Effus woke up and felt an immediate pang of guilt that she hadn’t taken Mane to get ice cream the previous  night like she’d wanted to. This feeling vanished all too quickly though, banished by remembering that Mane had turned her offer down and gone to bed. She had been passed out for a long while- Effus checked the time on her tablet, and deduced that if Mane were not up yet, she’d have been asleep for fourteen hours. This was highly unusual for a Terran, but with how at ease Mane seemed the previous night and how stressed the poor thing had been…she might just not have had a proper night’s sleep in a long time. Effus decided to give her two more hours and then check in on her. Besides, Mane could have woken up earlier than that and simply been up quietly reading or something sequestered in her room. She both wanted privacy, and needed to get it if she was going to heal. Effus' mind flashed briefly to the sight of that gaudy, repulsive ship that had served as the stage for her ward's crime. Depending how frequently her father's designs had seen the two of them confined to it...well, there were zero variables one could plug into that equation, such that solving for Mane's personal space gave a healthy answer. In addition, Mane hated her father, clearly, which would only amplify the negative effects of being thusly trapped with him. 

A pang of pity struck Effus like a blade sliding between her vines and plates of bark before coming uncomfortably close to her core. Wait...dirt. Effus was letting the little one's fears and outbursts get to her again. She shook her leaves and vines, and let herself be calmed by the reassuring sounds of her own immense body's natural rhythms. Her flowers, which had subconsciously pulled themselves unnaturally taut, now loosened and went back to a healthier, more open state. She absorbed some of the hab's air, let it circulate through her cell walls. 

"I...am an affini." A grounding exercise. Something shared across many-though the affini stressed not most- sophonts, including themselves, was the efficacy of using unshakable knowledge, such as arithmetic or the most basic information pertaining to one's field, to wrench the mind away from things like panic or trauma. "I am an affini." It wasn't an instant win button that defeated any possible threat to a mind's health, of course, even for those species for whom it was the most effective, but for many species it was a simple and useful tool that could be relied on to at least help. "I am an affini." Mane was safe now. That was an unassailable fact. Mane had her, and she had Aria, and she had Melody and Erias and even Mort ready and willing to keep her safe. Whatever spider web of lies and knives had twisted that tender soul like this couldn't reach her anymore. "I am an affini." There. Good. Effus felt much better now. 

She collected herself and then emerged from her room to the rest of the hab. Airy sat on a little cushion in front of a tv. She had a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, eating cereal and watching a cute cartoon about a lesbian couple adopting a cat. At least, Effus was pretty sure that was a cat. She knew cats were Airy's favorite Terran animal, and she was fairly sure she knew what they looked like. This one seemed a little strange, but it might just be the breed or the way this show drew it. 

"Good morning Airy!"

"Hi Effus!" Airy giddily responded through a mouthful of cereal. Effus couldn't stop herself from having a jovial little laugh at her precious Airy's silliness. She extended a vine and patted Airy's sweet head gently with it. The floret eagerly nuzzled in and made her cute little purr as she did, putting a big happy smile on Effus' soul. She did so delight in sweet comfy florets and the task of doting on them. "Thaaaaank youuuu prrrrrrrbbb," Airy rumbled using her voice, having swallowed a mouthful of food so she could do so safely. Effus wiggled with delight and her flowers happily twirled about. 

"Is Mane still asleep?" Effus asked, wanting to make sure her other human was okay. Airy shook her head. 

"She left about an hour ago saying she was going for a walk. Probably to the library. Have you noticed how fast that girl reads? It's downright astonishing." Effus smiled and gave Aria a few gentle scritchies behind her ear. She chose not to tease Aria about how quickly she used to be able to read, before….

Hrrck. Hopefully, Mane wouldn't ever stumble on that. It wasn't like Aria couldn't read, anymore, she just couldn't read as fast...or even nearly as fast...as she once could, without her reading comprehension dropping. It didn't go to zero, either. To her it seemed an insignificant trade off for the girl's obvious happiness, but...it sometimes seemed to her that Mane insisted on seeing fangs and monsters in the affini's every shadow. The girl was best off letting them take care of her, that much couldn't possibly be made any more clear. Effus brought herself back to the present by focusing on the cute floret in front of her. Neglecting Airy in favor of the new girl wouldn't make domestication any less scary, after all. 

"Want to sit in my lap?" Asked Effus playfully. Aria's face instantly lit up with incandescent joy and her mouth hung open for a second. She nodded vigorously up at Effus while happily squealing. Then, as if that answer was too ambiguous, she also gave a verbal one to go with it. 

"Yes please Mistress absolutely thank you!" Effus felt all warm and nourished inside. Her body came partially unravelled, vines twisting and extending and curving such that Airy got lifted off the ground and then lowered into what, in real time, coagulated into the lap of Effus' new, still mostly humanoid body. She pressed up against Aria with the bounds of her new form, but only gently. Owner and pet both relaxed to the sounds of the other's body, and they spent time happily watching cartoons together. Aria finished the rest of her cereal before long, but didn't need to get up to put it away. Effus used a single long vine to take it and put it all the way over in the kitchen sink. It wouldn't do for one of them to have to leave the cuddle, after all. 

---------------

Mane was, in a word, lost. To put it in greater detail, she was completely utterly hopelessly lost. She had never seen this part of the ship before. The air didn't have that same...alien quality here. Had she wandered into the human part of the ship by accident? She figured that she must have. 

She had her tablet with her, in any case. Its obscene battery life was still at twenty six percent, despite not having been charged at all since she got it. Did she even have a charger for it? That seemed like a good thing to ask for sometime soon, before she desperately needed one. In the meantime she wandered aimlessly through the ship and took in the sights. She'd passed that fountain at some point from...what felt like forever ago. Maybe she would tell Effus about it. That moment felt...special to her. It served as a sort of threshold crossing. If Effus took her to her father's ship now rather than then, would she have been brave enough to rescue Pengi even if it risked the affini seeing her brother's book? 

Since they found the plushie, of course, they must have found the book anyway. A part of Mane wondered whether she ought to feel betrayed, but it was an irrational one looking for reasons to get mad. Of course they'd search the ship, and logic dictated the stuffed penguin probably wasn't the hardened capitalist's. She wasn't even sure Effus had arranged for it herself. She would, mind you...and perhaps Mane felt grateful for it.

She tried to ignore the various looks she was getting. It was better here than around her owner's hab: Terrans were just wary of her. Florets were…scared. A part of her liked that, she felt powerful and Other from them and less like an insignificant complication to be hammered flat for its insolence. The rest of her, though...resented it. They looked at her like a monster. As if she was a violent, unpredictable thing that might lash out at them if they strayed too far from their owners. 

But it was the affini who pissed her off the most. There were only three kinds of looks the alien plants gave her: pity, the kind of wary look one gives an animal that might hurt one's pet (because, of course, that's all she was to them: a dangerous beast let off its leash by her idiot of an owner), or in very rare cases what looked like contempt. She didn't WANT their fucking pity. Those holier-than-thou shrubberies could take their condemnation of violence and their deeply rooted superiority complex and fucking choke on it! What the hell did THEY know, giving themselves to serving an empire that considered literally all other life so inferior that letting it self-govern was seen as an act of negligence!? 

Mane bumped into (what she had to assume, based on their neck scars, was) a floret who instantly doubled over in apology. They seemed genuinely shaken and went wide-eyed with fear. Knowing better than to terrorize an affini's pet without the affini there, Mane offered apologies and picked something up they had dropped. It was...a plushie of an affini. Their owner, presumably. Something deep inside of her sneered at this. 

Pathetic. 

Another part of her felt it was adorable. Why couldn't it just be another human?

"It's okay, really," said Mane as she masked harder than she ever had before to another human being except her family. They seemed relieved and happily ran off clutching the plushie in their arms. Was Mane...relieved? She couldn't say. She breathed, in and out, nice and slow. Grounded herself. The dark feelings receded back into The Pit, where she could address them later.

In theory. 

She got walking again. A few cute outlets selling things like stuffed animals and figurines and pretty glass cups helped distract her from the mortifying ordeal of being known. She did some window shopping, especially enjoying a cute little shop with those small electronic pets that resembled robotic dogs. She was tempted to enter the store and get one, but...was she allowed to, like, legally? Technically she was a prisoner of the state. Just popping in and asking if she could do that, on her own, felt INTENSELY awkward. So instead, she kept walking. 

Mane saw a big dark room full of big machines covered in neon lights. She knew what that meant! It was an arcade! A HUMAN arcade! Heck yeah! 

Mane felt excitement jolt through her nervous system as she scurried into the building. She recognized some of these machines- older, even classic Terran arcade cabinets interspersed with edited versions of the same with more floret-friendly visuals. There were games she'd never played, as well, that could have been Terran-made originally. Lots of them, of course, too. The arcade was absolutely massive. It stretched back like a yawning colossus' mouth for what looked a mile, dotted all the while with glitzy devices of all kinds. 

Mane switched to wearing her coat normally, so as to become marginally less recognizable. She hoped the dim lighting of the arcade would help her to that end. She wandered from one station to another, marveling at the size of this ridiculous installation. The further inside she roamed, the fewer of its attractions seemed familiar to her. VR machines were littered this way and that. Whole rooms off to the side were dedicated to them, some going as far as to incorporate physical elements- such as harnesses or mockup cockpits- as well. She quite liked it here. Did the ARGOS have anything of this sort, she wondered? She would have to ask Ursula. 

She happened on a familiar sight- it was Ih, playing some kind of shoot em up with a fellow she didn't recognize. Not at first anyway. There was...some kind of vague sense in her mind she had seen them before. 

"Oh, hi Mane!" Said Ih. She seemed to get distracted from the game by how Mane was dressed. "Oooh, you got a makeover! Lookin good, doll~!" Mane, irrationally, felt herself moved in a good way by the compliment. Mane blushed, not that you could tell. She was still wearing her outfit from the previous day, but with her coat covering the top it was less showy. 

"Oh! Mane! Hi!" Said the other person. "I'm Uthris, by the way. I was one of the guards outside of the Confiscated- ack!" A ship on the screen, presumably Uthris' character, blew up. "No faiiiiir! You're a FLORET, how are you still better at this than me?" Both of the pair laughed and Mane found herself giggling along. 

"Get gud!" Ih teased. Mane decided she could watch these two for a while. That sounded fun.