“Go sweetly, go neatly,” Dracaena sing-songs in the resonant, rumbling tones of Lalgrrra-Affini. “Regally singing yashkten, how low you’ve fallen.”

Monica, tough-shelled seedling, regal little blossom. Monica, sweet as creeping pais moss, bright as the glow of an asm’s carapace, belonging to them and them alone. So old and regal, respectable and snappish, with the kind of gaunt, haunted face that always has them pollenstruck.

There is no need to keep up any kind of facade — of predator, pamperer, or protector — not when Monica gave herself up willingly. 

Eventually, Cinnabari thinks wryly, they always come back.

Like this, they can explore her in a way that sight and sound can’t hope to contend with. The smell and taste of her skin, stretched taut over her torso but wrinkled like old paper over her face, felt through a series of nerve-ridden vines. 

Beautiful. “I’ll find your story,” they purr in a long forgotten pidgin of Atsuri, “Where will it be, I wonder, that dlu, hidden pocket of truth? Uncovered by all those silly little thoughts, diluted into an amber-trapped fragment of authentic, naked self?”

Monica replies with a pleasured moan, a sound so thoughtless it wraps right back around to being sincere. Her nostrils twitch and flare like winking little eyes, thin hairs rising along fragile skin as if to fluff up a nonexistent coat of fur. They wonder if it’s vestigial, some evolutionary carry-on from a time where humans had fur thick enough to matter, before getting absolutely enamored in the structure of Monica’s legs. 

“Poor little thing,” they trill out excitedly, “very naughty of you to hide this, hmm? I’ll treat you so well, so good, make you soft and lazy, have you kneeling by my side — accessory to me. Ancient little thing as my accessory, would you like that? No more decisions, no more tiring effort, no more fear or pain. Go gentle or rough, little one, I’ll enjoy you either way.”

She wriggles in place, squirming as they hold her down to trail over the bottoms of poorly made feet and investigate the contours of her joints.

“Feet flat as a board,” they murmur, clicking out pity, amusement, fondness. “So poorly created, spine curves in twice, the paws have awful form, I could just…”

Monica, wonderful little Monica, adorable little Monica, all theirs little Monica. They imagine pulling her into their core, letting her clutch at them, feeling her go slack and pliant to their rhythms as the world fades away until the only points of reality left are her hands on their solidified soul. 

No. Not today. Tough-shelled seedlings need to soften before they’re ready to crack open. 

They retreat, just to see her gasp and beg and reach for them once again. Just to have the certainty of it, just to see how that desperation gleams in human eyes, before they return to studying the tension held in her every limb. 

“Please, Miss,” Monica sobs. “Want it, want it, want it, goddamnit, is that what you need? You’ve fucking — already got me — why do you keep feeling so hungry—”

“Patience,” Cinnabari hisses. “So eager, seedling. I thought you told me to pry you open?”

“I thought you planned on touching me, not teasi — not this,” she snaps back. “Goddamnit, Cinnabari, what do you want from me? More? You’ve already got me, bratty old thing. Already yours in the ways that…that really matter.”

Cinnabari sighs with a low gathering rumble. “So greedy,” they say fondly, “have you considered that perhaps I’m just…savoring the meal? You don’t savor good things, little one, and that’s a lesson I plan to very thoroughly teach you. You’ll be selfish and slow and live in pure, sanctified gluttony.”

“…all of you angels are falling to pride,” Monica drawls, voice pitched higher with amusement, cracking under the pressure of small tittering sounds. Her laughter is a howled out, gleeful thing, rare to behold and rarer still to cause — Cinnabari finds themself nothing less than starved for it. 

Then Monica…flushes. Cheeks flush with life-giving scarlet blood, tinted pink like a watercolor canvas. “How,” they growl, “do you expect me not to be greedy? You’ve been aching for this, seedling, and I’ve been very considerate of what you claim to want. So, so very considerate.”

“Brat,” Monica mutters under her breath. 

“A brat you’ve decided to roll over for,” they retort.

She coughs, embarrassed and shy. “That’s…that’s just,” she avoids their gaze, “listen, brat, you can’t have me doing what you’ve been…been wishing I would do and then start mocking me for it. Pick one, Ma — Dracaena. Don’t be mean.”

“You adore me when I’m ‘mean,’” Cinnabari purrs. “And besides, I’ve been so very patient with you, with this. I could’ve — no, should’ve — had you the moment you walked into my library, shining like light off an asm’s shell, spitting out insults like it could hide how soft you really are.”

Monica reacts like she’s been struck, a moment of bright shock fading into twisted fear. “I’m an old bitch,” she says dismissively. “I’ve been nasty and cold-hearted for decades. You only want to think the best of me, Cinnabari, or else you’ve had your vision skewed. I think,” she pauses, pain rising like bubbles in boiling water, “I think that’s what makes you a real life angel. All of you can see people as they could be and that…that’s something no human I know can lay claim to. The ability to look past all the — all those guards and shields and walls we put up — then scoop out the softness, reward it, coddle it. I wish…”

I wish I could be what you see in me, she thinks, maybe if they’d been here sooner…but no. Wishful thinking helps no one.

“It’s truly tragic that you’ve been so blinded. Really, little one, all these rotting misconceptions. You don’t get to claim your behavior, to claim what you are,” Cinnabari wraps her up again, since she asked for the explanation tomorrow. No need for her to be thinking now, even if she is fun when she’s flustered. “I decide, love. I decide what you are — because all you really are, deep down, is mine.”

Monica doesn’t speak. But she doesn’t need to, when her mind shatters into shard-like fragments, paper-thin and trembling like a leaf in a storm. 

“I’ve seen you move,” they say to their Monica. “I know there’s pain you aren’t telling me about. That’s perfectly within the rights of an independent sophont — but that’s not what you are, now is it? And I don’t like to have my things in anything less than perfect condition.”

They turn her over, nudge her gently into a better position, knees supported and frail limbs cushioned using vines covered in feathery petals. 

Kshriaa had loved these. Glacially slow, light strokes in the cracks between his carapace could render him speechless in an instant. 

Humans must be similar, because Monica immediately starts thrashing. “I decide. What you are, how good you’ve been…oh, Parolles, how you’ve hurt yourself with all this pretending,” they sigh, a small exhale of unneeded breath. “Trying to keep your dignity intact, when we both know you’d rather be on your knees where you belong. Really, dlu little thing, it’d be best if I just kept you like this. Do you want that?”

They move her to nod, a confirming bob of the head, so similar to the chrichi’s flirting up-down dance. “Oh, wonderful!” Cinnabari coos. “Do you like this?” They make her nod a second time, lingering to stroke their way through her mane of dirty white fur. “I’ll clean you right up, keep you safe, hold you right here until the blood in your veins sings to my song. You deserve nothing less.”

Can’t, I can’t, I need it, I can’t.

“You will,” they soothe. “I’ll make you.”

Monica makes a wounded, throaty sound. A pained one. The stimulation teeters on the edge of too much-just enough in a way that leaves her gasping for respite.

They pry her mouth open, exploring hidden depths with gentle touch. Tendrils slide against tongue and they delight in the most heavenly textures — warm, silky, soft, wet — as Monica shifts into muffled keening. It really is just bliss when a new pet starts breaking. They wonder what else she’ll like, what else she’s been hiding, what new and secret things they can force out of her happy little skull. Squeeze her until she has no idea what up or down is, prick her until she doesn’t care to know her name, seize her—

Wait, they remind themself, until she cracks on her own. An affini with no patience is a predator with no teeth. 

They aren’t here to break her in a way she can’t come back from. They’re here to break her in a way she’ll never want to come back from.

“Tell me what you like about this,” they demand, knowing that the slew of cursing and moans are the closest thing to words that she can muster, and combing through the tangled threads of her mind as answers rise like unfurling kiy blossoms riding on an errant breeze.

I am small, she thinks, and I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Desperate, cornered, staggering heart. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. 

Then words, whispered like the gentlest beating, “You will.”

I can’t, she thought, little hands shaking, so tired it was painful, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do anymore. I’m not strong, I’m not big, I can’t hold it all up. Help. Please.

‘You will,’ spoken softly like a lullaby. ‘You’re doing alright, but we…need to train you up, ok? So you can be big and strong like your papa. So you can work.’

She thinks, again and again, I can’t.

You will, heard in the pained crease of her parents’ faces. I can’t, as she does the same to her own son, I can’t. You will, you have to, you don't get a choice. I can’t, and she’s small all over again, a pathetic thing, no use to anyone, unable to work or clean or stop fucking shivering even as her family insists that it’s not her fault.

And then, you have to, rubbing her own hopeless circumstances in her face. You don’t get a choice, spat out or murmured soft, a blow to the ego and mind. A truth so painful it has to be real, nothing but sharp edges and clear glass shards. 

But then…then them. Cinnabari says you will like it’s a fond little endearment. Cinnabari wields that truth like a weapon, trails it down her spine, refuses to let it sink. You have to, smothering like a blanket. Lack of choice, made soft and safe, tamed just as she hopes to be tamed. Inevitable. Impossible. Incredible.

“Oh,” they whisper, “it’s failure, isn’t it? They pushed you so hard, little one, and then made you push your own pups even harder. No wonder you think like this…failure was so hard for you. Failure could never be soft. If you failed, your pack would suffer.”

Trying so hard to help, feeling so destroyed when she failed. What about that isn’t sweet? What about that isn’t soft?

Monica doesn’t respond but the parts of her mind focused on yielding to their orders splinters beneath the pressure of pleasure. Bends, shudders, cracks. They squeeze, adding pressure, and she’s swallowed up by euphoric nothing. 

She deserves a break, after all this.

They toy with her, focused on other matters but still enjoying the luxuries of her body. 

Monica Parolles is a scared little thing. Made of more fear and sweetness than anger, snapping out as affection flares, intriguing to speak with and full of strength she never should’ve needed. Failure hurts more than anything else in the world. She’s afraid to love or be loved, afraid to lose any other people, afraid because of systems that were only recently dismantled. She fears disappointment.

Set her up for failure, they think, and she’ll be more afraid than she could possibly stand. 

Make that failure soft or harsh. Make that set-up playful or serious. Assure her of their intent, assure her of their persistence, show her a new kind of failure and love. In this relationship, it’s not Monica doing the protecting. 

New pets are so much work. Cinnabari smiles with a high-toned chirp, a creaking purr, and a delicate show of teeth.