Feather-light touches down her sternum tell her that she’s still safe. She sinks down deeper and deeper into that dark as the touches stroke pleasantly behind her ear, as the dewey warmth of summer billows from her open chest, until even sensation can no longer reach her.
Aimee floats back up to that place between presence and emptiness, buoyed by a current felt but not seen to where she can bask in the language of touch once more. She doesn’t linger, but neither does she stay away. She perceives small things, like fingers through her hair, or scritches behind her ear, or slow trails down her arm. Islands of perception between the dark ocean of true unconsciousness.
Consciousness comes slowly. Disconnected notions wink into being in the sleepy void. Scattered thoughts weave together into an inner monologue. Isolated stimuli compile into the first light of awareness, and wakefulness drags itself bit by bit out of the morass of hypnopompia. She perceives the otherworldly softness that envelops her on all sides but her face. She’s on her back, unusually. Side sleeper that she is, she tries to turn over. Her arm moves inches before meeting insurmountable resistance.
The trickle of awareness becomes a flood.
Her eyes open. Her head whips to meet the offending wrist, only to see it bound in soft cloth. The other end is tied around a bedpost. She tries to move her other arm, and then her legs. They’re similarly stopped in their tracks.
Where the fuck am I?
Her bed is far too soft to be aboard the Punisher , and her surroundings too extravagant. Even in the comforting darkness, the frilly lace of what she assumes are curtains to her side are significantly out of her comfort zone.
This is someone else’s domain.
She’s caught off guard as lights come on, warm and gentle, from crystal placements in the walls. The curtains open, as if by magic, revealing green grass, tall trees, and starshine. That tracks with the gravity keeping her in bed - she must have been taken planetside somewhere. Before she has time to take it all in, the door slides open, and her blood runs cold.
It’s her.
The ship rocked and the lights flickered. A screeching crunch echoed down the corridor, the shriek of a beast impaled again and again by the Affini behemoth’s verdant and sinuous harpoons. The klaxons wailed and the Punisher bleated its distress call into the uncaring void.
Aimee strains against her binds.
“Petal, please, it’s okay,” the creature before her says.
She doesn’t listen.
The bulkhead before them swelled, then burst apart in a rusty, crunching shriek. Sputtering red light poured from the wound around its maker, wreathed in smoke and shadow, its eyes a wildfire in the darkness.
Aimee fired once, twice, thrice and again as the creature advanced, slow, implacable.
Then it surged forward, knocking Aimee back against the bulkhead behind her, far away from the traitor. The wormhead.
Something squirms in Aimee’s chest. She strains harder.
Vines encased her firing arm and pried the gun from her, finger by finger, before crushing the implement completely.
She looked down at the monstrosity and found a mouth full of needles, fangs glistening in the flickering crimson of the emergency lights.
Then those lights gave out, and Aimee knew the old beast was dead.
Aimee felt something pierce her shoulder. She looked back into the monster’s raging, burning eyes as her own consciousness began to slip from her.
The last thing she heard was its voice, deceptively gentle words spoken through the fangs of a killer,
“It’ll be over soon.”
Aimee’s heart hammers in her chest like a bird desperate to flee its cage until something cold and cloudy oozes through her chest, then through the rest of her body. The feeling of a chilly, rainy afternoon suffuses her and smothers her panic, though the apprehension remains.
“Oh, petal,” she hears from the creature at the foot of the bed.
Aimee scrabbles for the panic she knows she should feel, but it slips through her fingers like water. All the same, though, it’s her.
“Are you feeling better now?”
The voice draws Aimee up to her face, rich and melodious and self assured.
Aimee looks away. “No,” she lies with borrowed confidence. “And I’m tied up.” The drugs can steal her terror, but it seems her venom is still hers.
The creature before her is undoubtedly the thing that took her on the ship. The shapely arms crossed over her chest are the same twists of vine that nearly crushed her arm. The brilliant flower that seemed nearly to glow bloody red in the flickering lights floats prominently, tauntingly on the creature’s chest, resting above what Aimee could only imagine is a pair of modest breasts beneath a wooden corset. Its lower body is the same waterfall curtain of loose vines, flowing across carpet as easily as it glided across rusting steel and sparking wire. The quartet of spade-shaped leaves from which the vines fall imply the violence the creature’s capable of, even as the rings of flowers running between them imply something else.
This monster is the reason she’s here. Her looks are beside the point.
“Are you afraid of what I’ll do to you when I get free?” Aimee asks.
The creature’s face seems to light up, relieved, smirking. It’s a farce, of course. A mockery of the terran form meant to confuse and deceive.
Her face is sculpted from dark green vines, no different than the rest of her form. Her two dim, red suns peer down at her, the same ones that stole the breath and the fire from her before. In the light, she can see that they look metallic and faceted, like hammered metal. Lips, full and soft and colorful, conceal the fang-like needles that glistened under the Punisher's sputtering red light.
“Oh, I’m not worried one little bit about what you’d do,” it says, “I’m already domesticating you. You’d have to be exceptionally naughty to dig your hole any deeper~”
Aimee shrinks.
“Why don’t we start with introductions, and then move onto explanations? My name is Calyx Saccharum, Ninth Bloom, and my pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her.”
Aimee scoffs. “Yeah, cool, and-”
“And your name, little blossom, is Aimee Saccharum, Seventh Floret. The documentation we have on file for you indicates your pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her’ as well, but you are welcome to have those changed at your request.”
Aimee says nothing. You don’t have someone’s name forced onto you if you’re slated for anonymous manual labor in a mine somewhere. Suddenly, her soft bindings take on sinister connotations.
“As for why you’re tied up,” Calyx continues, “that’s to prevent any regrettable decisions, like trying to pull out your cardiorhyza.”
Before Aimee can ask the obvious next question, Calyx pulls down her covers. She looks down her bare chest and spots something that doesn’t belong.
A green lump bulges out from between her breasts, sporting a little red flower not unlike the one on Calyx’s own chest.
She feels the panic bloom inside of her, but the cool grey smothers it before she can grasp it.
“What the fuck is that?” Aimee asks.
“It’s a cardiorhyzic implant. Simply, it’s an artificial organ planted superficial to your sternum that interfaces with your cardiovascular system at a few central points to… well, to do a few different things, actually.”
Beneath the drugs, her panic curdles into something still, quiet, yet so much deeper.
“Primarily, it’s managing the swarm of nanites that’s dealing with all those heavy metals you took in through your ship’s horrible drinking water.”
Aimee floats atop an abyss of dread.
“The rest of your old ship’s crew has a similar implant, actually, but yours is programmed to do some other things for me too. For example-”
Calyx brings a massive, verdant finger to Aimee’s face and tucks a lock of hair between her ear.
Aimee’s eyes slip closed and she leans into the touch, overcome by the feeling of comforting safety in the midst of her dread.
“Oh, that’s a marvelous response. Good girl~,” Aimee hears Calyx coo down at her.
Her eyes shoot open and her head jerks away from the contact. “What the fuck ?”
“That would be the Class-C bonding enhancer your implant has been topping you up on for the last few days, while you recovered in my vines.”
Soft touches along her sternum tell her that she’s safe.
“One of a few modifications I requested to the base design, and it’s clearly done wonders .”
“...how long have you- has it been drugging me for?” Aimee asks.
“A few days. And it’ll continue to keep you nice and pliable for me until we get your haustoric implant in to take over.”
Haustoric implant.
The infamous worm their vile propaganda loves to talk about. The thing that wriggles into your head and transforms even hardened asshole officers into dopey, doe-eyed little sluts for their conquerors. She’d heard enough from the horrific pornography the other sailors would pass around in hushed, jeering tones.
“...so that’s it then,” she murmurs. “I’ve lost. You’re just… you’re gonna scoop me out, implant me, r-replace everything I am until I’m one of your little wormheaded f-freaks.” Tears pool and slide down her cheek.
She startles as a vine brushes her cheek, soaking up a stray tear. She’s powerless to fight the way her heart flips, or the feeling of safety that blooms inside her.
“My poor little flower,” Calyx coos down at her. “You misunderstand what’s happening to you. Why would we go to so much effort to capture you if we were going to put someone else in your head? What a silly thought. A simple nudge here, a pruned thought there, a pinch of cognitive restructuring… that’s all a precious thing like you needs to be your best little self. A helping vine, so to speak~”
“Oh, so a ‘light’ brain scrambling then. I feel so much better, thanks.”
Calyx tuts, then her eyes briefly ripple with gold and her smile renews itself.
“I have an idea, petal. Would you like to make a bargain?”
“What, do you want me to haggle over how much of my brain you scoop out?”
Calyx’s smile evolves into a grin. “Currently, your cardiorhyza is configured to manage the nanites patrolling your blood for nasty substances, keep you on a steady drip of your Class-C, and dose you in the event you have a medical episode, like a panic attack or a cardiac arrest. It can do other things, but only if I tell it to.” Calyx crouches down, insofar as the concept is meaningful for a being with her figure, and brushes a hair out of Aimee’s face. Aimee looks away. Her fingers are soft.
“I’ve canceled your implantation for now. I won’t reschedule it until you beg me to. Until then, I’ll have to make do with your existing Class-C regimen, commands if you disobey, and any xenodrugs I decide are necessary for your immediate wellbeing. I do so love a creative constraint~”
Sure, any drugs you ‘decide are necessary,’ how convenient, Aimee thinks to herself, but she says nothing. The writing on the wall is obvious. She’s not getting a better deal than this. Except-
“What do I get when I win?”
Calyx giggles. “This isn’t that kind of bargain, petal. You simply get to be un-implanted for as long as you’re able to want it. My guess? This won’t take long at all~”
“That’s a stupid fucking bargain then.”
Calyx grins. “Would you like me to reschedule your implantation then?”
“NO! No, fine, I’ll play your fucking game.”
I just have to avoid begging her for a mind control worm, forever. How hard can that be?
“Wonderful! How about we get you fed?”
Aimee’s chair is way too tall. She’d started to realize the trouble she was in once she got down from the bed and took in the scale of her new bedroom with the lights on. The pit in her stomach grew as Calyx handed her the clothes she was intended to wear - a frilly black nightdress and a pair of equally frilly panties - but it really sank in once she left her bedroom. Everything in Calyx’s “hab unit” is scaled for someone more than twice Aimee’s size. She couldn’t have gotten into her seat without Calyx putting her there. The first of probably many furniture-related things she’d be unable to do without Calyx’s help, made all the more horrible by the way said “help” made her cheeks warm.
Is this my life now?
Her thoughts are interrupted by the *p-plunk* of a heavy bowl set in front of her. The aroma reaches her before she sees what’s in it. It smells like meat and spices. Real food.
“It’s a chicken and black bean stew,” Calyx says as she sits, taking the chair to Aimee’s right. The bowl is huge, and there’s practically a half of a loaf of bread next to it. “I’ve had it going all day. I suspect you won’t finish it all, but I’d like you to try, okay?”
Calyx runs a finger through Aimee’s hair. “You’ve been unconscious for a while, after all, and your body could use it.”
“Y-yeah, uh, sure,” Aimee says as she reaches down for a spoon. Failing to find one, she scans the table. There isn’t one there.
“Hey, uh, Calyx? I don’t-”
“You will refer to me as Miss, or as Mistress, little one.”
“...M-Ms. Calyx, I don’t… have a spoon?”
Calyx narrows her eyes and smirks. “No, you don’t.” She holds her hand over the bowl of stew and squeezes a small metal spoon out of the center of her palm. She adjusts it in her hand until she has it in a usable position, facing Aimee. The pit in her stomach opens a little bit wider.
“I can feed myself.”
Calyx narrows her eyes again.
“-u-uh, Ms. Calyx”
“That may be, petal, but I’m going to do it for you anyway~” she says, matter-of-factly. She lifts a spoonful of aromatic stew up close to Aimee’s mouth and taps her cheek with her other hand. “Open.”
“This is humiliating for both of us, you know.” Aimee says through gritted teeth.
“Whatever could you mean, blossom? I’m having a lovely time~”
Aimee keeps her mouth shut.
Calyx backs the spoon away from Aimee’s mouth, then moves it slowly closer, up and down, teasing “Here comes the space shuttle!”
That’s it.
Aimee tries to knock the spoon out of her jailer’s hand, but the plant is too quick. The spoon dodges with plenty of time. “Fuck you, I can feed my damn self! You don’t get to take that from me too!”
She feels a vine wrap around the offending wrist, and instinctively seeks Calyx’s eyes.
A mistake.
They’re a deep crimson, shimmering and roiling violently in pulsing golden waves with a sadistic energy that Aimee can feel. Calyx’s face twists into an impossible grin, and the vine around Aimee’s wrist winds more and more around it.
“If you won’t behave of your own free will, then I’ll simply have to make you behave.”
Calyx’s eyes and their frenetic display of colors and patterns starts to bleed outward in Aimee’s vision, dominating her world. Aimee feels her thoughts recede like the outgoing tide as her mind drifts down to a strangely familiar sleepy place of relaxed focus. Calyx lowers her arm, and shuffles around to her rear. Aimee starts turning to follow the eyes, but-
“Face forward.”
Of course she’ll face forward. Turning around in such a big chair would be a hassle anyway. Even more so as vine after vine binds her in place, coiling around her other arm, binding them both behind her, winding around her, and pulling her legs flush with the legs of her chair. She feels the tap on her cheek again.
“Open.”
She dutifully opens her mouth, and Calyx places the spoon inside.
“Close,” Calyx orders, punctuated with a swipe down on her cheek.
Aimee obeys, teeth awkwardly closing down on the metal of the spoon. Calyx pulls the spoon out and swipes a circle around Aimee’s cheek.
“Chew.”
Aimee obeys. Some distant part of her registers that this chicken and black bean stew is possibly the most incredible thing she’s tasted in her life, but that part of her, the part that thinks, is too deep in the still and quiet dark of her trance for that observation to propagate. Aimee chews , mechanically and diligently.
“Swallow.”
She feels a vine brush up and down her throat, and she obeys, swallowing her food easily.
“Open.”
Their dance of stimulus and response continues like this. Tap, swipe, swish, brush. Open, close, chew, swallow, open, close, chew, swallow. Aimee mindlessly obeys each and every order. As the spoonfuls keep coming and coming, though, the pace of her chewing begins to slow.
“How full are you feeling, petal?” Calyx asks. “Can you comfortably handle more?”
Aimee continues to face forward.
“ Answer me , petal.”
“I’m full, but not too full.”
Calyx waits a moment, then sighs. “Alright petal, I’ll put the rest away.”
Aimee continues to face forward , as the bread and the remaining stew are picked up and leave her field of vision.
After a minute, a finger and thumb grip Aimee’s chin. Her empty gaze is turned up and to the side to meet Calyx’s.
“Petal, I need you to come up for me now. Can you do that?”
Aimee nods dreamily.
*SNAP*
“UP.”
Aimee blinks and her body stiffens. She looks around. “H-huh, what-” Embarrassment scorches her cheeks. “What the fuck was that!?”
“I believe that was a hypnotic trance,” Calyx says, “and an accidental one to root. You wouldn’t behave, so I made you, using commands spoken with the force of my biorhythm. Those commands were only supposed to compel you to follow my orders, though. It seems a certain little pet is even more suggestible than I thought~”
Aimee’s words fail her, not for the first time today. What the fuck do I even say to that.
“If you’d like to be conscious the next time you eat,” Calyx continues, “I’d suggest behaving from the outset. Though, if I’m reading your adorable little expressions right, maybe you’d rather be blissed out as I feed you~”
Aimee isn’t sure what kind of expression she had, or even what kind of message it should have been sending. “N-no, please, I-I’ll behave… Ms. Calyx,” she says, but the mental image stubbornly persists on the insides of her eyelids. The thought of being still, and docile, and obedient . Of being helpless on her knees before her captor. Of not belonging to herself. Aimee shakes her head.
I’m going to make it out of this in one piece. I have to.
“Well then, now that you’re fed, let’s get you cleaned up and back to bed so you can rest! You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow~”
Vines lift Aimee out of her high chair and set her on the floor, a single vine wrapped around her wrist and tucked inside her clenched fist. A gentle tug instructs her to start walking, and to Aimee’s surprise, she does. Her steps are slow and unsure, but even that much is miraculous after spending so long floating around in microgravity. Calyx’s pace is also mercifully slow, no doubt deliberately. The gesture is demeaning, but its undeniable sweetness finds its way to her heart anyway. She blushes.
Calyx leads her to a large doorway. The door slides open for her, and Aimee steps through.
Calling this a bathroom understates it to the point of comedy. It’s nearly the size of her entire apartment back on Viburnum, and she lived in one of the really good units too. Where she expects cheap, plain, repetitive tile, she instead finds stone cut at odd, pleasing angles. Despite the humidity of the room, the rock beneath her feet is parched.
The wall in front of her looks like one solid slab of cut stone, but on closer inspection she realizes it isn’t a wall at all. She sees a lit candle perched on each corner facing her, and steam rising behind them. It’s not a wall, it’s a bathtub. A tub that’s as tall as she is.
Aimee hears the door slide closed, and her stomach plummets when she sees that Calyx followed her in.
“Look, I know this is a whole thing for you, but please, I can bathe myself. M-Ms.”
Calyx coos down at her. “Aww, my little leaf is learning so fast! But I’m afraid letting you bathe yourself would be too dangerous. You could pick the wrong body wash, or fall off your seat into the deep end with no strength to swim. To say nothing of how you’d even get up there without me. No, best that I take care of all that for you~”
Just like earlier, Aimee can feel the satisfaction wafting off of Calyx like a bad odor. It feels smug, gloating. Calyx’s insistence has nothing to do with “safety precautions.”
“Now, strip. Or would you rather I do that for you-”
“NO, no, I- fine. Whatever, I’ll do it.” She reaches down to the hem of her nightdress and begins to pull it up. She shuts her eyes. She can feel Calyx’s flesh-searing gaze, but she can at least stop herself from seeing it. The nightdress comes over her head, and she feels it pulled out of her grasp. The waves of satisfaction radiating from her captor only grow more ferocious. She starts pulling the panties down, but loses her balance as she steps out of them. Thankfully, cursedly, her fall is broken by vines, writhing and wriggling.
“You did a very good job petal, but why don’t I take over from here~”
Aimee is lifted up and her underwear pulled down. She curses the blush spreading like an infection on her cheeks, very much without her consent. For all its many faults, even the TCN hadn’t made her endure this specific kind of humiliation. She imagines driving something hard and sharp into that smug face. It makes her feel marginally better, but the satisfaction is hollow and bitter.
Hot water vapor kisses her feet and ankles and pulls her out of her own head, and her eyes open. Calyx lowers her further into the impossibly huge tub, until it’s up to her shoulders. Her eyes flutter. Situational context aside, the water feels heavenly.
She briefly worries about getting her hair wet in the bath until she feels a gentle tug at the back of her head. Vines wind through and around her hair, sheltering it above and away from the water. And giving her leverage to pull my hai- Aimee cuts the thought short before it can reach its treasonous destination.
“Now petal, I know this must be strange for you, but I promise you’ll enjoy it. And the sooner I finish, the sooner I can get you all tucked back into bed. So don’t struggle, alright?”
A vine slithers its way around Aimee’s wrist and raises it out of the water, dragging a limp arm along with it. Aimee watches as a thicker vine wraps around the base of her arm, glistening with what Aimee hopes is just body wash. Thinking better of watching Calyx work, she finds a fascinating spot on the opposite wall to stare at. The vine coils around, to and fro, spreading up and down over her skin like a spring. The bouquet of sensations pulls at her attention even as her gaze stays squarely on the wall. A sigh slips past her lips, soft, contented. Traitorous.
The vine slowly works up her arm, gaining ground through each cycle of gentle advance and retreat. Her breathing slows and her body relaxes, both in blatant defiance of her will. A second vine lifts her other arm out of the water and works it in much the same way. She feels a gentle pull from the vines in her hair. “Good girl, just lie back and relax~”
Condescending bitch , she thinks to herself, but her indignation isn't enough to smother the little butterflies her praise leaves in its wake. Layers of gentle pleasure soak into her body from the outside in. Her back presses against the culprit before her brain can think to stop it. The mass of vines that weaves together into Calyx’s torso sets to work immediately, wriggling and pulsing and flexing in a symphony of strokes and presses against Aimee’s back, conveying Calyx’s satisfaction through every touch of vine against flesh. A soft gasp dribbles out of Aimee’s mouth in response, and her eyes lid.
She feels surprise and delight join satisfaction in the chorus. Her face lifts into an easy smile despite her efforts, no easier to shove down than a buoy in the rocking ocean waves.
The vines around Aimee’s arms work all the way up to her hands, glide across her palms, and wriggle in-between her fingers, leaving no inch of her flesh unscrubbed. Her chest is pulled back and down. Her arms are lowered down into the water. Her hips rise up and out, and the vines around her ankles carry her legs with them. Those same vines pull outward and spread her legs in the open air.
“Please, no…” Aimee says, holding tight to this one remaining dignity against the sleepy docility that’s all but consumed her. She fights the vines and her own collaborating body both, trying with all her failing might to keep her legs closed. She fails. The realization that Calyx must barely be exerting herself marbles through her sleepy haze, inspiring seditious thoughts.
“Ssh, it's okay, flower. Just let it happen. It’s so easy to just let it happen.”
The reassurance from her captor quiets her protests. It would be so easy to let it happen. To close her eyes. To ignore whose vines are kneading her weary flesh, whose voice is leading her down the garden path, and to simply do as her body desires. She’s safe. She’s cared for.
She sinks even deeper into relaxation.
Vines coil and twist around her soft thighs and work them just as the other vines worked her arms. The gentle, sporadic points of pressure and release on her inner thigh light her heart aflame. Her eyes lid further and though her breath remains slow, her heart begins to hammer excitedly in her chest. She’s too far gone to consider whether what’s inflamed the beating of her heart is fear, or something much more dangerous.
“That’s it. Such a good girl for me~”
An energy begins to pool in her lower abdomen, hot and gooey, veins of heat flowing from a molten core of need that oozes outward inch by ruinous inch. Vines work further down her leg, twisting, scrubbing, kneading. Brushing against skin, snaking between toes.
Aimee squeaks as she feels vines on her crotch, and rides the shock as far up and out of her morass as she can.
“Mmnoo, please…”
“Don’t worry dear, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything untoward with your body. Not until you beg me for it, at least~”
Calyx’s gentle, rhythmic ministrations soothe her uncertainty and remind her that she’s safe. The offending vines make blessedly short work of her nether regions, and Aimee’s unease, tenuous as it is, drains from her the moment they complete their work and retreat. The rest of Calyx’s vines easily drag her down even deeper than before, to a place where voicing such displeasure again is unthinkable.
A gentle pull draws back her arms as Calyx slides up and out of the water, carrying Aimee with her. Calyx leans gently forward, and Aimee’s limp body follows, bound and helpless to resist as she is. She dares not look down, for fear that she might catch her reflection on the water’s surface and see what she’s been reduced to in these torturous minutes of bliss.
Vines wrap all around her torso, around her waist and over her tummy, kneading alien substances into Aimee’s remaining skin. More vines curl under her breasts, then up and around and over them, massaging them gently, but purposefully. Yet another worms up Aimee’s back, over her shoulder, and up to cup her chin. It pushes softly up as the vines in her hair tug gently down, forcing Aimee’s gaze upward.
“You’ve been such a good pet for me so far. Just a little bit more left~”
Calyx’s voice is hot against her neck.
The warring currents of anger and bliss, fear and disappointment, resentment and the desire for more, more, more are too much for her to contain.
Aimee groans, loud and unbidden.
Calyx brushes Aimee’s cheek with a hand, and Aimee catches sight of a massive finger. Deep as she is, she dimly contemplates what unwholesome things Calyx could do to her with it.
“Oh you are a treat! You’re going to blossom so wonderfully, my precious flower.”
Aimee whimpers. Calyx’s vines continue to press into her body. No square inch of her can escape having the alien soaps ground into it. The warmth in her body has spread to every corner, and Aimee feels that warmth build to something deeply troubling.
Then the vines stop.
“Hmm, as enjoyable as this has been, I suppose I shouldn’t keep you from your bed much longer.”
Aimee groans inquisitively.
“I know, dear. But you’ll always be free to ask this of me again. Let’s get you dried off.
She’s lifted out of the water and immediately swaddled in the softest towel she’s ever felt in her life. After a few moments, the towel is removed, and she’s set back down on her bed. She looks up into Calyx’s honey-and-paprika-colored eyes. Calyx brushes a hair out of her face, and Aimee’s heart skips a beat. Her face lingers, as though daring Aimee, before she stands back up.
“Sleep well petal~”
Calyx turns and leaves the room, door sliding closed behind her. Aimee is finally alone, untouched but for her bedding. Despite her soft sheets and warm covers, she feels cold. She drifts asleep before she can consider why.