“So you’re a human,” the floret with very few signs it had ever been human observed. Cerise’s expression changed at that. Was that ever in question? She knew florets stopped being human from time to time, getting cat ears or tails or fur on their bodies. Back on Edifice, there was one floret who had colorful scales on his skin that wanted to join Kelly’s wargaming group– he never got in– and there was a middle aged woman that jogged by her house sometimes whose collar looked like jewelry and whose hair was a long, iridescent mane of feathers. She supposed either of them could be called inhuman, but this Imago was something on a different order of magnitude to that. And it had been calling Cerise a human like that was unexpected.

“Is this a surprise to you? That I’m human, I mean.”

Imago’s idle pattering of legs on tile slowed, as it considered. “I’m, um, I’m sorry if I offended you. Do you want to be human?”

“Um.” Cerise had never really considered that as a serious question. “You mean to ask if I’d rather be a doll, instead, whatever that means? I don’t know, humanity is… it feels like it’s my responsibility to stay human, isn’t it? To claim everything… everything humans did, instead of running away from that? I feel like it’d be too easy to just… to just–” she trailed off, thinking.

“Alright, I mean, I got permission to stop being– doing all that. That’s not humanity’s job anymore. I still don’t really understand it, is all?” it cocked its head to the side for emphasis.

“Understand what?”

“Why anyone would want to be human, I mean. Like there’s all these things you can be, besides humans, besides people, and everyone seems to forget… I don’t know. Mistress says that the Affini let everyone either become what they want, or want what they become. And I’m both. Who wouldn’t wanna be both?”

“I would once have just-” Cerise’s eyes moved to the corner of her vision, and her head turned to let her look. Apostasia was there, looking down at her, smiling. An aureate smile, knowing and luxuriant and waiting, as if waiting for something in particular. Her head turned back. 

“Nevermind. You’re very nice, Imago.”

“Imago is very nice, isn’t it? It’s forgotten how to be any other way.” Monanthes interjected, with a volume that made them seem far closer in the room than they were.

“Ah.” Its cheeks turned blue again– that was blushing, Cerise realized– and it chittered with laughter. 

“Don’t forget what our Cerise said a little while ago, Apostasia. She and her Lace have not yet become acquainted, have they?” Monanthes teased.

“No, the poor dear has not,” Apostasia joined in, sounding somber. “And how frustrating it might be. An existence looking out from a body that does not belong to it, in motive and in sense of self– even the knowledge of what that body looks like now almost entirely withheld. What can my handiwork truly say it is, with complete confidence?”

Apostasia cast a glance at Cerise, pointed and smug. 

“Do I have permission to speak, Miss Apostasia?”

“Yes, my marble. Speak briefly.”

“Is that a riddle? What can I truly, confidently say I am?” Cerise asked.

“Not my words exactly, but yes, a riddle it was. One that, if resolved, will bring the one who does so closer to a new sort of peace of mind. You are a bright little thing, aren’t you, my canvas unfinished?”

“Um, how many tries do I get?”

“At this quandary? Why, you may attempt to resolve it as many times as you wish, darling.”

“Ah. Is it that I’m a doll, then?”

“That word has many meanings and connotations. You are a doll in some ways, but not yet in others.”

“Is it that I’m a floret?”

“And can you truly say that proudly, shout it aloud with complete confidence to your words?” 

Cerise sighed. This would be a question for another day, then. A new sort of peace of mind, Apostasia had said? Wasn’t that what she wanted? To truly know what was waiting for her? So little was for sure, in Cerise’s world, and any certainty was worth pursuing.

“I’ll think about that. Do I have permission to, uh,” She didn’t know if she had to ask for this, but it seemed prudent in any case. “Do I have permission to change the subject, Miss Apostasia?”

“And to what do you wish that subject to change?” she asked in response.

“Um, if it were that I could request something, um, I would like to request that– So earlier you teased– Mx. Monanthes also teased–”

“It is befitting of a doll to be clear with its words, darling.” the orchid-adorned affini said, with some edge to her voice.

“Could I please see myself in the mirror, Miss Apostasia?”

A silence passed, and Imago chittered, laughing. 

“She’s a desperate one, isn’t she, my Imago.” Monanthes taunted lightly. Cerise tried to keep her face from twisting in frustration.

“She’ll love the way she looks!” the millipede floret retorted. “She’s beautiful.”

“I will fetch a mirror for you, provided you agree to go somewhere with me, Cerise my darling.” Apostasia said. Cerise’s shoulders wanted to sag in relief, as immobile as they were. She drew in a deep breath.

“Go somewhere?”

“The somewhere I would be taking you to? It will be quite some distance, yes. The Yarravia is no small vessel, from a terran perspective. - it mustn’t be, for the distances it travels. Soon, we will be traveling to a place you have not yet been to, on this ship. I will ensure that any outings we make tomorrow around the Yarravia will be as convenient as possible.”

“Ah, okay.” She figured a second outing would happen soon enough anyway. “Yeah, I agree to that. May I see what I look like, please?”

Cerise’s head turned to watch as a multitude of Apostasia’s vines shot out around her, snaking their way through an open door. They pulled back a mirror, ornate, gold-tinted and heavy enough that she didn’t know how such thin vines could hold it up. The affini slowly set the mirror down in front of her, in Cerise’s peripheral vision. Her head turned, slowly, agonizingly slowly, over to face it, and what she saw was astounding.

The fine vinework filigree that she saw on her arm through bleary eyes the day before was striking in its complexity, and Cerise now realized that it had been like seeing individual brushstrokes on a Venusian acid-oil masterpiece, like a three-note refrain in an aria. Diaphanous threads of green, cast in yellow hues by the golden surface of the mirror, traced her body in fractal whorls evoking flowers and creeping vines, symmetrical across her meridian line but spiraling in ways that made exact symmetry hard to ascertain. Her body rose fluidly to her feet, the mirror tilting to accommodate, her eyes traced the curls within curls of the Lace down her legs, where it grew thick and dense around her kneecaps, just as it had on her elbows and wrists. The Lace appeared to just barely move wherever Cerise wasn’t looking, and then fix into impossible shapes the moment her eyes focused.

Her sternum was covered with a denser winding of lace that evoked a corset, strings of bunched threads winding in and around one another as if lacing her in, Cerise realized with faint and detached amusement, and another pattern of tight convolutions suggested a shawl, flowing around her shoulders and upper chest and up under her collar to her head. A collar, which, if Cerise looked closely, had writing on it.

The letters “B. Acqui.” adorned the collar she wore in elaborate golden cursive script, as if on the label of some expensive designer product; extravagant text to denote something’s value, its rarity. Cerise almost opened her mouth before shutting it, remembering what was expected of her.

Imago leaned forward, staring at her too. Cerise understood why. Her head turned towards Imago, and as her eyes left the twistings of filigree, her thoughts grew clearer, although flourishes of lace still danced in her mind’s eye. 

“You love it! I was right!” Imago squealed. Its inhuman voice made the last word a hiss. 

Apostasia spoke. “The dichotomy of function versus form is a very Terran dilemma. In many millennia past, when perfect functionality was no longer a question in our species’ designs, we pivoted to the exorbitantly artistic, marking each triviality we made with such creative touch that uniqueness was rendered again mundane. When we ran out of new things to create, we changed the definition of what could be created, so that more opportunities might exist.”

Images of a white crack opening up in a lilac sky swam through Cerise’s head. “And the Lace? How does it work? How can it control me so perfectly, and be so beautiful?”

“The most intimate things remain magical to you, my doll, for as long as I am able to preserve them. If you may know, this Gestural Lace was commissioned just for you, if such a word can apply without currency or trade, although its design is my own. It was grown here, on the Yarravia, in a place where many such things are cultivated, and it was grown by a friend I trust with my core.” Apostasia sighed wistfully, as if some part of her mind were elsewhere. “This Lace in particular numbs the skin to specific kinds of pressure, so that its movements may feel natural, but leaves you vulnerable to light, affective touch.”

“A vulnerability my Imago’s excited to exploit, isn’t that right, Apostasia?” Monanthes chimed in.

“Indeed. In fact, why not let the precious thing enjoy its gift right now?”

Cerise’s body laid down, sprawled out into a comfortable, inviting position, a bubble of an emotion she couldn’t identify growing in her chest. This was what being a floret was supposed to be, wasn’t it, in some distorted way? The helplessness, the way everything already seemed so alien, the promise of pleasure she couldn’t control? So much of her existence as a floret seemed amiss somehow, but this almost, almost, made sense. The bug thing, the former human, wiggled with anticipation– before suddenly springing into motion. Rather than coiling around her in a single swift dive, as Cerise had anticipated, it instead put its mandibles right next to her ears, whispering.

“I have a feeling this might get a bit… overwhelming. So! You know old terran stoplights, right? We can use the same system! Green means go ahead, yellow means slow down, red means stop! Does that work?”

She’d heard of similar things being used between Terrans when things got intimate, but here she was, on an Affini ship, with a sophont whose lower half was a millipede. The idea that it really was formerly a human clicked on a level it hadn’t, before.

“Y-yes.”

Stars, how could something so terrifying be so disarming, so cute, Cerise thought in frustration, and that was the last coherent thought she’d have for what felt like hours.

The moment the yes left her lips, Imago pulled in close around her, long and oddly heavy body gracing her Lace-meshed skin with a thousand gently tickling legs. Chitin-hair combed through her own, gently petting her, stroking her scalp like a careful lover. Imago’s body was under her own, on top of it, exerting pressure from either side, prickling constriction that would have been painful to anybody less drugged up than herself coursing down her as a cyclone of light and searing gold that made her skin feel like something foreign and overpowering that she was trapped within. No longer a part of the world around her, the pleasure wiped away any sense of proprioception, rendering her body adrift in a sea of light that stripped away shape and form and gravity until she was nothing but a scrap of fabric in a hurricane, Lace-puppeted movements contorting her around Imago’s form in what felt like slow motion. Time stretched on and rebounded in on itself, each moment playing itself back in memory five times over before the next moment began. Imago made a sound with that beautiful, hissing voice it had. Cerise’s neck stung. She didn’t care. 

Apostasia had been right about the vulnerability, that even a single digit would have been enough to make her draw breath, to suspend her between one thought and the next. Instead, she’d been subjected to the upper limits of what her body could process without running into the limiting factors of terran biology. Her neurotransmitters would have soon been depleted, but the stores of drugs inside her collar depleted themselves instead, subjecting her blood-brain barrier to an onslaught of artificial bliss that her consciousness could barely keep up with. Imago made another noise, the same one, but the cascade of touch made perceiving anything further away than her skin a nearly impossible feat. 

What was Imago? Most florets she knew of wouldn’t turn themselves into something this alien, would they? Something so distant from humanity, something that viewed the responsibility it owed its species as something that an owner could whisk away. What was Cerise doing here? The thought percolated through waves of pleasure, small and hardened but persistent. If she judged Imago to any degree, the same applied to her, didn’t it? A doll-to-be, whirled along to her owner’s fancies, not resisting for fear of some punishment as of yet unnamed? Was she supposed to be enjoying this so much? Did she have any right to enjoy this so much? Did she earn it?

“Yell-”

Imago hadn’t even waited for the full word to leave her mouth before it slowed its ministrations. A concerned look flickered across the alien thing’s face.

The memories of the sensation, nearly as powerful as the feeling itself, took their time to dissipate, echoes rebounding off either end of the present. Time stretched unnaturally, and kept on stretching. Did she deserve to enjoy this, the way she was? The question was becoming less and less relevant, as the hole that the stimulation had left was filled with a restless longing.   Cerise’s body screamed out. It needed more. Why had her brain cut off the endless satiation? Any sort of guilt she felt was washed away by her desire for more.

“Green.”

* * *

Cerise awoke to gentle sparks dancing around her periphery. Blurry lines of light weaved through thoughts like afterimages of something bright and molten. Thoughts resolved, and with them, the dancing sparks– lines and points of bioluminescence starring Imago’s many-legged, living hair.   It still baffled her, how a survivor of the expectations humanity could throw at someone could somehow be so… extraordinary. She was staring, wasn’t she. She attempted to break her impoliteness by turning her head, which of course was utterly futile. Instead, she kept staring for about another ten seconds before remembering that she could use her meager control of her own body to simply shut her eyes. She then realized that was also rude, and was left quickly muttering a string of apologies about her behavior.

A warning vine caressed Cerise’s lips, as the hab lights slowly turned back on. She fell silent. 

Apostasia spoke. “While you two recuperate, Monanthes and I are going to speak in another room. You seem fairly comfortable together, and you, Cerise, are intelligent enough to know how to conduct yourself when I am out of sight. Monanthes, dear, there are some things I would like to know with more clarity that we can discuss privately.”

“Do I have permission to speak?” Cerise asked.

“Yes, dearest little thing. I am here to ensure you feel listened to, even if reaching such a point might take some time.”

“May I know what you and Mx. Monanthes are going to be talking about?”

“No. In consolation, however, I have a gift for you, should you accept it.”

Cerise’s eyes darted warily. Considering all of the things affini considered gifts, did she really want to accept what Apostasia was giving? Was she going to be gifted drugs that would further dull her thought, or steal her sight, or– 

What Apostasia pulled out of her vines quelled most of those concerns. It was a soft toy of the type she had seen many florets carry; a stuffed animal in the shape of an elegant white moth. Cerise reached out a hand, and touched it. Soft, downy plumage, of a fiber Cerise couldn’t place. A unique feeling, a softness that reminded her of a time she had, back in Tay’s Fort, visited a clothing depot after the Affini had come, being the only person inside. She had walked around, listening to music she had written, put her hand on some ridiculous, frilly dress that was on display. It felt as if it could come apart in her hand. This felt like that.

“This is one gift I have been waiting to give you, Cerise and Imago, to help dear Monanthes and I better entertain you. As I do not yet know which animal you have an affinity for, I have instead compiled this, which resembles some sort of Terran bug in a somewhat amusing way. I intend for you to have something of your own to take care of, so I expect you to always be sure you’re aware of this toy’s location. Can you do that for me?” Apostasia asked, voice sweeter than it usually was.

“Is this some kind of trick or a trap?” Cerise asked. She knew most affini were often upfront, but Apostasia was not like most affini. She seemed different, stranger.

“Only in that I might grow to understand you better through it. It is much simpler than you might normally expect of my schemes, dearest intelligent little puppet. Much can be learned from the interactions between objects.”

Cerise caught the implication at the last sentence, and further averted her eyes. Was this how Apostasia saw her? As something on the same tier of existence as a stuffed fabric toy? She put the thought out of her mind. 

As Apostasia and Monanthes walked away, Imago stirred. “So, you really enjoyed yourself, huh?”

Cerise blinked out of deep thought. “I, uh, I still need to process it. In a good way, I mean. It was the most straight-up raw fun I’ve had in, like, forever, actually, and I’ve still yet to decide if that’s a good thing.”

Imago looked concerned. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. If this is good, unambiguously, incontrovertibly good, it means I was wrong about, like, a lot. Like, I feel like we have a kind of duty to… to enjoy ourselves responsibly, I guess? To make sure we’re getting the right message out of what we enjoy. And this is…”

“This is what? Sorry, I’m not, like, really following.” Imago giggled.

“And what message would this be sending? That the Affini hold the keys to our enjoyment, so we can’t experience all there is to experience without becoming… this? Without giving up so much else?”

“I don’t think I’m giving anything up! I survived being human, I deserve to feel like this. So do you. Um, can we talk about something else?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Cerise thought about what she just said. Saying these things, and she’d known the floret for less than a day. 

Imago spoke, starting off slowly. “It’s alright, I’ve, um- I’ve kinda also just been fascinated with like. What you are?"

What she was? What was Imago’s life like, as a floret?

It explained, words picking up, verbal steps breaking into a run. “Which is weird, since I used to be like you. But like, I don’t remember a lot of that? And not from the drugs, it just isn’t that important to me. So, I’ve been kinda preoccupied with how your biology functions! By terran standards, I kinda have a PHD? Which is weird. Which is a bit rude of me, I think? Anyway!”

Cerise blurted out the first change of conversation that came to mind: “So how does your biology work? How do you eat, and pick stuff up? Do you have hands or something similar that I’m not aware of?”

The immediate response was a blue-hued blush spreading across the poor thing’s face.

“Well, um. I can’t? Do a lot of that stuff. Mistress does it for me.” quiet, it followed with “It’s actually really hot.”

“Does it bother you? That your body relies on another?” Cerise’s own body felt momentarily cold in its Lace.

It pondered for a second, putting its words together before it finally spoke. “It doesn’t, at all. See, the difference between my body and a terran body, is that while terran bodies evolved, my body was designed. Every mandible, every plate of chitin, put into place for a reason. There’s no need to be able to do those things for myself, because this body was never designed to operate independently. I mean, I lack the necessary glands to have a panic attack. It's really cool!”

“I see. Thank you for sharing.”
Imago hadn’t actually stopped, of course.

“So, something else cool is that I actually have both an exoskeleton and an endoskeleton, which isn’t something you see with life on earth, but you get it plenty out in this one star cluster in the magellanic cloud. You might assume I run on hemocyanin because my blood is blue, but it's actually a unique compound the affini came up with that allows spiracles to function at the scale I exist at. They used the same technique to make a really big body for a beeple. Wait, do you know what beeple are?” It continued to pursue its special interest rant for minutes on end, and Cerise found herself drifting along with the current, mostly relaxed. She was a better listener than she had thought, but something was eating at her. It was around the time Imago was talking about how Monanthes would polish its chitin using a lacquer-derivative compound that she finally caved in and admitted it:

“There’s so much I don’t know, compared to you.” Cerise said. She repeated it in her mind like a mantra, as if it were something reassuring, even though it very much wasn’t. There’s so much I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. 

“I don’t know how many days it’s been, since I became a floret. Did you know that, Imago?”

Imago looked like she didn’t know how to respond. Cerise’s heart hurt. Was she overwhelming the poor thing?

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll try not to be too much.” She hoped this was within the bounds of speaking when spoken to. She was just continuing what she had said earlier, wasn’t she?

“No, no! It’s okay! I’m okay!” Imago reassured. “I just wish I could tell you stuff, or something. I don’t know much more than you do. Just that you’re really cute, and, well, you’re here.”

The inability to hide a blush with her hands was more frustrating than Cerise expected. “Okay, okay. I guess I just… there’s a lot I’m afraid to say, so I don’t get punished somehow. I’ll still be respectful and polite to Miss Apostasia, just in case,” and she was pretty sure that doing otherwise would make her wince in fear at this point, “but there’s things I’m afraid to ask her, or I’ll just get tangled up in more riddles and games.”

“Is– Do you not like it here?” Imago asked.

“It’s… It’s different than that. Every moment with Miss Apostasia is exciting, it’s a whirlwind, but it’s like a scary whirlwind, or something.” Cerise could feel her eloquence leaving her.

“It’s a whirlwind that I’m caught up in and I can’t move, literally, and every minute I feel myself getting entangled deeper and deeper into whatever Miss Apostasia wants to do to me, and I can’t be sure you’re not part of that.” 

Imago shifted.

“No offense. I still trust you, I trust you lots, and you’re cute and nice and you’ve put up with me so far, but it feels like I’m lost and adrift and at risk of, like, losing. Something. I don’t know what, just losing. Whatever game we’re playing, I guess. I made the wrong move a long while back, and it feels like everything has been going in the wrong direction since then, and now I’m up here. And the scary thing is, this excitement? This world where everything’s new? I feel like I could let myself lose, if this keeps up, and I think I owe the world more than that.”

Imago shifted again. Cerise realized she had tears welling up in her eyes, and she couldn’t move her hands to wipe them away.

“Do you want hugs? Because I’m really good at those.” Imago offered, looking unsure of itself.

“Um, yeah, yeah, I’d love that, actually.”

Imago coiled up around Cerise without quite touching her, and then hugged with all six dull scythe-tipped arms. Cerise breathed.

“When you almost yellowed, back when we were playing, um, what was that about?” Imago asked.

“Oh, the traffic light thing. I’m trying to remember. I think it’s more of what I just said, really. I felt like, like, I was letting myself go, for a second.” Cerise paused. “I guess I did, for a little while.” 

“And when you greened again?” it asked.

“I don’t know. It was becoming too much. Not enough, I mean.” Imago looked confused. “When you stopped, for a few minutes–”

“That was a few seconds, cutie!” the myriapod floret interrupted. “And yeah, trust me, I get it! That’s the Class-A she put in you, I think. Makes you really need it. I think there are subtypes that do that, like, specifically. It’s really, really hot, right?”

Cerise smiled. Her hands had been clutching her moth plush to her chest. How was something that looked so alien the only source of solid facts, in this wrong-side-out world of hers? 

Cerise took another look at Imago’s face, an alien enthusiasm dancing across it. 

“I suppose so.”

* * *

Moments ago, Apostasia

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll try not to be too much.” 

The voice played crystal clear from the communications tablet held in Apostasia’s vines. 

“This is strange. This feels strange,” Monanthes said, pacing the length of the private room. The room around them was ornate, as opposed to the hab unit’s living room and central hall, which was woefully underdecorated. 

Replicas of paintings by ancient affini and florets alike hung on the walls, depicting scenes from deep Affini space. A Deep Andromedan stellar forge in florid, splashing oranges, alongside a triptych of a Haraianrod’s Chain, an awe-instilling structure of precariously orbiting spheres that had been rendered long obsolete, but was kept around thereafter for its elegance. Some of the oldest, kept behind veils for the sake of any guests who might enter, depicted the Core Worlds. Scenes of such complexity and utter, terrible beauty that even Apostasia, when looking at them, liked to think, to pause and reminisce. 

“What about my manner of floret-craft is not, dear Monanthes?”

“I’ll still be respectful and polite to Miss Apostasia, just in case,” the live feed continued to play. The recording on the screen showed a Lace-ensnared face from below.

“Most florets don’t vent, Apostasia. Most florets are given their implants, and that’s that, and it’s bliss from there on out. We made implants universal for a reason, Apostasia. What we do doesn’t work without them.”

Apostasia thought for a moment. Had she had reservations like this before, once? 

“I can say that I have millenia of floret-craft behind me, and that I have for so long trained dolls that I can see aspects of what’s happening that to you are less clear, but I do not want to appeal to my own seniority, here. You are an affini, Monanthes, and you deserve a better reason than that.”

“–and every minute I feel myself getting entangled deeper and deeper into whatever Miss Apostasia wants to do to me, and I can’t be sure you’re not part of that.” the tablet spoke, crystal clear.

“And what reason, exactly, do you have in mind?” Monanthes asked. “You’re right, I’m an affini, and I don’t like to watch florets suffer. Even if it’s for the sake of art.

“Oh, Monanthes, but it is for the sake of far more than that. You deserve a better reason than my authority, which is why I am asking you to watch and wait.”

“I trust you lots, and you’re cute and nice and you’ve put up with me so far, but it feels like I’m lost and adrift and at risk of, like, losing.”

Monanthes’ vines shifted. Apostasia knew what she thought of some older affini, what she thought of those that brought Core Worlds traditions out to the fringes. 

“And how long would you have me wait, Apostasia? How long should I worry until it becomes clear that everything’s alright?”

The tablet continued to speak. “I feel like I could let myself lose, if this keeps up, and I think I owe the world more than that.”

“My Cerise is in need of a paradigm shift, dearest Monanthes, and it is paradigms that I have worked with the longest. She is on a trajectory to experience one more magnificent than most florets could hope for. Time is all I ask of you, Monanthes, because you deserve to see what happens next.”