Monica opens her eyes to see a park, surrounded by greenery.

She swears she’s not weak to this. She isn’t weak to it and anyone would be weak to it, hypothetically, not that she is, just that it’d be normal to…be weak to it. It just hits something soft in her, something vulnerable, and Cinnabari has no qualms with exploiting that vulnerability until she genuinely wants them to stop.

They both know that’s never going to happen. God, the amount of power she gives them — and all they want is to feed her by hand with it. Taunt her from time to time. 

(Wrap her up in vines and cuddle her close and oh god oh no oh please what if she was in their core—)

“That’s a good girl,” Cinnabari coos, startling her out of her thoughts. “Good, dumb girl. Is that what you want to be?”

Monica sets her jaw, teeth ground together, fists clenched at her sides. They think of massaging the tension out of her, what noises she’d make, if the pain would be less manageable. She thinks stubbornly about patches of grass.

The shrunken down feeling has faded, just a tad. She still feels ridiculous and flushed and safe — but the world is big again. 

Nice and grand. Expansive. Something she could study, learn. Stories she’d been told, stories she will be told, the endless stories that make up Cinnabari. 

I should write a book, she thinks. She’d said that before. Learn to write again, learn to read again, have her story join the rest in Cinnabari’s library. 

A hobbyist, they’d called themselves. Well, maybe she wants to be a hobbyist too. A hobbyist author or something along those lines. All the time in the world for that. All the time in the world for anything. Anything. A vast, endless expanse of time and things to spend it on.

Monica had a manager’s  share of choices to make…and she chose Cinnabari, over and over again. 

“I’m going to walk,” she announces. “And you…stay behind. I’ll walk and you’ll stay behind.”

“You won’t be doing that,” Cinnabari says, as if they have the power to just deny her. As if — with no discussion or talking — they have the right to choose for her. 

Oh God, would it not be so nice if they chose for her? They can see that she wants that, at least a little, and they can see that she can see that—

No. Down that path lies madness. Yes, it’s flustering to be seen through, and yes, she…likes being flustered just a teensy bit.

But it’s not that much better than alone time, surely! She’d been…well, maybe not happy on her own but tolerant of the solitude at least. She didn’t feel the cold as sharply. She could sit there for hours, in her own space, fallen into a cooled haze of contentment. It hadn’t been joy but it hadn’t been bad.

Well, maybe she didn’t like it. But it had never been painful to be alone. It had never made her suffer. Or at least it was a background kind of suffering, the low buzz of loneliness nothing compared to the thrum of determination moving her forward, nothing compared to that all consuming need for her family to be alright. 

If she stopped, she would know a pain much worse than missing someone.  There’s hardly a choice between grief and isolation. 

“Let me walk away,” she says. And they won’t let her. They won’t allow her to run from this. They’ll trap her because she wants it and they know she wants it and she can't hide anything from them.

Cinnabari cocks their head to the side, a trickle of red running down the grooves of their crude, lovely wooden face. “You test me so,” they lament, voice stretched in tragic sarcasm, “oh, it’s almost enough to give in. But I’m worried, dlu-seed, about the standard I’m setting.”

Monica takes a single step backwards. They don’t move to stop her. She takes another step.

And another. And another. And another. 

Moving doesn’t hurt. She has a feeling that running would do terrible things to her not sturdy legs but…if they don’t stop than who’s to say it would hurt? 

She keeps moving back. They keep letting her.

Their voice carries farther than the sight of them, resonant and soothing even as something in her starts to tense in anticipation. “What kind of failure do I set us up for, like this? You can’t pout and stomp and get your way, little one. You wouldn’t like that anymore than I would.”

The voice doesn’t change. The scenery does, canopy growing thicker and roots spreading out like networks of intricate, snake-like limbs, but the voice is steady. A grounded thing, amidst the verdant smell of growth. 

“I want to punish you, honestly. But I’m a bit afraid, dlu one, that you’re much too eager for attention. Starved of it, really. So cutely eager, you’ll take anything I give you — oh, but that does make it hard to discourage your missteps.”

Monica stumbles in the middle of her path. She licks her lips, pausing for breath, braced against a soft plush trunk. 

If there were a time to catch me, she thinks, it would be now.

“I’ve already got you,” they reassure, gentle without pity. Though pity from Cinnabari would be different than pity from, say, Zoysia. Pity from another fine but ultimately…not Dracaena affini. Pity from people who don’t like the harder parts of her, who don’t admire her for survival, who don’t respect the effort it took to drag herself up and live. 

Cinnabari wants to claim her. Turn her into — make her into a part of them. She would be different, after, changed in some grand unknowable way.  She’s willing to face that for them. She’s willing to risk it, in the same way she was willing to risk death for every other love she’s clutched this close to heart.

For a moment she thinks, to hell with it all, though she has no clue what ‘it’ could be. To hell with what, exactly? The company’s already gone, deader than a union caught mid-meeting. Cinnabari’s — nice and all — but they don’t make rules for her. They don’t…she could fight them. She can fight them.

“You can’t,” they whisper, “but it’s so cute to watch you try. I can’t help but give you a chance, even if rewarding misbehavior is far from my usual policy.”

“You don’t want a chance anymore. Shall I take it from you? Relieve you of the burden?”

A pang of disappointment. “If you want to,” she says. “Couldn’t stop you, if you did. Probably handled under parts of the cushy slave papers— thou shalt not decideth chance. My grandmother used to love that kind of thing, you know, had all sorts of sayings from Archaic Terra. Do you know any Archaic Terran or—”

“Deflection,” they purr, “is not a trick grand enough to work on me.”

Briefly, she wonders what their punishment would look like. What kind of discipline they’d want to dole out. 

Kneeling for hours on a cold metal floor, detractions from her pay, extra time on assignments nobody wanted, sewer duty. There is no sewer duty, she has no assignments, money has been crushed beneath the Compact’s collective heel, and Cinnabari would only want her kneeling on plush vines. 

Kneeling like that would be a reward, if anything. Drifting soft and gentle, no need to speak or think or work, just the heat in her cheeks and the stirring in her gut and the shared elation of submitting. 

After a while it would hurt, do damage, but she can’t…pain is bad. Pain is usually bad. But pain from Cinnabari, pity from Cinnabari, punishment from Cinnabari — that could be good. That could feel good. She wants to find out how it sounds, looks, feels to be below them like that. 

“Rest,” they say. “I want you to rest for me.”

Monica looks out. The forest surrounds her.

“Picture yourself sitting down.”

She struggles against it, for a moment, the world flashing back to her own home.

No greenery. No tree. No park.

She looks up. Eyes of hammered metal stare down, foreignly familiar. There are no colors swirling around, no gleaming shine to get lost in. A serene pool of black greets her, reflective white glints left as the only sign of its true shape. 

It’s not just black. There are undercoats of pulsing, rich greens and browns — subtle, earthy tones — a smell of musk and wood and cloves. Cinnabari’s smell, peppery and smothering.

“That’s a good girl,” they coo, “look at me. Right at me. You’re in the forest, aren’t you? A green, grand forest. Let the house fade. Let the walls rot away. You’re in a forest.”

Cinnabari smells of amber and cloves and silvery bark. 

The forest smells like Cinnabari. She’s in a forest. She smiles, nodding along as they speak with a voice so pretty it could tame a wolf and so husky it could unravel her from the inside out.

“In a forest,” she murmurs. “Big one. You’re here.”

Cinnabari hums affirmatively. “And if I’m here, then what are you?”

“Happy,” she says automatically. 

Shock. Why would they be surprised? “That is…oh, you dlu little thing,” they drawl, tone forgotten. “Dlu yashkti, that’s what you are, that’s what I’ll make you into. Sweet little baby cat.”

She opens her mouth to make a comment and gets cut off by her own terrible, horrid moaning sound. She stares down at her own face, unable to see her mouth or stop the flow of horrible thoughts about how, exactly, a sound that pathetic and needy came from her body. 

Joy, liquid and pure, swells like a wave and crashes down on her. A vine hovers just above her lips, close enough to make her squirm in anticipation but far enough to keep her head straight. Because it’s not enough for her to squirm; they’re entertained by the horror at the squirming, by the heated flush of blood to her cheeks. 

Her body is still hers but it’s someone else’s too—

Oh, they liked that, she thinks dully, following the bob and weave of their taunting vines. A pattern. It curls to the left and she follows. It swerves to the right and she leans, like a flower turning to the sun, like a dog as treats are waved above it.

Her head spins because of more than just the rapid turns and nods and shakes they have her do. 

“Gesture training will be a nightmare for you, won’t it?” They sound so happy. She likes it. She really, really wants to hear them more, almost as much as she wants those vines on her skin, almost as much as she wants to sink into the forest again. “That’s where I’ll have you fail, I think. Set you up for it, nice and easy, then punish you too. Indulge myself, be just as unfair as I’m tempted to be. Have you stand in a corner like your species’ children, have you jump and twist and do all sorts of silly little tricks for my amusement. Would you like that?”

The vine, so lovely, covered in blue petals. The vine goes up and she does too, desperate not to lose sight of it. It goes down and she leans forward, too forward, falling and falling and oh god—

Oh god. The vines don’t touch skin but they do cling through her clothes, posed like snakes or worms, like alien things that slither and hover and shiver at the tip. She’s been caught. Caught.

Her whole body hums in concert with a song older than her own weary self, with a song so ancient it makes her feel small again, with a song so brutal it allows her to bear the comfort of its soft recourse. 

And she can see, for a single instant, just how much that song has changed. Hissing wind pipes and growling drums alongside a murmur of plucked, delicate strings. Harps for an angel. It’s her, in there. It’s Monica.

Changed and changing. Both of them. Better together than they could’ve been alone, not needing to be alone, because they can be together. 

“You’re in a forest,” they say. And it must be true, because they’re hers. Her affini. Her Cinnamon. Her wife. 

“Big woods,” she drawls, slurred and half-formed. Her eyes are lidded but it’s ok, because she doesn’t need to see, with her affini here. “Biiiiig woooods.”

“Very big. And you’re very small, aren’t you?”

She is, isn’t she? They’re so big and she’s so small. 

How could they love her? How could she matter?

A pressure rises in the back of her throat. 

A vine wraps around her wrist. “Dlu, whiny thing. Naughty little stray. My squishy-cored seedling.”

Naughty. Whiny. She makes a protesting sound, words too delicate and empty. Speaking is too complicated, when she’s like this. 

“Whiny. You’re a brat in so many ways. Badly behaved. Naughty. Soft, sweet, bratty thing. A petulant little stray all for me — how lucky I am. How lucky you are, that I got to you first. I’ll have you beg one of these days, say sorry for ever running from me, squirm your way into a corner — and you’d love it, wouldn’t you, you needy little brat?”

Oh god, oh god, oh heavens above and hells below and—

A vine. Creeps up close. Wriggling from side to side, winding its way across the thin fabric shielding her poor mind from inescapable, affectionate oblivion. A vine. A vine, a vine, a vine. It could pet her head. It could squeeze her fingers. It could wrap around her neck like a collar, ever at the risk of pressing down, never suffocating but always warning, and maybe Cinnabari would laugh as they did it, cackle as she squirmed—

Soft, rustling sounds. Shaking leaves. They already are laughing, warped as the sound is. 

Monica opens her mouth, tongue stuck out, begging wordlessly.

“Manners,” they chide, utterly unashamed, utterly unfair. Rude. Mean, they’re mean, her affini is so mean. “I’m only as mean as you let me be. It’s your own fault that you like to be bullied, seedling.”

She whines, protests, words beyond her grasp but complaints still well within her reach. She wants it. She needs it. They know she wants it, needs it, they want to give it to her — why hold it over?

They sigh happily. “It’s your fault it’s fun to bully you. Bad girl. Cute, bad girl.”

Bad strikes her like a physical thing. Bad. She quiets, swallows down more wounded noises, straightens and feels the wave of pleasure pull back.

She’s bad. It wouldn’t hit her so hard if it weren't — if she weren’t — but she is, it was and it does, it does. Bad. They’ll never give it to her if she’s bad. They’ll stop liking her if she’s bad. They’re going to leave.

“I’m going to punish you,” Cinnabari coos into her ear like a sweet nothing, “do you want that?”

Up goes the vine. Down goes the vine. She barely even realizes they’ve had her nod until they make a delighted, quiet sound. They like it. They like her. Her heart skitters and falters in her chest— but it’s ok, because her affini is here. 

It’s ok. She slumps over, swaying on her feet, and the trunk that she leans on is soft, soft, soft. Where her skin can touch it, she can feel her nerves light up, humming and bursting with bright, buzzing joy. It’s good. It’s almost too good. She wants to — to do something with it — needs to move — but her affini clicks scoldingly when she tries to wriggle away.

She can’t move. A hand twitches, a vine wraps around it, sends her spinning. 

“You’re in a forest,” her affini says. And she knows, even if she can’t nod along, that she is in a forest. “You’re in a forest. If you’re in a forest, you feel good. You’re in a forest.”

She’s in a forest. 

“And you’re needy.”

And she’s needy.

“You want to squirm and move. You’re in a forest so you want to squirm and move.”

She’s in a forest. Of course she wants to squirm. 

Monica smiles. She’s in a forest.