She followed Gladialis into the hab unit, and then looked around in wonder.  "Welcome to my...well, our home", the tall Affini said.  "Would you like a tour?", to which the girl could only nod.  The lighting was...it was magical-looking.  Soft and silvery-blue, it illuminated everything with soft tones, bright but not harsh.  Tiny lights glittered on the ceiling, and she looked up and around, eyes wide.  "The night sky from the desert in….well, it doesn’t have a name anymore.  But it was on Terra", Gladialis said.  "I fell in love with it while I was there.  At night when it was clear, you could see the curve of the Milky Way, and I just...I felt connected to everything."

A sweet scent began to fill the air and the girl sniffed, looking around and gasped.  The little white buds on Gladialis's back and head had opened, and gorgeous white and pink flowers slowly bloomed.  "Moonflowers, little kitten.  The plants that I originially bloomed from.  They blossom under moonlight, which is what this is", she said, waving a hand to the lights.  "Softer and sweeter than the sun, but no less illuminating.  Sometimes that's what's you need, you know?  Something softer, something kinder?"

She looked around, eyes wide, and Gladialis smiled.  "Let me give you the grand tour", she said with a smile.  "Living room", she said, waving a hand.  "I decided not to have a dining room, since I usually end up eating in the kitchen.  Buuuttt", she drawled, stretching the word out.  "I Iove this couch.  It might be one of the comfiest and softest couches ever, in the history of couches.  Certainly every single sophont, Affini, or floret who's sat on it loves it."   The couch in question was tall, clearly Affini height.  Green fabric-covered cushions lay on it, and Kitten ran her hands on it, amazed at the softness.  "See?  Told you", Gladialis said with a smile.  "And you got the tv here, so you can watch anything you want.  I've updated the habs AI to recognize you.  So say hello."

“Ummm…hello?”, Kitten asked, feeling a bit silly talking to the air.

“Well, hey there, cutie!!  How are you doing today?”, a cheerful voice asked from the ceiling. 

“Oh…umm…It’s been a day, I guess”, she said, and then frowned.  “What’s your name?  I…umm…it feels weird to just talk to the air.”

“I don’t have a name, little cute Kittie!!  Gladialis never gave me one”, the AI said and Gladialis shrugged as Kitten looked at her.  “She usually just calls me ‘hab’,”

“Hmmm..that’s…Fuck that”, she said as Gladialis gasped and the hab AI made a choked sort of sound.  “I’m going to call you ‘Lena’.  Ok?”

“Sure thing, cutie!!  Sounds like a plan”, the Ai said, sounding oddly…pleased.

Gladialis smiled, and then remembered the class and something she’d read in the manual.  “Terrans, especially undomesticated ones in new settings will aggressively pack-bond with almost anything.  Comfort items such as plushies, inanimate and insentient objects such as boats or plants, and even dangerous predators.  Terrans have been witnessed pack-bonding Krisutha’de, the famed apex hunters of A2365.23 and calling them ‘precious balls of fluff.  Look at these adorable beans and it’s cool looking claws.’ “ She looked at the Terran girl who still gripped the plushie like horses were trying to steal it.  And realized that the manual, if anything, had understated things.  Well…looked like her hab AI was now Lena.  She wondered if she needed to hide her little AI robot cleaner, and then decided that it might be a good idea to change its functional hours to when Kitten was asleep.  Last thing she needed was for Kitten to think it was cute and give it a name, like “Sweepy Mcsweeperstein”.  ‘Not that it wouldn’t be funny’, she thought to herself with a small chuckle.  Or worse, google eyeballs.  She'd heard stories about a "roomba" named "Stabby", and she was taking no chances.

Led into the kitchen, the Terran girl looked around in wonder.  She'd NEVER seen anything at all like this.  Never in real life, maybe in a movie.  Pans hung from a rack on the ceiling, and a few jugs stood on a counter.  There was some sort of island in the middle, with Affini sized chairs around it, and a pantry stood open at the other end of the room.  This one actually had "regular lighting for when she cooked", Gladialis said as her flowers began to fold up.  Some type of device took up a small corner of the room, and Gladialis said that it was a “compiler”.  “Ummm…what does that do?”

“The better question is what can it not do?  The short answer is that it makes things.  Cooking ingredients, clothing, pretty much anything.  The long answer is that it breaks things down to an atomic level and then remakes them in any of over a billion different configurations.  So it literally makes things.  You can ask Lena to make you things and she’ll run the complier for you.”

“That’s right!! Anything for a polite little kitten like you!!”, Lena adds and Kitten smiled.

“So…so that’s what Victor was saying, when he said that his…umm…that he and his…the Affini he lives with, that they don’t like using compiled ingredients.”  She thought about it, and then looked at Gladialis.  “What does it break down to make these things?  Not like…people or anything.  Right?”

“Oh, anything, really.  All ships keep a certain amount of ‘compile-mass’ that gets replenished when we dock, and in a pinch, the Baeira can grab a passing meteor or asteroid and use that.  And we have a completely closed system, so everything gets re-compiled.”  Gladialis watched as the little Terran looked around, holding her beeple plushie and smiled.  She couldn't wait to see her meet a beeple for real.  That would be so cute, she might spontaneously rebloom from watching it.  Even though she clearly had an issue with the idea of Affini having florets.  Oh well.  She’d been exposed to the idea for less than a day, it was completely reasonable.  Oh….wait…she still didn’t even know what a floret WAS.  Oh dear…..Not every Terran ever understood it, and that was ok as well.  Another item added to the list.  "Little Kitten", she called, and smiled widely, her eyes twinkling.  "There's some more to see, little one.  Come.  I think you'll like what’s next.  I’ll cook for you soon, I promise."

Kitten cocked her head and followed curiously as Gladialis opened a door and ushered her in.  It was....to call it a bathroom was like saying a battleship was a spaceship.  It was big, no doubt, but the tub….It was big enough that it could be a swimming pool.  "That's...umm...a huge tub", she said as she looked around.  A shelf carried a variety of bottles, bars, and jars, some with symbols that she didn’t recognize.

"Oh yes.  I'll show you how to use it later.  I think you'll like it, Kitten."  Gladialis smiled gently, watching Kitten look around with a wide eyed look.  "Never seen a bathroom like this before?", she asked and Kitten shook her head.  "Come, lets see the rest", knowing that Kitten had missed seeing the rings inset into the tub, perfect for bathing squirming or fussy pets.  Leading her to the next room, she opened the door.  

"This is your room, Kitten."  She stood aside as Kitten walked in, looking around and holding her plushie.  "Do you like it?  I can change anything you want.  I went basic since I didn’t know what you like.", she said, her hands losing coherence and becoming a group of twisting vines for a moment.  Thankfully, Kitten was too busy looking around to see.

The room was far larger than her room back home.  FAR larger than her bunk on Thors Hammer.  A large bed stood in the center, pillows piled high.  A large closet, bigger than her bunk stood ready for the clothing that Gladialis had ordered.  Even the stuff that she was pretty sure she'd never wear.  There was a shelf for stuff like books or knicknacks, a nightstand, a tv, and a tablet sitting in the middle of the bed.  "I got you a tablet, so you'll be able to watch shows, talk to other sophonts, or order things.  It should be ready to accept your biometrics", Gladialis said as Kitten looked at everything.  "How...ummmm...how did you..ummm...this must have cost...ok, nevermind.  No money, right?  Did you just have the space?"

"Oh.  Well, I had the spare room, and I had it prepared for you, just in case.  Furniture is easy to get, as were the rest of the furnishings.  Now...there's my room, which you don't need to see right now, and then the final room.  You ready for that, little one?"

"That's really nice of you, but you didn't need to do that.  I'd be happy taking the couch."

"No, little one.  You deserve a space of your own anywhere you go.  Some place to call yours, to rest and have private time.  And this is yours."  Gladialis smiled, but she was a bit unsure why the little Terran didn't want her own space.  Most sophonts that she knew, especially the Independent Terrans, all wanted spaces of their own.  Maybe she’d been so used to sharing that she wasn’t comfortable on her own?, Gladialis wondered.

"I appreciate it.  It's...ummm", and she shuffled, before looking down.  "It's just a lot of work."  Then she mumbled something.

"I'm sorry, little kitten.  I didn't quite get that one.  I’m afraid I don’t speak mumble, or mumblese…Or is it mumbleonian, I wonder”, Gladialis teased her, smiling gently at her to take the sting out of any of her words.  “Can you repeat that, please?"

"I...ummmm...said that it was a lot of work, and I didn't want to be a burden", she said, blushing.  "I...umm...I don't need so much.  And I didn't...I didn’t do anything to deserve it."

"Little kitten, you aren't a burden.  Caring for you isn't a burden at all, and  it never will be.  Ok?  You deserve good things, and I'm very happy that I can help give them to you."  Gladialis wondered what had happened in her charges life that she felt like this.  Maybe "caring for her'' was the wrong phrase, but Gladialis meant it.  She was pledged to look out for this little Terran as long as she was her ward.  “You don’t have to ‘Do Anything’ to get good things, that’s…”, and she sighed.  “That’s toxic capitalism teaching you that, little one.  You deserve good things just for being.  Simply that, little one.  Now...I have one more room to show you.  Well, there's MY room, but that's not what I want to show you."  Excited now in a way that she hadn't been before, she led Kitten to a set of double doors opposite her bedroom.  

Kitten paused at a painting in the hallway, something in an old, golden frame.  It looked like a terran girl, looking wistfully into the distance, which slowly changed to a gorgeous mountainside.  Water and purple mountains, things she knew now were trees stood there, and Kitten just stopped, amazed.  "This…this is gorgeous.  I've never seen anything at all like this before."

"Ahhhh.  This was done by a landscape painter  in the nineteen seventies named Bob Ross.  He painted the happiest little trees I've ever seen.  This was, I think Oregon, on Old Terra that Was.  And with help from the Affini Compact, we'll make it look like this again."  She smiled as she watched Kitten stare at it, amazed.  "I found these", as it switched to another landscape, this one a photo of the ocean and waves, "in the basement of some sophont who had fled Terra.  Can you imagine something this gorgeous just sitting and gathering dust?", she said sadly.  "Just taking something this gorgeous, a vision of what Terra used to be, and keeping it from everyone, hoarding it.  Just because they could."

"So…ummm…so what did you do?", Kitten asked.  She was imagining Terrans thrown in jail, eaten, or turned into one of those shambling Terrans she saw.

"Oh.  The best thing.  I called a friend who called a friend named Digitalis Lutea, and we digitized as many of these paintings as we could, and uploaded them to the overnet where everyone could view them.  And someone elses floret, a sophont who loves to paint and is quite talented, gives a class once a week on how to paint them."

"Oh.  That's…that's actually really…umm…that's really nice."  Kitten thought that it was a far better punishment, all those rich fucks had all their shiny toys taken away and now everyone could see them.

Gladialis grinned.  "All those works of art should be appreciated, no?  And I have a special reason of my own for wanting to see others appreciate them.  So follow me, Kitten."

"I very, very rarely let anyone see this, Kitten.  Soo...umm...no coming in here with dirty hands or food, that's one of the rules.  Oh!!  Ask permission before touching anything.  Deal?"

"Ummm...sure", Kitten whispered.  Unsure what she was going to find, her eyes went as wide as dinner plates and her jaw dropped as Gladialis opened the doors.

"Holy fuckknuckles."