“Now, I hope you’ll appreciate this, because it took quite a while to ‘cook’ this up,” Cinnabari lets out a warbling sound barely recognizable as laughter. “Finau contains several components that make it’s taste, some of which I removed simply because you’d find them foul and others, like cyanoacrylate, which I removed because they’re lethal to you.”

Monica narrows her eyes. “You made that up. There’s no way that’s a real name for a real thing.”

Cinnabari broadcasts truly untold amounts of pity. “A human word for a compound commonly used in adhesives, such as…exceptional glue. Superb glue.”

“Ah,” she says. “Well, then. I stand corrected.”

The soup — or bone tea, if she’s remembering things correctly — smells absolutely heavenly. She remembers meat, of course, remembers with great longing the little well-textured bits of lab meat that they’d mix into boiled water, when they had water available. Remembers the small bowls passed out to all the little ones, being just as little herself and vibrating with excitement at the thought of food she could chew. She liked to chew on things, used to gnaw away at her clothes until she realized how expensive that was, until she’d had to go around with sleeveless rags and tattered pants. 

“You know,” she says, in a tone that says ‘get ready to listen as I rant.’ “I used to eat little cans of soup — the ones with rubbery green and orange disks parading as vegetables — but I always did prefer when my mother had the time or money to buy some lab meat and plop it into water then heat it up. Had some of that on my birthday, I think, and it was…it’s good. This is better. I don’t know how you managed it but it is better. I might like it more than the house-robot’s oatmeal, too.”

“I’m going to be feeding you from now on,” Cinnabari declares. Monica gapes at them, hit with something that sears through her belly, heated and hazy as a fever. “By vine. Every sip you take, every bite you get, will come from me. I’ll be very upset if you break my rules, seedling.”

“…that’s not fair,” she says lamely. “That’s — not fair, Cinnamon, can’t just say shit like that out of nowhere. Give me a warning, for God’s sake, you can’t just do that—”

Pressed just over her lips, the very tip of a vine. Monica shuts her mouth, staring down, body straining to get closer. She needs the touch. Every part of her needs it. 

“Stay still,” Cinnabari commands. And so she does. 

Monica follows the flicking movements of the vine, watching as they dip roots into the tea, as the vine grows fat and bulging with liquid, as the bulbed tip starts beading with a small drop of dark green. There’s a crushed poultice of leaves in the second bowl, finau no doubt. She would look closer at it, if the vine weren’t hovering in front of her face.

Her eyes track it as it teases, swaying from side-to-side, Cinnabari full of affectionate, unending amusement. They aren’t getting sick of it. They think she’s cute for it.

I’m being teased, she thinks, because they think it’s funny to watch me squirm. Not as punishment, not as reward, not as something she could escape or wince away from or even argue against — but because they wanted to, because they could, and because they knew, as Monica knows, that she will not stop them. 

Her tongue passes over her lips, trembling as she tries to imagine what this will taste like, shrouded in the very recent memory of being fed her own oatmeal, and wondering if they’re really serious about feeding her like she’s a child every time she has a meal.

She feels safe. She feels…taunted. She’d like to feel bullied, which is one hell of a weird thing to be wanting, but is…true regardless of how normal she finds it. She wants to be bullied. She wants to be trapped, left thinking of ways to argue her way out of it, only to come up with dead ends at every turn. And then she wants to be fed, bite by bite, like she’s something pathetic and precious and protected. 

Could she run? She…doesn’t know. More than ever, she can move without pain. More than ever, she has a chance at fleeing, at escaping all this. And yet she feels just as trapped in a different, sweeter way. Bound in chains just as effective, even if the restraints feel like a warm embrace. 

She opens her mouth, preparing to speak.

“Quiet,” Cinnabari says. And she listens, desperate for the creaking drawl of their accent, yearning for their low-toned growls, longing for the sounds she’s learned to understand. 

Quiet and still, she thinks, quiet and still. She leaves her mouth open, since she knows they want to see it again.

They already saw her teeth, her gums, her tongue. But they want to see it again and again and again, until the sight is burned into their mind, until the luxury fades into routine, until Monica does this for them everytime they want it with no explanation needed other than a meaningless whim. 

She shudders, though she’s warmer than ever. 

The words nau-nau and dlu cross their minds, into the shared gray space where Monica and Cinnabari join, the harmony where heartbeat and drumbeat are intertwined. And she realizes, very suddenly, that they want her to pick up on their little cues, learn how to read them. 

How could I possibly learn enough of them for love, she had wondered. But she is learning. With every story, every bit of language, every inhuman noise, every thought that crosses both their minds at once — she learns another fraction of them. But what if she never learns enough, never adjusts to the care, never fulfills their expectations–

I’ll never adjust, she’d said. 

I can’t, she’d said.

But they’d made her. And they’ll continue to make her.

I’ll never know who you are in full, she thinks, but would it really be so bad to spend the rest of my life learning?

Something clicks into place. And she remembers, yet again, that she will have this. She really can and will have this. All she can do is imagine herself sprawled across the couch with them by her side, imagine herself kneeling by them, imagine herself listening for hours as they ramble on and on and on. 

The world shrunk down into beautiful simplicity. And she’s scared but the fear is fading, leaving nothing but warmth behind. The truth — that they won’t let her go — is finally sinking in. 

She leans forward and waits. 

The first spoonful is burnt — heat, heat, heat, a searing trail from mouth to throat to belly — but the second is endured, the third is tasted, and the fourth is savored. 

Spices and salt burst on her tongue, blending in just the right ways, textures ground between her teeth and bits of leaf that she devours as the taste fades. The aftertaste is tart, almost fruity, but the full-bodied flavor is itself addictive. She’s left hungry for more. It doesn't taste like Terran food. It tastes alien. It tastes strange. 

She can recognize it. They have a taste to their vines, an enigmatic, inscrutable hint of Dracaena that she can’t put into words.  All she can think of to describe it is sugary and sharp and strong. Cinnamon. They really are like cinnamon.

Finau tastes strongly of Cinnabari. Or maybe Cinnabari tastes strongly of finau.

“It’s a little of both,” they hum. “There are others who taste of more Terran plant life but I have never believed in that kind of…adaptation. I’ll taste however I normally do, minus a few more poisonous elements, and if a creature happens to find parallels then that’s nothing but convergent evolution at work.”

Monica knows what most of those individual words mean. “Did your little aspen think you tasted like finau?”

They pause to stew in a curdled mixture of nostalgia and grief. “Yes.”

She leans forward, mouth open and tongue stuck out, waiting expectantly for the next spoonful. When they move to feed her, she grabs at their vine, rushing through the sudden lance of sensation to deliver a soothing pat. The effect is ruined by the terrible noise she lets out when Cinnabari, demon that they are, tickles a vine under her arms. 

She refuses to tolerate their second attempt to feed her, batting them away and trying to scold them through snorting squawks. “No — nohoho — you incorri—no, not there!”

“You like it,” Cinnabari protests, sounding affronted, “I did it to you before, I can see the joy. Don’t lie to me, Parolles, it’s unbecoming.”

“Hoho—horrr….” she grits her teeth, wriggling in place, burning up in a dozen different ways. “Horrible.” 

She can taste the moment their interest is properly piqued, their thoughts shut out and mind a low, thrumming buzz of excitement. Dread and delight bloom across her brain and they drink it all in like a fine meal. “Little one,” they try to speak gently but their voice is a crackling drone dimmed down to a low rasp. Less syrupy than it is sinister. “So many times you have hidden the truth from me. Can we agree that you have lied about yourself?”

She squirms, keenly aware of how much freedom of movement she has, limbs unbound and body painless. Keenly aware of how much leeway they’ve given her and how little that really matters here. “Trrr — shit, nonono — trap, it’s a — trap—”

“I would never trap you, seedling. You come to me all on your own,” Cinnabari says, smugly, so smugly. She wants to roll over and bare every weak point she has, she wants to claw that old ego of theirs to shredded strips. The smug, assured tone makes something on her shiver and curl in on itself, a kind of confidence that makes them seem both admirable and insufferable.

It’s endearing, usually. But the pride blooming and the sensation across her skin and the way they look at her—

“Ca — caahaaaan’t,” she struggles to speak, “wait, wait, please, please, Cinna—”

“Quiet, Parolles,” they reply. 

Her body snaps into shape, coherence flooding back into her, a train of thought given back just so she can dedicate it to keeping her mouth just, to being good, to not failing. It’s unbearable and giddy and too much but then they look down, they stare, they watch. 

She’s so little in their vines that it hurts.

Hands shaking, chest heaving, trying so badly to succeed. But when she manages to choke down the noises they add new vines, feathery ones coated in whisker-like bristles, familiar ones that she can recognize from memories of recent ecstasy. She has never felt more afraid or desperate or wanting in her life — a thought she’s been having quite a lot nowadays.

Cinnabari smirks, in thought if not face. “Yes,” they sigh delightedly, the sigh of someone relaxing into a warm bath, the sigh of someone who knows how a human sighs happily. “Yes, seedling, I think this is the most precious thing you’ve done for me. Stay quiet, won’t you? I want to…focus.”

Stay quiet, she echoes, be good. She grits her teeth, clenches her jaws, bites down on rising snorts until it hurts, a burning in her chest and throat that—

Vines. Pleasure, so much, too much. She whines, high and strained, a pathetic keening that hitches like a laugh as whiskers brush across her inner thigh and dance along the soles of her feet. 

“Very cute,” they murmur. “Yes, I think I’ll keep you like this. Don’t you agree?”

Words, words — she knows she has choice words — she’d usually have some loud ones, surely, she would. But she’s on the verge of short circuiting already, without this added on top.

They continue on without her input, crooning soft compliments and fangless insults as she shudders.

Eventually, inevitably, she lets out a small little squeak.

Monica freezes still.

The vines pause at her skin.

She swallows down a rasping apology. 

And looks up. 

Cinnabari smiles a cold and terrible smile. 

Monica yowls as her world dissolves into nothing but touch, nerves coaxed and cuddled into submission, flesh raw and soft and loved, mind running itself ragged.

There are flashes of thought —please, I can’t, you need to, more, please — but soon they, too, are lost in the flood of sensation.