Elvira spent the next several hours staring lazily out of a virtual window as the xenodrugs worked their way through her system. Through a blissful haze, she watches as the spinning of the stars slows and stops, the simulated gravity giving way to freefall. The entire habitation ring her and Akash’s habitation unit are on is being removed from the shorter range shuttle and respooled onto a substantially larger vessel. Dreamily, she asks Akash how big the hulking starship is.

“Akash — M.. Mistress.. What are the uh, dimensions of that craft..?”. Elvira is rewarded for correct title usage with a gentle brush of one of Akash’s vines against her cheek. Her head feels so floaty and distant but calm and safe nonetheless. The sensation of microgravity was calming in a way itself, it reminds her of playing games in the cramped quarters she shared with Mara back on the gunship. The two of them giggling and shoving each other playfully.

“Darling, you’re drooling again~”. Elvira blinks several times in rapid succession, shaking her head in a vain attempt to clear it. With some effort, she swings herself back down onto the bed while wiping the saliva off of her face with her free hand. She blushes, shyly fidgeting with her hands and the slowly drifting bedsheets.

Akash pulls herself back towards the human, her vines grappling onto various recessed handholds along the walls, floor, and ceiling. “The Helianthus is around 52 terran kilometers long, and 23 wide.” The human blinks hazily in thought, running comparisons to the largest terran spacecraft, then geography as she realizes that no terran craft have ever even approached that scale.

“We.. we didn’t stand a chance, did we.” Elvira’s voice wavers as she realizes that this is a statement, not a question. Akash laughs and smirks, “You certainly did not darling.” She pauses for a moment, smiling down at the human. “It’s for your own good, we made that clear in our first transmissions.”

Elvira scoffs, “You couldn’t have expected any species to obey an order to simply become a client state to some civilization they’d never heard of, especially”, she glances around at her environment, “with these terms..”

“We do hope for peaceful submission, but are very aware of the stubborn nature of most of our wards. At least at first”. She grins devilishly.

Stammering, Elvira starts to find refutations of the affini’s words, before taking a deep breath and reconsidering. She redirects her gaze out the window, past the affini flotilla, towards the disk of the milky way. “I’ve never seen the galaxy from so far out before.”

“It really is beautiful! Had we known a species as cute as humans existed in it, we would’ve expanded here decades ago”. Akash ruffles Elvira’s hair lightly. The human woman shivers, leaning into Akash’s touch.

Pulling Elvira up off of the bed, the gravity having partially returned. Akash examines a nearby clock. “It’s about time we get you ready darling, I’ve got a surprise planned for you~”

“W-what kind of surprise?”, Elvira asks meekly.

Akash grins. “You’ll see, but I think you’ll enjoy this. It’s time to show you the foliage district”