Cass had seen working kitchens before, both on Earth and on Solstice, where she’d sometimes covered for a fellow prisoner too sick or injured to stand up for eight hours – after all, it wasn’t like her dead-end drunkard of a supervisor would notice. It was a shock if the disinherited scion of one of Osborne-Clark’s leading families left his quarters more than twice a week, and consequently no one expected anything short of an abysmal response time from Archives, which wasn’t exactly a high-priority division to begin with.

Working kitchens, Cass knew, were inevitably cramped, hot, poorly ventilated, loud, and injury-prone. They were among some of the most miserable places one could work, and relied more on churn than on employee loyalty – and that was on Earth, where one had the option (however theoretical) to quit. She was sure that this kitchen would be no different, but she’d been consuming resources since she got here and had done nothing to give back to the collective, and even if it was an alien collective full of trapped and brainwashed terrans, it was still a collective, and said trapped terrans deserved reciprocity if nothing else.

There was also, of course, the chance to gain intelligence – if Leah was anything to judge by, florets would blab whatever came into their heads regardless of what it meant for operational security. She might be able to learn something useful just by washing dishes and keeping an open ear, so she braced herself and took that last step into the kitchen.

It was not cramped, nor was it hot, and the windows lining the wall let in both light and fresh air. The same music playing front-of-house was playing back here, too. It was less like a working kitchen and more like the sort of thing one saw in photos of quadrillionaires’ estates, open and lavish in a way that screamed I’m just for show, but there were half a dozen people working with room to spare, smiles on everyone’s faces, engaging in friendly conversation as they put together sandwich after sandwich.

I really need to stop expecting past experience to inform anything on this ship, Cass thought, staring at the scene so lost in thought she didn’t even notice the man with the ruddy beard walking up until he said, “Hey there! Couple of looky-loos curious how the magic happens?”

“She wants to wash dishes,” Denise said, snickering just a little as she picked up another set of plates. “Still used to money, I guess,” she added as she backed out the door and vanished around the corner.

“Oh, yeah, that can take a while to wear off,” he said, holding out a hand. “Cliff Catalpa, First Floret.”

“Cass Hope,” she said, hesitantly taking the man’s hand. He had a firm but not tight grip, and callused fingers. He was maybe about her age – tough to tell, with the beard.

“Now don’t you worry about nothin’, alright?” he went on. “You and me, we’re square. There’s plenty for everyone here, so no more workin’ for your daily bread. The Affini make sure of that.”

“No, that much I understand,” Cass said. “That’s sort of the point, really. I feel like I’m taking from the collective without contributing. It feels…weird, I guess, is the best word for it.”

“Cass likes to help,” Leah said, leaning into her, careful to keep her hair away from Cass’s skin this time. The pressure and the warmth weren’t unpleasant. “She’s a helper.”

“Aaah, I see,” Cliff said, nodding. “Well, if you want to wash dishes, you certainly can.” He gestured at an absolutely pristine sink. “I used to, back before I learned how to stop worrying about ideas like ‘waste.’ We mostly just decompile the dirty plates now, it’s quicker. Sometimes, I still wash ’em though, especially if Master comes around. He thinks it’s cute, see?” His cheeks warmed fractionally to match his beard.

“But doesn’t taking something apart on the molecular level like that require an absurd amount of energy?”

“See, there’s that ‘worrying about waste’ thing I was talking about,” Cliff responded, chuckling.

“Fine,” Cass said, smiling awkwardly even though she didn’t really see what was so funny. “If not washing plates, then–?”

“Wanna learn how to make a really damn good sandwich?” he said, shrugging.

“Yeah!” Leah shouted, raising a hand. “I do!”

“Well, you, my dear,” he said, leaning in close and pausing. “Ohhh yeah, you’re real high.”

“Am not,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “Just a little buzzed.”

“Buzzed for you, maybe,” Cliff said, straightening up, “but high enough I don’t want you doin’ nothin’ dangerous. You wash your hands and go on over and talk to Millie and Jen and they’ll get you started on assembly. You,” he added, turning to Cass, “you look like you’ve got some decent upper body strength. Ever work a deli slicer?”

“No, but I’m a quick study,” Cass said. What followed was a crash course in food and appliance safety, culminating in Cass turning out paper-thin slices of cold cuts and cheeses. It was oddly satisfying, moving things across the spinning blades in a smooth, rhythmic motion. Cliff worked beside her, first guiding her through the motions, then observing her, and finally leaving her to her own devices as he attended to other kitchen tasks once he was satisfied she understood what she was doing.

It gave her time to think, and to listen. There was kitchen chatter, of course – orders coming up, timing, preparation details, and so on – but for the most part, the conversation was more like a bunch of friends simply hanging out. Leah got on famously with Millie and Jen, the three of them only taking a break from talking about their respective (ugh) owners when Leah needed guidance. Cliff and Sascha, a leaner dark-haired man whose personal grooming read twink to Cass, tended to talk shop more, including about some of the meats Cass was working with.

“Wait, you cured this yourself?” Cass said, shaving a piece off of something called capocollo. “It didn’t come out of a compiler?”

“Well, the original meat, sure,” Cliff said, “but everything after that, one-hundred-percent traditional air-curing. Sascha knows a guy who got into culinary history and preservation after he got domesticated, and he’s got a whole butcher shop full of cuts of meat that damn near vanished because no one with a net worth south of a billion could afford ‘em on the regular. Fewer people eatin’ somethin’ means less of a market means less people makin’ it which means less people learnin’ to make it which means it gets more expensive, lather, rinse, repeat. Ain’t capitalism grand?”

“Mmmm.” Cass nodded. “So what you’re saying is that six months ago, I could have bought a starship with this chunk of meat in my hand,” she added, smiling – this time, for real.

“Oh, at least!” He laughed, then reached out and stole a slice from beneath the deli slicer and popped it into his mouth. “Mmmm. Tastes like five years’ wages!”

“It is nice to be around real food again,” Cass said. “Half the time, all we had were those awful ration bricks.”

“Oh, you had the bricks? See, they gave us the cubes on my ship. We used to call it single-serving-shit. Where’d you serve?”

“Solstice.” She steeled herself and met Cliff’s eyes – there it was, the spark of recognition, the oh-shit. “Don’t worry. I was in for ideological reasons. Most of us were.”

“Well…dang. Glad you’re out, at least.”

“It’s not as bad as it used to be, in some ways,” she said. “We had a revolution when the war started, threw out the suits.”

“I heard about the uprising, yeah,” Cliff said. “The news said they suppressed it, though.”

“Well, they said a lot of things, didn’t they?” Cass replied. “They certainly tried, and– well, they tried.” I don’t want to talk about it. I need to stay focused on them, anyway.

“Well, true. The official news was sure full of it. They were pumping us full of nonsense non-stop after I got drafted. All sorts of things, like, ‘the Affini eat terrans alive,’ ‘the Affini will make you eat terrans alive,” ’they’ll send your family to the mines and work ’em to death.’” He shook his head and laughed. “Wound me right up so’s I didn’t know which way I was goin’, then pointed me at the Compact and said ‘go and kill for your species.’ So, when they inevitably got on my ship, you know what I did? I pulled the pin on a grenade and charged ’em!”

“…you’re kidding.”

“Oh, he’s not kidding,” Sascha said, grinning. “He loves this story.”

“Well, it was was later in the war, so we knew which way this thing was swingin’, you know? I figured, hell, I’m in the front line, I’m dead anyway – I might as well try and save my squaddies, right? So off I go, frag in hand tickin’ away, and one of ’em grabs me, picks me right up off the ground and yanks the thing out of my hand, and he stuffs it inside himself so when it goes off I don’t get hurt.” He laughed and spread his arms wide. “And that’s how I met my Master!”

Sascha snickered. “Every time, he has to make it so dramatic.”

“He had a grenade go off inside him and he was…okay?” Cass could scarcely believe it – she’d seen what grenades could do to people during the Revolution. Even the overpressure was enough to kill, even if the shrapnel wasn’t.

“Oh, yeah. He said it stung a little,” Cliff said, going back to slicing paper-thin cuts of onion. “They’re tough as nails, you know? He didn’t even have to rebloom– that’s when they sort of heal up and regrow themselves,” he added.

“I’ve been told about that, yes.” She still found it hard to believe that anything could live through having a grenade go off inside it. Surely the Affini had to have vital organs of some kind, didn’t they? “And after you tried to kill him, what, they just let you go?”

Cliff snorted. “Are you kidding? Charging an Affini with a live grenade in hand? One-way trip to domestication city.”

This doesn’t make sense, Cass thought. He introduced himself as a floret, but he seems completely normal. Probably more normal than I am. “So…he made you his pet?”

“Oh, he couldn’t resist! And neither could I, once he loaded me up with enough Class Js to knock out a horse,” he said, laughing. “Once he got me calmed down and explained how things work here, it was easy street.”

“Because you don’t seem like the florets I’ve met.”

“Yeah, because you’re hanging out with Miss Space Cadet 2555 over there,” Sascha said, nodding across the kitchen at Leah.

“It ain’t all xenodrugs and snuggles,” Cliff said, winking at Cass. “Though I do like those. But being blasted outta my mind doesn’t go with cooking, so here I am, stone cold sober and loving every minute of it. I did kitchen work for wages before I got drafted, sure, ‘cause it was the only thing I loved enough I could stand to keep grindin’ at. Now I get paid in smiles, and I like that a lot better.”

Cass was quiet for a moment, nodding as she processed what she’d been told. The deli slicer hummed as she shaved down the capocollo. They seem fully lucid, she thought. I’m missing something here. What makes them so blasé about being treated like this? Was it the kitchen? The sheer material comfort available? Was there a library somewhere on this that would dwarf even the Archives, and which would hook Cass the way Cliff and Sascha seemed to be hooked? That could never be enough, Cass thought. Not even that. What am I missing?

Leah insisted on walking Cass home. There was absolutely no arguing with her, though Cass certainly tried, and it occupied them for the entire walk. “You gotta treat a lady like a lady,” she insisted, hanging on Cass’s belt loop as the rounded the last corner. “And you’re a heck of a lady!”

“If you say so,” Cass said, but she couldn’t help but smile a little.

“It’s the rules! …I don’t remember where I learned it,” she said, frowning a bit. “But it’s a rule, I know that.”

“Well, that’s Tsuga’s hab right there,” Cass said, pointing, “so you’ve done your chivalric duty. Are you going to be okay to get back on your own?”

“Heyyy, I’m the one being chi-val-ric here! Mmm, good word,” she added, giggling and biting her lip. “But no, I’m fine, I’m like, so sober right now. And your leg is still all junked up, isn’t it? You should go in and sit.”

“It’s fine, honestly,” Cass said. She’d gotten so used to the weird, mossy leg brace that, for much of the time, she forgot it was even there. Her leg hadn’t hurt at all in days. In fact, nothing had, really – the situation aside, Cass felt better than she had in a long time, since well before her hormone precursors had run out. That alien HRT must really work, she thought.

“Stars, you’ve got such a hot smile,” Leah said, standing on her tiptoes and planting a kiss right on Cass’s lips. Cass was too stunned to stop her. “Mmmyeah, definitely want more of those,” she said, laughing. Then, she paused, looked a bit concerned. “Oh, kisses don’t bother you, do they?”

“N-no,” Cass said. “Just wasn’t expecting it.”

“And hugs?” She bit her lip.

“One hug,” and before the words were even fully out of her mouth Leah’s arms were wrapped around Cass’s midsection, squeezing tightly. It was a surprisingly comfortable pressure, and Cass even found herself enjoying it after a moment of getting used to it. Leah was warm and soft, and she smelled like a flower garden in full bloom. It felt natural, right, when Cass put her arms around Leah’s shoulders. They fit together well, and they stayed in the hug together for a long minute.

“I don’t wanna let go,” Leah mumbled into Cass’s chest.

’I bet you don’t,” Cass said. Leah’s face was mashed right up against Cass’s breasts, which, while not necessarily all she’d have wanted out of her second puberty, and which age had long since started catching up to, were certainly not negligible.

“More dates.” It was not a question, but a demand.

“We’ll talk about it,” Cass said. Am I dating a floret? she thought. Because she certainly seems to think I am. Can you date someone who isn’t even themselves? Am I dating her, or the version of her that the Affini made her be?

“More dates,” Leah repeated, squeezing even tighter.

“If nothing else,” Cass said, “I definitely want to try more of those sandwiches from Cliff’s. And the dumpling place you mentioned. So, we’ll talk. About where to go next.” There. That’s noncommittal, but it should be enough, she thought.

“Okay…” Leah pouted and released Cass. “I mean it!”

“I know you do,” Cass said gently. “And I’m sure I’m going to get about ten or twenty messages from you when you get back home.”

“At least,” she said, giggling and bouncing a little bit in place. “Okay! Bye Cassie!” She turned and skipped off down the path, paused, turned and waved, skipped a little further, paused to wave again, and finally skipped round the corner before doubling back and waving a final time. Cass waved back each time.

What the hell are you doing? she asked herself. She’s got a mind-control parasite made out of alien plant people in the back of her neck. And yet, Leah didn’t seem like a sock-puppet, dancing on invisible strings. The florets of the cafe’s kitchen had all, more or less, been fully lucid (which was probably a good thing considering they were using knives, deli slicers, and a hot griddle-top stove). She’d spoken to them all in turn, and they’d all been open about how and why they’d been domesticated, and how much better off they were now.

And every single one of them wore a collar. Every single one of them was owned by a xeno, a pet instead of a person. Somehow, they were happy with it, in a way that didn’t feel forced. Cass couldn’t understand it. Maybe the Affini were just that good at what they did – maybe all the florets were just biological robots following inhumanly complex programming that she couldn’t spot the seams of. But why make a robot that just wants to get high, hug people, and eat sandwiches?

She shook her head and sighed. There was no logic to any of it. Not human logic, anyway; maybe it made sense to whatever went on in the heads of the Affini. She wasn’t going to figure it out right this second, standing out on the path, looking up at the sunline and the far side of the ring beyond.

When the door to Tsuga’s hab slid open and Cass walked in, she found the enormous two-thousand-year-old alien plant in the middle of redecorating – or, at least, in the middle of moving some of the boxes that had been in the room Cass was sleeping in. The moment she laid eyes on Cass, though, she stopped short. “You’re back! Are you feeling better?”

“Uh…yeah,” Cass said, extracting her hands from the pockets of her jacket and shrugging it off. “I just spent some time with someone I met at the grocery a couple days ago. We got lunch. Then we helped out in the kitchen.”

“Did that help?”

“Yeah, I think so. Sorry about before,” Cass said after a moment of thought. “It was just a lot to process.”

“But you’re more comfortable about the difference in our ages now?” She set the boxes down and crossed to Cass with three long steps, squatting down in front of her. Cass still had to look up at her.

“I don’t know if comfortable is the word for realizing I’ve been bunking with someone who’s older than my religion,” Cass said, “but I can deal with it.” When she’d first left Tsuga’s hab, earlier that day, she’d been obsessively making a list of things Tsuga was older than – ignoring relativistic shifts between Solstice, Earth, Messier 32, and wherever else Tsuga had spent her absurdly long life, of course. Strange matter spatial torsion, obviously, so obvious it almost wasn’t worth counting. Electronic computers. Vaccination. The Hall-Héroult process. Movable type. The stirrup. Buttons. Eyeglasses. Rockets. Fireworks. Windmills. Banknotes. Universities. Chess. The Fall of Rome.

“I’m sorry. It must be a lot to absorb all at once,” Tsuga said softly. “I hope it helps you understand why we do what we do, though. You must understand there is no malice whatsoever in our actions. We only want to help you, and we have a great deal of experience in helping.”

“I can understand that,” Cass said, nodding. “Can you understand that we – me and my people down on Solstice – may not want or need your help?”

“Cass, I saw the way you were living. You need our help. Individually, yes, many terrans are entirely capable of managing their own lives, but on the whole you need us.” There was something in the way she said it, Cass thought, that hinted at something deeper. It was subtle, but then, Tsuga was an alien. Cass had enough trouble understanding other humans, so really, it was a miracle she could glean anything from Tsuga at all. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a sadness lingering behind her words when she spoke of conditions at Bulwark.

“We endure hardship for the sake of something better,” Cass replied. “How is that any different from what you do? You expend so much energy, so much effort – and I know it’s probably not as colossal to you as it seems to us, but nevertheless – you do all you do, in your eyes, to make the world a better place. Why can’t you connect what you do to what we do? Why can’t you accept that, if individual terrans can manage their own affairs, so can terran subcultures?”

Tsuga was silent for a long moment, and Cass had to fight the urge to look her in the face, for fear of meeting her eyes. Finally, she spoke: “You make an interesting argument,” she admitted. “You are a very interesting terran, Cass Hope, and I feel very fortunate to be able to know you.”

“Yeah, well…” Cass felt her face warm, felt and indulged in the urge to awkwardly scratch at the back of her head. Why do I feel this way? I haven’t looked at her eyes. Is she hypnotizing me in some other way? Or is this just residual emotion from Leah? “You’re not so bad yourself,” she muttered. “But, you see my point, right?”

“I do,” Tsuga said. “But I don’t think it will win over many Affini. I’m not sure it even wins me over, to be perfectly honest. We have a long history of doing this, Cass. You can appreciate just how long when I say that, from my perspective, our collective task has been going on long enough that I feel about it the way that I think you likely feel about me. It is ancient in a way difficult for me to grasp, with momentum and weight behind it that, I think, is impossible to deflect. I can see that it is good, but it is something so much greater than me that I cannot help but feel awe at it – at least, for now. Perhaps in a dozen Blooms, I’ll feel differently about it. We know and we have seen so much…and we have seen what happens when things go wrong. I’ve seen what happens when things go wrong.”

“And that’s enough for you to dismiss out of hand the idea that we could take care of ourselves?” Cass said, keeping her voice calm even as the rest of her clenched tight. They’ve been doing this so long that someone who’s been around for two thousand years thinks it’s incomprehensibly ancient?

Tsuga was silent again, looking away as her vines shuffled inside her bark. Anxiety? Cass didn’t think Affini could be anxious, but that’s what it felt like to her. After a particularly energetic shiver, Tsuga stood up. “It’s not something I like to talk about,” she said, “but you deserve an explanation. Before I was an ecological engineer, I worked as an archaeologist.”

“You mentioned archaeology a couple of times,” Cass said, nodding. “But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I know terrans have a self-study discipline of archaeology,” Tsuga went on. “Most archaeology for us, however, is xenoarchaeology. Some of us study the pasts of sophonts we encounter, often in tandem with them, to help us better understand them and to help them better understand themselves. Others, formerly including myself, study sophonts that–” Her voice caught, and Cass could see her bark shift as if her whole body were convulsing. “That we weren’t in time to save.”

Cass felt a cold shiver run down her back, a prickling feeling climbing her scalp. “What do you mean?” she said. “I thought you were impossibly advanced. I mean, look at everything you’ve done! You travel between galaxies.”

“We are not gods, Cass,” Tsuga said, not looking at her. “We are able to travel faster than light, and more effectively than terrans are, and our technology outstrips yours often by orders of magnitude, so I understand your misconception. Why don’t we simply expand as quickly as, mathematically, we should be able to? Because domestication requires time and resources. We are limited by things like available mass, number of Affini, and other factors – and space is, as I’m sure you’re aware, a very big place. So, from time to time we encounter sophont species who, sadly, are no longer extant. We know them only through what they leave behind.”

Click, went the thought in Cass’s head. She understood the overprotectiveness now, the inability to believe that terrans could govern their own affairs. She’d read enough history, enough works from hundreds of years in the past, to know how many terrans were sure that extinction was coming in their lifetime. She knew, if only intellectually, the dread. “You’ve seen worlds where the people there killed themselves,” she said quietly.

“Occasionally,” Tsuga said, nodding. “More often, it’s through no fault of their own; supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid or cometary encounters, geomagnetic shifts, solar extinction. There are many ways for a species to die.” That convulsion came back again, stronger this time – some of her needles had dropped off, and Cass felt a sick worry that she might start losing some of her bark carapace as well. “But yes, I have seen species who drove themselves to extinction. Nuclear exchanges. Biological warfare.” She paused for a heartbeat. “Relativistic kinetic strikes. Hypermetric bombs. Other things, worse things, that I’m not sure your language has words for. If it does, I don’t know them, I’m sorry.”

It hurts her to think about this, Cass thought, and a deep draught of pity welled up inside her, tightening around her heart. “You don’t have to talk about it anymore,” she said, crossing over to Tsuga and putting a hand on her thigh. This might help a human calm down. Maybe it’ll help her. “I understand why you feel the way you do. And…thank you for telling me.”

Another shudder ran through Tsuga’s body, and Cass could feel every vibration. Still, it seemed to help. “Thank you for listening,” Tsuga said. “I…don’t speak of it often.”

“Sounds like you burned out,” Cass said. “And I think anyone would, if it’s as bad as all that.”

“It has its rewards, sometimes,” Tsuga said. Something about her voice brightened, but the sadness didn’t go away. “Like when we’re able to find sufficient remains that we can synthesize a hereditary molecule and associated proteins. Then, with a little work, we can bring them back. Even if we couldn’t be there for their ancestors, we can at least be there for the new generation.”

Cass tried not to let her disquiet show. They resurrect species from extinction? Why in the world would they do that? If they’re dead, they’re not suffering. “I think I get how you feel,” she said, putting aside her confusion. “I understand why you don’t want to leave us alone. But knowing that doesn’t change how I feel, or how my people down on Solstice feel. Do you get that?”

“I do,” Tsuga said, nodding and, fractionally, relaxing. One of her vines gently coiled around Cass’s wrist, and she fought down the revulsion and the impulse to jerk it away. “I think we may be, unfortunately, diametrically opposed in our opinions.”

“Well…I’m glad we at least understand one another,” Cass said, letting out a sigh. Once the vine was still, it was much more tolerable – a pressure, not a sliding feeling full of texture and sensation. “I’m not going to stop resisting. I can’t. I owe it to my people to do what I can for them, to keep as many of them independent, and to keep us as a whole as independent as I can.”

“I understand. But be careful. We Affini are not well-disposed to toleration of feralism, and this ship in particular has a great deal of experience with direct domestication of feralists. If you are too forceful, or if you say the wrong thing, you’ll find yourself going down that path as well, and there will be nothing I can do to stop it.”

“I’ve got you in my corner,” Cass said, taking a chance at looking up at Tsuga to give her a smile – that was safe enough, at this angle, for just a moment. “So how can I go wrong?” She was under no illusions that Tsuga was probably going to undermine her own efforts, but if nothing else she was an invaluable source on how the Affini operated, how they thought, what they wanted and why.

Tsuga’s needles shifted as she looked down at Cass, and another vibration ran through her plant-like body, falling into a strange kind of rhythm. There was a brief moment when their gaze met, before Tsuga’s leaflike eyelids slid in to block most of her eyes. It was a subtler effect than it had been before. “I know I’ve just said this, Cass,” she said, “but it bears repeating: I’m very happy that I get to know you.”

“You changed your face,” Cass said. It was obvious, now that she was looking at it – so much more natural looking, so much less mask-like.

“I did. My face before was just a unskilled effort at copying Polyphylla’s. I’ve had time to observe how your face moves so… I made another effort. And I think it came out well.”

“I think so too,” Cass said, grinning. “Much more femme.” Do not, she told herself, get turned on by the weird alien plant lady. Which, itself, reminded her of something. “Hey, unrelated, but did you ever sort out the pronoun thing?”

“What?” Cass felt the rhythm inside Tsuga stutter slightly. Did I surprise her? she thought. “Oh, no, no I still haven’t worked your schema out. The books never made any sense to me, and even with terrans around on this ship – well, you have variations and gradations, yes? But the literature also says terrans insist they’re all separate and very strictly so, and I can never keep which is which properly aligned. Like, you, for example, I know your pronouns because I’ve heard others use them, but just to look at you… well, I know you’re a woman, but you dress in a fashion the books associate with masculinity, and you – all of your comrades, really – lack the facial markings associated with femininity in the texts. You can see how this quickly winds up going around in circles, yes?”

Cass nodded. If nothing else, Tsuga seemed much more enthusiastic for talking about gender than she did for talking about heavier subjects. She felt bad for blundering into messy territory, so if this helped Tsuga move on and stop stressing out, she was happy to play along. “I mean, for one thing, we’re at war. Were at war, I don’t know,” she added, shrugging, “but also you’re probably being thrown off by the fact that I’m a huge dyke.”

“… a structure that prevents water from flooding low-lying areas?”

Cass snorted. “No, no, it’s slang,” she said. “It means lesbian.”

“Lesbian is…” Before Cass could answer, Tsuga’s eyes flew open. “Ah! I remember. A lesbian is a woman who prefers the company of other women for romantic pursuits!”

“Close enough.” Tsuga was having issues grasping the basics, and Cass was not about to drag her into the deeper waters of age-old discourse.

“And this has what to do with gender roles?”

“Oh, nothing and everything,” Cass said, laughing. God, I wish we could just talk like this without having to worry about everything else going on. “You sure go right for the hard questions.”

Tsuga looked surprised – with her new face, Cass was having an even easier time reading her expression. “Humans find the subject difficult as well?”

“I know that 44 years probably doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but that’s how long, bar when I was really, really young, that I’ve been thinking about it just as it concerns me, and I still learn new things about how I relate to my body, my sense of self, and how I feel about other peoples’ bodies all the time.” She gave Tsuga’s leg a gentle pat. “You’ve been at it, what, a couple months? I’m not surprised it weirds you out. I’m more shocked other Affini get it at all, frankly.”

“We are very adaptable,” Tsuga said. “We have ensured that. It’s necessary for what we do.”

“Well, what Affini gender are you? Actually, do you even have gender?” Cass had been wondering this for some time, especially after meeting the Captain.

“Not in any way that maps particularly well to your species, unfortunately,” Tsuga said. “The Captain suggested I simply find a pronoun I like the sound of and use that, and e does have quite a bit of experience with terrans specifically.”

“Well, experimentation works,” she said, nodding. “If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.”

“I feel as if there’s simply too much to choose one as a starting point. I have done it before, of course, but…” There’s that sadness again, Cass thought. Is she still feeling off about the archaeology stuff? “Well, in that instance, the lines were much clearer,” Tsuga finally said. “While it’s far from universal, eusocial species tend to have a strong identification between gender and role in the collective.”

“And one of those really clicked with you?” Cass tried to imagine it – had it been like the moment, now etched in her memory, when Little Cass had wondered why she had to go with Papa instead of Mama at the mosque?

“One did. It was… I think the best translation would be egg-guardian? A role for carrying and nourishing the eggs laid by the queen. They had rather more reproductive roles than terrans do, obviously,” Tsuga said. Her needles were drooping again – now this conversation was making Tsuga upset, and Cass’s stomach tied itself in knots as she tried to puzzle out the connection.

“Okay,” she said, to fill the air and to give herself time to think. This had to have happened after she quit archaeology, if she met a living species, so why is this bothering her so much?

“Unfortunately, I don’t think you can pronounce–” A horrible rasping, clicking, rattling sound, like a thousand crickets made of chainsaws, sounded forth from somewhere inside Tsuga. Cass could feel it through her hand, still anchored firmly to Tsuga’s thigh, and it felt like nails scraping down a chalkboard.

“No,” Cass said, shaking her head and trying to force her heart to slow back down. What kind of mouthparts make a sound like that?! “No, definitely not.”

“So you see the problem,” Tsuga said, making a very pronounced sigh.

I have to get her out of this spiral, Cass thought. I’m the asshole that put her there. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve always read you as a woman, and egg-guardian…” She shrugged. “Yeah, that fits, I guess, if you want to go for biological determinism.” We don’t need to complicate things by bringing up seahorses. “Does that help at all?”

Tsuga’s bark carapace shifted. “Perhaps. As you said, experimentation works, and in light of the Captain’s advice…yes, perhaps I will try that. Tsuga Sequi, 8th Bloom, she/her. Hmm. Tsuga Sequi, 8th Bloom, she/they?” She made a soft, disgruntled noise. “This is still very complicated.”

“You’re telling me,” Cass said, smiling. “I’ve had to live with this all my life.”

“You appear to have mastered it,” Tsuga said, finally giving Cass an odd, wooden smile in return. “So perhaps there is hope for me yet. Thank you for your help. May I…I know you are a very independent terran, and that you don’t care much for affectionate gestures, but may I hug you?”

Cass froze. The vine around her wrist tightened fractionally, the barest hint of movement but enough to set her hair on end. Why does she want to hug me? she thought, followed immediately by Because Affini are all hyperaffectionate, you’ve seen this, followed up by At least she asked instead of just doing it, and finally ending in You dug up uncomfortable memories, you owe her a little bit of affection, and maybe it’ll help her feel better. “S-sure,” she said.

She was unprepared for how swiftly Tsuga moved. Before Cass could realize what was happening, she was kneeling down again, wrapping her long arms tightly around Cass and lifting her clear off the ground. Vines wrapped around her as Tsuga stood, cuddling Cass close to her chest – she’d expected the bark to be rough, but there was enough moss and other foliage interwoven with it that, despite the complex texture, it was surprisingly comfortable. One of Tsuga’s huge hands supported her legs (and, if she didn’t know better, she’d think the alien plant was copping a feel), and the urge to cling to the Affini for dear life subsided as Cass realized how stable and how firm Tsuga’s grip on her was.

Cass relaxed slowly, leaning into Tsuga. She somehow knew with a powerful certainty that Tsuga would never let her fall. She radiated safety and comfort, a soft thrumming like a cat’s purr rumbling up from deep inside her. She was warm, too, warmer than Cass would have thought a walking tree could ever be. Tears began to gather in the corners of Cass’s eyes, and she had no idea why – she rubbed them away and calmed the ache in her chest with slow, deep breaths.

This doesn’t mean anything, she told herself. This is just a favor you’re doing for a friend. Was Tsuga a friend? She didn’t seem like an enemy, and in enemy territory, maybe that was enough. You don’t belong here, and you’re going to go home, and you’re going to get back to work building a better world.

Everyone is counting on you, Cass Hope. It was the classic refrain in the back of her thoughts, taking center stage once again. Don’t let them down.