Cass became slowly aware of the room around her: the trickling of the mirrorfall, the artificial calls of nonexistent birds, the false sunrise leaking gentle ambient light down into the clearing that made up Leah’s bedroom. There were other things, too, like the weight of Leah’s head on her arm, or the warmth of her body as Cass spooned up against her, and the floral scent of her hair. A hairline scar on her arm, only visible when the butterflies drifted by at the right angle, stood out, perhaps the legacy of some surgery the Affini had done. She was breathing softly, still fast asleep, and she felt very good to hold onto.

Nothing had woken Cass up; she’d simply come to consciousness. Was it the old I-have-work-to-do reflex, honed over years in the bunker at Bulwark? It was odd, waking up in room straight out of faerie stories, but Cass had to admit that it was both lovely and suited Leah very well — an unusual, ethereal princess from another realm, indeed. She gently extracted her arm from under Leah, smoothly replacing it with one of the many extremely fluffy pillows that surrounded them, and climbed out of bed. The crimson nightdress swished around her thighs as she stood.

Right. The dress. Well, that was one thing she could take care of, if it was still as early as the dawnlit sky above indicated. She padded in bare feet to the hanging vines that served as a door to Leah’s room, as flower-laden as everything else in Polyphylla’s hab, and brushed her way through them. The common room was empty and silent, lit in the same shade of light. Perfect, Cass thought, as she crossed to the kitchen nook. The floor here was a smooth sheet of rock, and while the layout was recognizably a kitchen, everything was as blended in with naturalistic aesthetic as the rest of the hab was. Instead of a countertop, there was a boulder with a flat surface nestled behind the broad tree; instead of appliances, a cliff face shot through with roots. She could make out shapes, but had no idea what anything was. “Hab?” she whispered.

“Hey cutie,” it responded. “Why are we whispering?”

Cass sighed. Of course Polyphylla has the hab AI set to floret mode. “So we don’t wake anyone up,” she replied. “Obviously.”

“Gotcha! Anything I can do for you?”

“Where’s your compiler?” One part of the rock face vibrated gently. “Okay, good. Now, can you talk to other hab AIs?”

“Sure can!”

“Great. Contact the hab that belongs to Tsuga Sequi, Eighth Bloom, and check the compiler records. There should be a tank top and slacks; print me one of each.”

“You got it, cutie. Coming right up!” The compiler began to vibrate gently again, and Cass let out a relieved sigh — she’d half expected the thing to refuse her on the grounds that the chosen clothing was insufficiently cute.

“I see you’re an early riser.” Cas whirled — Polyphylla was standing behind her, at the entrance to the kitchen nook, arms crossed, vines gently coiling and uncoiling. “And very clever about using the complier.”

“And I see that you’re better at sneaking up on people than I gave you credit for,” Cass replied. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing her heart to calm down.

“I thought we were going to pick out a wardrobe for you together.” There was an air of disappointment, but not frustration, to her voice.

“I don’t need help picking out clothes,” Cass said. “I never agreed to that, anyway.” The compiler chimed, and after a moment of experimentation Cass figured out how to open the panel and retrieve the fresh clothes. “You get one dress-up adventure, and it’s officially over.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Polyphylla said. “One might be sufficient, though.” She cracked her chest open and retrieved a tablet — somehow, her talent for looking human made it a grislier sight than when Tsuga did it, and Cass shuddered. “I was able to identify several clear sources of dysphoria for you, though of course I’ll need you to check those over — preferably, while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

Cass paused halfway through pulling on her trousers. “Are you telling me,” she said, “that this entire dress bullshit was intended to make me feel shitty about myself?”

“Of course it wasn’t,” Polyphylla said. “I thought you’d like it, and I was admittedly curious about the boundary state of your preferences vis a vis masculine and feminine presentation. It would have been a moderately useful data point for the psyche map I’m going to put together as part of your wardship. But then you had a dysphoric reaction, and I realized that I could potentially eliminate a major source of noise for that project and a major source of discomfort for you at the same time with relative ease. I know it was unpleasant for you, and I’m very sorry about that, but it’ll lead to a much better quality of life for you in the future.”

“How the fuck does making me miserable help anyone?” Cass snapped.

“One has to observe an issue before one can correct it,” Polyphylla said calmly. “Otherwise you’re just guessing and hoping for the best, and I don’t work that way. And don’t curse, I don’t want you to be in the habit of doing that around Leah.”

“My emotions are not some kind of weird experimental subject for you,” Cass said, glaring and pulling the dress up over her shoulders and tossing it away. The tank top went on, and she felt a little more normal. “Where’s my jacket? You didn’t recycle it, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t recycle it,” Polyphylla said, tapping away at her tablet. “You’d clearly put a lot of work and care into it. It’s on a shelf. I can get it for you if we go out. Here, look over this and tell me what you think.” She offered the tablet to Cass, and though it was like holding a family vidscreen, it was lightweight enough not to be too cumbersome.

“What the hell is–“ For a brief and awful moment, Cass thought Polyphylla had somehow dug up a photo of her mother, but then she realized what she was looking at. On the screen was Cass, but not Cass. She was wearing the red dress, but it looked right on her, somehow. It took a moment for her to puzzle out just what she was seeing. Slimmer shoulders. Thicker thighs and hips. A narrower rib cage. A jawline that wasn’t quite so sharp. The Cass on the screen was still very recognizably Cass, but more feminine, maybe a little younger-looking. “What is this?” she said, her voice emerging just above a whisper.

“A preliminary model for your preferred shape,” Polyphylla said, kneeling down next to Cass. “You can change it however you want. There’s several different interfaces for you to influence it with, and don’t worry, I have a backup saved in case you can’t find your way back to this.”

“How did you–?” She couldn’t push herself to finish the sentence. Her unreal reflection had its fingers around her heart, and it was clenching for all its life.

“Microexpressions, temperature changes, kinesthetics, various other factors,” Polyphylla said. “Very easy to spot, once you know what to look for. Using those observations, I was able to create a rough map of your psyche as pertains to your dysphoria, and using that map, I created that model.” She tapped the tablet gently with a vine.

Cass swallowed, trying to force her emotions back down her throat. Do not let her break you like this. “You watched me for five minutes and you figured all this out?”

“Well, as I said, it’s only a preliminary model,” Polyphylla said. “That’s why I wanted to get your input on it.”

“What the fuck is the point of this?” Cass whispered, her eyes starting to well up. “I don’t… I don’t need to see this weird, idealized version of myself!” She forced her eyes away from the screen — as much it hurt to look, she couldn’t help but want to stare endlessly at it — and glared up at Polyphylla. “Why would you think I’d want to see something I can’t ever be?”

“But you can,” Polyphylla said, her voice gentle and, Cass supposed, intended to be soothing. “We’ll put you on an appropriate regimen of Class-Gs, and over a few months your body will respond, and you’ll come out looking like that, or, well, however you do want to look. It’s really very simple. Leah certainly didn’t look the way she does now when I first met her.”

Cass blinked the tears out of her eyes. “… you can just do that?”

“Of course. Easily. If you’re comfortable with surgeries, we can even push things well beyond what you would consider the terran norm. My primary concern right now is simply correcting your dysphoria, by correcting the aspects of your body that produce it. I appreciate that it was uncomfortable for you,” Polyphylla said. “And I am really very sorry for that. But a little discomfort now has yielded a much quicker path to greater overall discomfort reduction.”

“You could have asked,” Cass hissed. “Instead of… of that.”

“It might have influenced your reactions if you knew I was observing them,” Polyphylla said. “I understand that it was likely a very hard experience, but please don’t worry. Once you add whatever details you want to that model, I’ll send it off to Arvense and he’ll come up with a Class-G cocktail tailored to your specifications, and then I’ll erase the entire experience from your memory. You’ll have all the cure and none of the hurt!”

The tablet slipped through Cass’s fingers and fell to the ground with a surprisingly soft clink. “The fuck you are!”

“Language,” Polyphylla reminded her. “And Cass, please don’t be afraid of it. I’m a professional. I do this sort of thing all the time. The edits will be absolutely seamless! You’ll remember your cute overnight snuggle with Leah just fine — the dress will simply fall right out of the memory. Oh, and I’ll have to edit this conversation, too. Hmm. I suppose I’ll make it about breakfast. What would you like for breakfast? If we actually talk about it, it’ll be much easier to anchor your memories to that.”

“You stay out of my head and you stay away from me,” Cass growled, backing away. “Don’t even come near me!”

“…I’m confused,” Polyphylla said. “You want to hold onto an uncomfortable experience?”

“I want my mind to remain unfucked with!” Cass said. “Why would you possibly think I’d be okay with you rewriting my memory?”

Polyphylla looked down at Cass for a long moment, then affected a sigh and settled to the floor — it was less an action of sitting than simply letting her legs collapse and spread out like a long, swishy skirt. “I can see we have some work to do,” she said. “If you don’t trust me, it’s going to make this entire process much less pleasant for both of us. You’ll be miserable, and I’ll be constantly having to adjust the data to account for it as I construct your psyche map.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t just plan on casually rewriting peoples’ brains whenever it’s convenient for you!” Cass’s eyes darted around the kitchen nook. There had to be a way out, a way past her. Maybe, if I can get up on that counter, I can slip through those vines… No, by the time she climbed up, Polyphylla would already be on her.

“There is nothing casual about what I do,” Polyphylla retorted. “I’m not simply poking my vines in your skull and rearranging neurons at random. I have been working with terrans since before we even understood how your species’ neurology functions. I was involved, in a small way, in helping develop our models for mapping terran psyches in the first place. I know what I’m doing, Cass. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be an accredited terran xenopsychology specialist, I wouldn’t be serving aboard the Tillandsia, and I certainly wouldn’t be taking care of Leah — she required a tremendous amount of deep psychological reconstruction and still requires significant maintenance.”

“You are not winning me over by talking about how you took a person and completely reconfigured who they are,” Cass said. “I’ve spent enough time with her to know that, whatever you did, it broke whoever she used to be.”

“She was broken long before I started treating her,” Polyphylla said quietly. She had gone rigid again, like she had the day before, transforming in an instant from a nurturing (albeit inhuman and creepy) caregiver to a terrifying predator. “And not by one of us. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and I will not have you talk about my Leah like that.”

Cass shivered, but stood her ground. “Then stop treating me like I’m not a person and explain things before you do them!”

“You want explanations? Very well. You understanding the methodology and my initial evaluation of your psyche will contaminate the data less than this degree of mistrust.” She softened, but only slightly. “Over the course of your wardship, I will be constructing a very detailed map of your psyche, consisting of various mnemonic landmarks that influence your baseline personality. Do you understand? I am simplifying the technical language significantly, but so long as you understand the base concept, we can continue.”

Cass nodded, relaxing ever so slightly. Don’t let your guard down. “Sure. I get it.”

“Based on what I know of you, both from speaking to and observing you as well as data collected about you both here on the ship and by Neoxenoveterinary Archeobureacracy, my current evaluation of you is that you have developed a highly feral persona that makes it difficult for you to mesh well with Affini. Tsuga seems to be the exception, given her relatively lax style of xeno care, which, while I’m certain is more comfortable for you in your present state, does nothing to address the underlying problem.”

“That being the ‘feral personality,’” Cass said bitterly. “Not wanting to be conquered and having my life managed for me, in other words.”

“More in the vein of being unwilling to accept guidance from an obviously more advanced species that specializes in caring for sophonts such as yourself,” Polyphylla replied. “Part of the issue is ideological; that can be ameliorated through time and experience. The real issue is the underlying tendency, which is anchored to an as-yet-unknown mnemonic landmark or landmarks. Part of my work during this wardship will be to determine what those landmarks are, how difficult they’ll be to shift or otherwise ameliorate, and whether doing so will require domestication. There are other issues, but as of now I believe that’s your chief stumbling block to integration.”

“Integration meaning ‘be a good little pet and do what you’re told,’” Cass growled. “The ‘guidance’ you offer is incompatible with basic dignity, basic freedoms!”

“What we offer is what you deserve,” Polyphylla said, finally relaxing her shape. “What you cannot provide for yourselves, what you deny to yourselves, what you need. Freedom, as you understand the term, is meaningless if you aren’t free from scarcity, from essential needs being unmet, from being alone in the universe.”

“And being given the world on a silver platter is meaningless,” Cass replied, “if the price you have to pay is your soul.”

Polyphylla sighed, or at least, made the right sounds and gestures to look like she was sighing. “Cass, I don’t want your soul. I don’t want to change who you are. I simply want to help you embrace the Compact. We’re not going away — we would never abandon you like that. You know that.” She extended an open hand, palm up, as if to make an offering. “I want to give you whatever help you need to be the best possible you that you can be. Can we please work towards that together?”

“Not if you’re going to take that as an excuse to do whatever you want,” Cass said, not moving.

“If I pledge not to enthrall or otherwise fascinate you without informing you of my intentions first, and to discuss any alterations I feel are necessary with you in advance, will that suffice?”

“I don’t need alterations,” Cass spat.

“You may not,” Polyphylla replied. “And if that’s the case, I will be very pleased. But I must check; I’m bound to do so by the terms of the wardship. It’s my responsibility to ensure that you aren’t a threat to yourself, others, or the community. In a way, this is what you used to do for your people. I just have better tools to do it with.”

Cass glared at Polyphylla, then shifted her gaze to the tablet, still laying on the floor. “Take that away. I don’t want it.”

She reached down and picked up the tablet. “I understand that my methodology was–“

“No,” Cass interrupted. “Forget the methodology. I don’t want it. I made my peace with my body and who I am a long time ago. Does it hurt sometimes? Yeah. But a little pain can be useful — like right now.” The smile she gave Polyphylla was not a kind one. “If I can be miserable, then I know I’m still me. If you were going to scramble my brain, that’d be the first thing you’d fix, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t scramble brains,” Polyphylla said, her irritation obvious. “But fine. For now. I don’t like simply leaving you with this lingering trauma, but if it gets us past this obstacle, I’ll defer treatment. I’m still going to keep this data. After the wardship is over, regardless of the outcome, I’ll transfer it to your data vault, and you — or your new owner, if you have one — can do with it what you like.”

“There’s not going to be an owner in the picture.”

“You’d be surprised how often I’ve heard that from future florets,” Polyphylla said. “As as to this absurd fixation you have on ‘still being you,’ I need you to–“ She paused, a riffle running through her vines, and she suddenly stood up. “Leah’s awake. We’ll have to have this argument another time.” She moved faster than Cass had ever seen an Affini move as she left her standing alone in the kitchen.

She took a deep breath and let her mind wander, thinking over what had just happened, processing it and filing it away, giving each word, each statement its due consideration. There’s a way through this, she thought. The same way there’s a way through a minefield. Now I just have to find it.

Polyphylla’s bathroom maintained the same forest aesthetic as the rest of her hab, with only a slight list to the utilitarian. The floor was paved in textured stones, square, of equal size, almost like normal tile. The bath itself was just as absurdly massive as Tsuga’s, lined with soft mosses, and already full of steaming water when Polyphylla escorted Cass and Leah inside.

“Alright, so, where’s the shower?” Cass said, peering curiously at a tree with a broad flower that might have been a disguised shower head.

“A shower won’t get you nearly as clean as a good bath,” Polyphylla said. “Besides, you’re so full of tension, a nice hot soak will do you good.” Her vines dipped down and neatly stripped the nightdress from Leah’s body.

Cass looked away quickly. Right in front of me, without even asking her, she thought. “Okay, fine. If you don’t have a shower, I’ll take the bath second.” She started walking for the door, but a vine reached out to block her. At least it didn’t grab her.

“Cass, this is part of your evaluation,” Polyphylla said, her voice stern but gentle. “I have to ensure that you’re capable of taking care of yourself, and that includes hygiene.”

“So you want to watch me strip off and wash,” Cass said, crossing her arms. “And if I say no?”

“Then you get a bath anyway, but without me asking nicely,” Polyphylla replied, “and I make a note of it in your evaluation.”

Cass heard Leah let out a giggle just before a big splash. “Cassie~!” she called. “Come on and join me!”

She felt her face grow warm. “You’re naked.”

“Yeah, and you’re not. Hurry up!” More splashing sounds ensued.

Cass’s jaw was beginning to ache from the clenching — when had she started doing that? She shook her head to clear it. She’s just going to throw you in if you don’t get in. “We’re going to have to have a talk about boundaries,” she said, peeling off her tank top and tossing it aside. “This wardship thing doesn’t make me your property.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Polyphylla replied. “Nevertheless, you need to bathe, and I need to evaluate your ability to do so. If it helps, I’ve been naked the entire time you’ve known me,” she added in a lighthearted tone.

“Ha ha,” Cass grumbled, shedding her trousers, then her underthings. Fine. If this is what they want, give it to them. This is how you get through the minefield. You’ve dealt with worse things than being naked in front of people. Like Intake, when she’d arrived on Solstice. She’d been naked then, sure, but it had nevertheless been worse. She pushed that memory down and turned to face the bath, trying to quash her feelings of anxiety and guilt in a like fashion. The water was hot, but not uncomfortably so, as she stepped in and found her footing. The rock inside the bath was textured as well, and the moss was firm enough to cushion the edges. She sat and leaned back against it, letting out a long, slow breath. It did actually feel pretty good.

“Hey~” Leah said, the steaming waters hiding very little of her body as she waded up to Cass. She looked away again, focusing on a knot in a (fake?) tree on the far side of the room. “Oh wow,” Leah said, staring directly at the looping scar that ran across Cass’s shoulder. “How’d that happen?”

“A man came at me with a knife,” Cass said, squelching the smoky, firelit memory. “I walked away. He didn’t.”

“So…” Leah blinked, and stared for a moment, her eyes glazing over. Yet another subject that made her tune out. “Huh? Oh wow, that’s a–“

“Leah, flower, don’t pry, it’s not polite,” Polyphylla said, her vines gently curling around Leah. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Okay!” Leah said, dropping the subject instantly and looking back up at Polyphylla expectantly. “The good shampoo?”

Polyphylla smiled. “If that got in the water, petal, Cass would have a very bad time, wouldn’t she?”

“Oooh, right,” Leah said, looking back at Cass and frowning. “I’m sorry you don’t get to use the good stuff! It’s soooo nice!”

“It’s infused with Class-A xenodrugs,” Polyphylla explained.

“Ah, yeah, let’s avoid that,” Cass said. “Sorry,” she added to Leah. “I know you like those. I really am fine waiting for the bath, if you want to use them.”

“No no no, it’s okay,” Leah said, pressing herself up against Cass. “You’re here! That’s even better.” The warm water made the touch less frustrating — everything was wet, slippery, less grating — but the fact that Leah was naked added an entirely new level of awkwardness to it. She was keenly aware of the sensation of Leah’s breasts gliding across her skin.

I can’t believe she’s doing this, Cass thought, caught between marveling and being horrified at the blasé way Leah treated nudity — and quickly crossing her legs. Stop that, stop that, stop that, she thought, willing it to go down with only moderate success. Fucking third puberty.

The rest of the bath went much the same — Leah would flirt with her, be interrupted by Polyphylla to have one part of her or another lathered and rinsed, only to to return for yet more flirting. The only respite came when Polyphylla began to work on Leah’s hair, a complex process involving several brushes, no less than five bottles of product, and a solid fifteen minutes of scalp massage. Cass made the best of it, scrubbing herself down with a loofah and a sweet-smelling body wash before borrowing one of Leah’s shampoos and quickly doing her own hair. It came out fuller and more lustrous than it had been in years — whatever was in that shampoo worked.

It also came out smelling like Leah, which Cass both very much enjoyed and was deeply frustrated by. I’m going to have to figure out where I stand with her, she thought as she toweled herself off. And then convince her to accept it. She still felt as if it would be taking advantage of a girl who was barely there. Leah may have been aggressive about her flirting, but was that really her, or something Polyphylla had put in her head? Judging by what Polyphylla had said earlier that morning, it was entirely possible that none of Leah was really her. If Polyphylla was as good as she said she was, and the work Leah had endured was really so extensive, wasn’t it possible that “Leah” was a fully constructed mind riding around in a body that didn’t belong to it, a body whose native intelligence had been erased in favor of something more satisfyingly adorable by Affini standards?

The disquiet lingered long after the bath, when Leah took her by the arm and dragged her to what was apparently her favorite patch of flowers, soft and admittedly comfortable, from which they could look up at a gap in the branches at the false sky overhead. It really was a good mimicry of a natural sky, with interestingly shaped clouds rolling by at regular intervals that Leah delighted in finding various objects and animals in. Rather than argue with her about how many legs a horse was supposed to have, she kept turning the thought over in her head: If I don’t make it through the minefield, this might be what I come out like. She wasn’t a Cliff — she wasn’t going to just settle down and open up a restaurant or something and happily accept being owned. They’d reach in deep and truly scramble her brains, and build something entirely new out of what was left. Polyphylla would probably take pride in doing it herself, and make of her that femme-y Cass from the tablet.

She couldn’t help but shudder. How long was it going to be before she could get that image to drop out of her head, a week? A month? Or would it be one of those miserable scars that still resurfaced years later, bubbling up unwanted at two in the morning when she was trying to sleep? Nothing hurts worse, she thought, than something you want and can’t have.

Even when she was younger, she couldn’t pull it off. She’d worked out how to wear a hijab properly, and the basics of makeup, but that was it — and all of it self-taught, since her mother hadn’t been around to help her. Not that her mother been terribly feminine, anyway, Cass reminded herself, but she was raised with it, and at least knew how to fake it. Cass didn’t even have that, and having the right body wouldn’t magically teach her all the things she’d never been allowed to learn.

This was taking a turn. Her thoughts were beginning to spiral, the clouds completely forgotten, Leah’s warmth next to her distant and unconcerning. She didn’t think about her mother often, and this was why — it was so hard to pull up out of out of this emotional nosedive. God, why are we like this? she thought. You made my mother like this, and You made me just like her. We just can’t leave well enough alone. And look what happened to us. Look what happened to Papa, he lost both of us. Why would You make us this way if this was all that was going to–

She was ripped from her wallowing by a pressure on her leg, as Leah rolled over and straddled it. She looked down at Cass, lower lip seized firmly between her teeth, leaning over her with her arms to either side of Cass.

“Leah?” she whispered. Oh God, does she want to–

When Leah’s lips came down, soft and ready, and when the weight of her pressed down all across Cass, and when her fresh and floral scent enveloped her, every thought in Cass’s head suddenly became so much less important. Her third puberty roared back to life, dragging her up from the depths of mourning with a fierce need. She could feel herself pressing into Leah’s thigh, and Leah in turn pressing into hers — softer, gentler, but no less insistent.

Are we really doing this? she thought, her arms reaching up to encircle Leah’s delicate body and press her close. She kissed Leah back, her tongue parting wet lips, slipping past teeth to find Leah’s own. She pulled a soft whimper from Leah, and it sent a thrill rippling through Cass’s body. How long has it been since I’ve made someone make that noise?

She knew she shouldn’t do this. It was wrong in every way. And yet, at the same time, she needed it. She needed one good thing to exist in the disturbing world that had displaced the one she knew. She needed to be able to give herself to someone without worrying that her soul itself would be signed over with it. In this moment, that meant she needed Leah.

Fuck it, she thought, clamping her thighs around Leah’s leg and rolling over to pin her against the flowerbed. Now it was her weight on Leah’s, her hands running through Leah’s hair as they kissed. She won more whimpers, even a moan as Leah shivered and squeezed Cass’s thigh between hers. This was how Cass liked it, in the driver’s seat and gazing down at a gorgeous woman losing herself in her arms. She was good at this, at least, good at giving pleasure. She could touch, and read in the eyes and the hear in the cries of her lover the joy that came of it, and in so doing claim a little of that joy for herself. Leah’s skin didn’t try to crawl off her body, even when the touch was good, so Cass touched her, a stroke on the cheek, a nibble where her neck met her shoulder, and God her skin was so smooth and soft. How was it possible for a girl this perfect to exist?

“Aaah!” Her lips freed, Leah found her voice, letting out a loud call of wild abandon as Cass’s teeth traced the line of her collarbone, her left hand stroking slowly up her side before cupping and squeezing her breast ever so gently. A test and nothing more — “More!” Leah whimpered, barely understandable as a word, but Cass spoke several languages, and this was one of them. While her left hand continued its work, seeking the tenderest spots it could through the fabric of Leah’s dress, her right hand made a long, slow journey down Leah’s side, pausing as her fingers drummed gently against her ass through her skirt. She made herself meet Leah’s eyes, saw in them the pleading, and saw in her nod permission given.

Under the skirt the hand went, sliding up Leah’s impossibly soft thigh to cup one ass cheek, squeezing it between her fingers and drawing a squeal that set Cass on fire from the inside out, the old familiar burning deep in her gut. Her fingers found a rapidly-firming nub on Leah’s breast and seized on it, gently pinching and rolling it — more moans, more shivers, and even an arching of the back. Oh, she likes that, Cass thought, licking her lips and running her tongue back up along Leah’s collarbone. She likes that.

On it went, Cass teasing the squirming, whimpering girl beneath her. The sound of her ecstasy was intoxicating, the heat it sparked in her building ever higher. Thoughts of propriety were out the airlock — all she could think of, in this moment, was Leah. Every mote of her attention was focused on her, on her expression, on her shivering, on the pleading stare in her eyes. There was something deep inside her, Cass could see, something aching to be touched, something utterly lost in the joy of being touched. That, for a moment, shook her, as it touched something deep inside herself — a kinship she denied with another vigorous squeeze of Leah’s ass. Cass rode the squeak she made far from the ghost of an unpleasant thought.

The hab spoke up just after Cass earned another series of body-wracking shudders from Leah, and as the fingers of her right hand began to tease at the waistband of Leah’s panties: “Hey cutie, you’ve got a visitor~!” Cass bolted upright and froze, the oh-shit-I’ve-been-caught instinct racing up the back of her spine before her brain knew what was happening.

Under her, Leah shivered and let out one last, long moan of delight that trailed off into slow, languid laughter. “Wow,” she said, a grin plastered across her face. She looked much like she did when she was high as a kite on Class-As. “You’re good at that.”

“I…what? S-sorry,” Cass said, rolling off of her. Now, the cold waterfall of adrenaline chasing away arousal, she realized what she’d been doing. Fuck. Shit. I fucked up.

“For what? I definitely wanna do that again,” Leah said, biting her lip. “Mmm, I think I need to go get some clean panties, though. Be right back~” She rolled over, got to her feet, and took a few shaky steps toward her bedroom. Cass watched her go, wrestling with her own guilt and confusion.

I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up. She’d opened a door that she probably couldn’t shut without making an even bigger problem for herself — a problem named Polyphylla, who was currently watching her from the far side of the common room clearing. “…of course you were watching,” she grumbled.

“Only at the very end, when the hab spoke up,” Polyphylla said, smiling. At least she wasn’t upset that Cass had done it — that was a risk she hadn’t even thought about before diving headlong into frantic lovemaking. “Though I could certainly hear you in my office. Leah sounded like she was having fun.” She crossed to Cass in a few long strides, her vines swishing around her like a floral wake. She leaned down and offered a hand. “Thank you for that. It was very reassuring.”

Cass stared up at the hand for a long second before reaching up to take it. “So you’re not mad?” she asked as Polyphylla pulled her to her feet.

“Why should I be mad?” she said, not letting go of Cass’s hand. “Leah hasn’t been able to stop talking about you since you two met — that’s usually how I know she’s found a very special friend. Of course, when I found out just how feral you are, I was a bit worried, especially about the two of you sharing a hab…but I’m much more at ease about it now,” she added, giving Cass’s hand a little squeeze before letting go. “You know how to treat her. Now, shall we greet our guests?”