Petal's eyes flutter open, but she quickly closes them against the bright light shining down on her, shielding her eyes with a hand. Her body is utterly exhausted from… before, and while she's apparently not being held in place anymore, she's feeling stiff enough that she isn't going to be moving herself any time soon.

Petal groans. "Mnmm… Mistress?" Petal can tell that She's close. She can't exactly hear Her breath or anything, because She doesn't, but she can hear… something. 

"Yes, my darling?" Her Mistress's voice is like honey in warm tea, soothing her from the inside out. 

"It's bright."

"Too bright?" Delphinium sounds concerned, protective… loving. 

Petal nods, and a moment later her hand is pulled off her face, to be held in one of Delphinium's. There's no searing light behind her eyelids though, so she opens her eyes again to see a gentle green and purple canopy, shading her from the worst of the light.

"Mmmm, thank you, Mistress." Petal looks around, now that the light isn't hurting her eyes. She seems to be in some sort of small park, or maybe a garden. There's pretty flowers all around, although none as pretty as those of her Mistress, whose lap she seems to be lying in. Petal smiles up at Her. "I love you!"

"I love you too, my Petal. How are you feeling after, well, all of that?"

"Mmnm, stiff. Bit achy. Heavy." Petal groans again. "It was… it was a lot." Petal blushes as she continues. "It was good, though."

“You did seem to rather enjoy yourself~.”

“W-well, I, um… yes?”

“Are you always going to be this easy to fluster, my dearest?”

“Um, uh…” Stars, how is Petal supposed to know the answer to a question like that? How is Petal supposed to know the answer to any kind of question? Maybe she could just ask Delphinium? But She’s the one asking, it wouldn’t really make sense to ask Her for help, since She’s the one asking. Unless it’s a rhetorical question? Petal hadn’t ever been good at not taking a question as a question though. Was this even a question she was supposed to answer?

It’s okay to ask for help.

Petal shivers at the intrusive thought. It must be her implant, right? Was that what that echo was before, too? Sensations that the implant was passing along to her? The echo did seem preoccupied with her pleasure, which is what she’d expect from an implant. Petal looks up at Delphinium with a smile. Her perfect Mistress. Her eyes follow a vine up her Mistress’s torso, until it disappears under another vine, which she follows down until it too disappears under another vine. She could this for hours, just taking in every inch of her Mistress’s body, until-

Delphinium shifts, and Petal can feel herself getting lost in the twisting and turning and reshaping of the vines. It’s a completely new pattern, and just as captivating as before, maybe even moreso. Petal feels viny fingers gently tousle her hair, and hears Her voice with her whole body. “Well, my love?

“W-wha… hunh?”

“Are you always going to be that easy to fluster~?” Petal blushes. Oh right, her Mistress had asked her a question, and she’d completely forgotten to answer it. What was her answer again? Oh! Right.

“Um… I don’t know, Mistress, w-what do you think?”

“Oh, I’m sure that no matter what else I change about you, you’ll always be ready to melt for me at a moment’s notice.”

Petal nods. That makes sense. Almost literally. She can almost feel her mind reshaping its sense of, well, sense, growing around this idea planted in her mind by her beloved Mistress.

“Yes Mistress! I’m sure that no matter what else you change about me, I’ll always be ready to melt for you at a moment’s notice!”

“I…” Wait, is her Mistress lost for words? “Roots, Petal, you are so utterly adorable, that there simply aren’t the words to describe it in a language you’d understand.” Wait, was… was Delphinium lost for words over how adorable Petal was? That’s… that’s totally unfair.

“Would there be words for it in Affini?”

“Of course, my love. A significant portion of every Affini language, and of every Affini dialect, is dedicated to describing all of the ways in which a sophont might be adorable.” Of course it is. Or, of course they are, rather. “For instance, my darling Petal, you are–” Delphinium continues for what feels like minutes in a language that Petal doesn’t understand, and isn’t even sure she could replicate the sounds of without a voicebox made entirely of ultra-precise vines.

“And… all of that’s good, right?” Petal asks, when Delphinium finally finishes.

“Yes, my love,” Delphinium’s viny thumb brushes across Petal’s brow, “all of that is very good. I think even I wouldn’t be able to find a single bad thing to say about you if I tried. Unless I were to resort to outright lies, of course.”

“Oh, um… thank you, Mistress. I couldn’t think of anything bad to say about you, either.” Petal pauses, but Delphinium seems to realise that Petal has something to add. “Um… when I’m allowed to think, that is.”

“Really? Nothing bad at all you could think about the person who stole your free will, turned you into a pet and invaded your brain? Who put a part of herself so deep inside you that even now, before it’s finished growing, it’s almost impossible to consider it as seperate to you?”

“I, um…” Were those supposed to be bad things? Her Mistress said it like they were bad things, and she can’t help but feel like some part of her would have thought it was bad, even a few days ago, but… “but, Mistress… those are good things?”

Delphinium pauses. Petal would be worried that she said something wrong, but she can feel just how happy her Mistress is. How proud, how adoring, how full of love. She looks up into the purple and gold glow of her Mistress’s eyes and feels herself somehow falling upwards into them. Her Mistress says something, in a language she doesn’t know, but she knows it’s praise. Her Mistress’s words reverberate through her, she can’t understand any of it, but she still feels the meaning on some deeper, more fundamental level. She is loved, and adored, and she doesn’t need to know what the words mean to know that.

“Oh dear, I do seem to have gotten a bit carried away, don’t I, love?”

“Mmmnngmm?”

“Dirt. While this is utterly adorable, I think I’m still going to have you come back for me, okay? I promised that I would give you the chance to experience this, and no affini would ever dream of breaking a promise they’d made to their floret.”

“Hunngnh?

“I need you to focus for me, dearest, come back to me, my love.” An order! Petal knows what to do with those.

“Yes Mistress!” Petal blinks a few times, shifting herself into a slightly more attentive position.

“You really are so wonderfully receptive, you know?”

“I, uh… receptive, Mistress?”

“Wouldn’t you agree, darling?”

“I- of course, Mistress, but… I just don’t exactly know what I’m agreeing with?”

“Do you need to?”

“I… um… do you think I need to?”

“No, my dearest, I do not.”

“Then, no, Mistress, I don’t need to know what I’m agreeing with.”

“Good girl~.” A vine strokes down the side of Petal’s face, before tapping the side of her cheek and casually exploring her now open mouth. Her vine is apparently coated in some sort of sweet, sticky sap. Petal quickly goes beet-red. She tries to make a questioning noise without moving her mouth, with limited success. 

“Uungh?”

“Shush, Petal, I want you to be aware, but that doesn’t mean you get to control anything.” Fuck. Petal falls silent. “But I’ll give you a chance to talk, soon enough. I do so love to hear your voice, after all, and I would never deprive you of the chance to beg for what you want, every now and again. You do it so beautifully, after all~.” Petal’s brow furrows slightly. She’s never liked her voice. Back when she was still trying to be a man, she’d worried that it was too feminine, but now that she’s becoming a girl, it’s too… rough, too deep. Too Jeremy, and not enough Petal.

“Not such a fan of your voice, my dearest?” The vine in Petal’s mouth starts to probe deeper. Her Mistress really likes her mouth, apparently. “I could fix that rather easily, you know. It would be utterly trivial to make you fall in love with the sound of your own voice, but I think it might be more satisfying to simply improve your body. Although there’s absolutely nothing stopping me from doing both, is there~.” Petal feels her head shake from side to side. She’s… actually not sure who did that. She wanted to, she’s pretty sure she tried to, but she also felt her Mistress’s vines, and she’s sure that she wouldn’t have been allowed to do anything else.

Delphinium continues to explore Petal’s mouth with her vine, a pleasant tingly slowly starting to spread from the sweet sap. Her head is also being controlled by a few of Delphinium’s vines from outside, tilting her head this way and that, to give the vine inside her better access, and probably also to make her feel completely powerless. It’s working. Petal feels her head tilt all the way back, and the vine in her mouth starts to slide down her throat. Petal doesn’t even gag. Which is weird, she’s always had a pretty intense gag reflex. It had honestly kinda annoyed her. She didn’t gag at all the last time Delphinium had a vine down her throat, either.

She didn’t realise that it would be, but apparently the vine in her throat is still thick enough that she finds herself struggling to breathe, except… no, she doesn’t. She finds herself just not breathing. Should she be concerned? Delphinium wasn’t concerned. Delphinium knows what she’s doing, she’s a vet, after all. For a moment, Petal thinks the colour is starting to fade from the edge of her vision as another vine enters her mouth and starts to work its way back down her throat. She feels a strange tickle, like she needs to cough, but she isn’t. She can’t. She tries to cough, but nothing happens. She tries to move her tongue, but it’s not responding to her instructions, either. A moment later, she feels her tongue move, or be moved. A thin vine gently pushes it up against the vine coated in delicious sap, before pushing it back down out of the way.

“I told you, my love, you don’t get to control anything right now. Which, in case you were wondering, does include your various reflexes. It’s not like you need them, with me here to keep you safe, now do you~. So why don’t you just let me get to work on that voice of yours, hm? I promise I won’t let it hurt more than you want it to~.” Wait, She’s doing that now?! Like, right now? If Petal were breathing, she’d probably be hyperventilating, but instead- wait, if she isn't breathing, shouldn’t she have passed out by now? Petal tries to draw in a deep breath, and a few seconds later, her chest expands. Long enough that it’s clear that it didn’t happen because of her.

“Yes, my love, ‘you don’t get to control anything’ includes your breathing, too. But you don’t need to worry about that, do you?” Petal feels her head shake. This time she’s sure it’s Delphinium, but she’d have done it on her own, if she could. “On the other hand, you’re probably more excited than worried, aren’t you~?” Petal feels some part of her try to blush, but apparently even that’s under Delphinium’s control. She feels the blood rush to her cheeks after a second or two, anyway. That’s so unfair. Delphinium even gets to make her blush on command. Although, technically, Petal is pretty sure that she blushes when her Mistress gives her any command, so that’s… not exactly new.

The vine with the sweet sap pulls itself free from Petal’s throat, and out of her mouth, only to be replaced by a cluster of thin vines, which follow the other vine, apparently into her windpipe. She’d have thought that this would have hurt a lot more, but maybe that sweet sap was some kind of anaesthetic or something, even if she can still mostly feel her mouth and throat. 

“Now, my dearest, I’d tell you to stay still, but we both know that you don’t have a choice~.” Petal thinks she can feel the vine cluster start to separate. She feels something she could best describe as being like tickling. It feels like she should be coughing, or laughing, or something, but her body completely refuses to move, unless it’s being moved by Delphinium. After what could have been seconds, or minutes, but probably not hours, she starts to feel the odd stinging sensation, growing in intensity, it even starts to get actually painful, although nowhere near as painful as her implant surgery. Which was yesterday, right? 

Is this what Petal had in store for her future? Some kind of lab experiment? Something for Delphinium to practice surgery on, just for fun, just because she’s clearly getting off on the idea of having Petal so completely at her mercy? Or worse better yet, does her Mistress have a plan? Is she working towards something? Is she going to take Petal, and make her into something new, something better?

What was it that her Mistress had said? If Petal were Her floret, She would see her… sufficiently divested of her humanity. 

If Petal had any control over her body right now, she’d probably be vibrating with excitement for whatever her Mistress has planned for her next.