Monica ends up sleeping through more than half of the second day, feeling a pang of loss. On the third day she realizes how much time she’s been spending with Cinnabari and how little time she’s been using to do…anything else. On the fourth she stares at a wall for a few minutes, trying very hard to summon up the fear that should be here.

The grip on her is fading, somehow. It’s not gone — she’s not sure if it can be gone — but she thinks of Cinnabari and the aching has lessened. The grief has sharpened its grip in her but the love is different, bitter and dry and curdling in her stomach. 

She still thinks about them. So, so often. She’ll go out into the streets, look at a bouquet of flowers, then snort thinking up ways to send Cinnabari one. You’ll be next, she could hiss. This is what happened to my last husband. 

She’ll huff, somewhat amused. It’s not her best joke but Cinnabari wouldn’t mind that, would they? And then she thinks of the fact she hasn’t seen them, not in a while, she should go back she needs to go back—

Monica will watch florets and their affini in the park. There’s very little silence, nowadays. The world used to be so loud and quiet — the low thrum of engines, the high-pitched whine of fluorescent street lights, the clinking steps of shoes against harsh metal floors — but familiar white noise has been replaced with something that scratches at her hind brain. She never got to hear rustling leaves or creaking branches or distant, merry laughter. She never got to hear people talking instead of murmuring in the streets — everyone talks like there are no cameras, like there never had been cameras, like they don’t…know better. 

She hears stuff that would’ve gotten people killed thrown around like nonsense. She hushes down a stranger when they start cursing out the Accord — and they look at her strangely, the affini looks at her strangely, everyone looks at her strangely. Cinnabari, where are they? Cinnabari needs to come back. She can’t…

Monica shakes herself out of it. “Sorry,” she flaps her hand dismissively. “Force of habit.”

“You’re…the old lady, right?” the human says, slow and soft, like she’s some wild animal that’ll start running any second now. “From down the street, I mean.”

Monica squints, lips curling as she thinks. “You,” she says, “I know you. Mendelson’s kid, yeah?”

They freeze, horror carving itself onto their face. “I…”

“Hmm,” she hums discontentedly. “That guy should’ve listened, last time I saw him, backed off on you. Should’ve whacked him, for what he did, when you came into your own. You doing alright?” Monica pauses for a second. “They treating you good?”

“I mean — yeah, of course? They’re…they’re affini,” the kid stammers. “They saved us.” 

“Leafiest angels you ever did see,” Monica agrees, nodding. She meets the affini’s eyes, those terrible marbles, those awful shiny traps. 

The affini watches her closely. Monica breathes in, heart too slow for the fear spearing through her. “You know this little one?” the affini asks. Not coldly, never coldly. So, so sweet. So sweet it’s sickening. So sweet it’s foreign. 

“Maybe,” she says carefully. “Knew a name. Spoke once.”

The affini takes an interest. She knows they take an interest, because the air itself starts trembling with their vibrato. The kid seems unaffected by it. “My name is Zenith Zoysia, Second Bloom, he/him.”

“Monica Parolles, woman,” she bows her head. “Zero blooms so far — I’ll let you know when that changes.”

A chuckle from Zenith, a stifled snort from the kid. Both sounds pair with a rise in the not-song that follows all affini. 

“You probably heard my name?” the kid says. Or…no, not kid. Not now. Adult. Twenty at the least. 

Monica shakes her head. “Just heard about it.” Mendelson was one of those assholes who thought themselves above the rules in one moment only to try desperately to be included in the next. The rules only applied when he was the one downtrodden, the one abandoned. He left his own blood out to get picked away by vultures — which broke at least one spoken rule and over three unspoken ones. 

Mendelson, piece of work that he is, hasn’t been seen since the affini arrived. Monica tries not to think too hard about what that means. She has a lot of practice doing that.

“Oh,” they say. “I was, um, still planning my name by the time he…he…you know. I’m…it’s not quite a name but it fits like one and I’d like if you…”

“Call them the Stranger,” Zenith purrs. 

“The Stranger,” she chews the name over, thinking it over. It’s odd, true, but so are they. It fits, she thinks. Cinnabari would love it. Monica stops thinking about Cinnabari. Monica needs to stop thinking about Cinnabari. “Like it,” she decides, with the air of an executioner passing judgment. “Good name. A flighty one but…a good one. Strong.”

The Stranger beams at her with sublime relief, Zenith left mildly confused by the seemingly overreacting human. The Stranger’s beat skips along in twine with the slower drip of their affini, different but complementary, small but meaningful. 

Monica thinks, I miss my affini’s song, and then immediately stops thinking about that. 

Something…anything else. Confusion! The confusion. Yes, yes. They wouldn’t know, would they? No one talked about the rules. No one should be talking about the rules, especially not now. 

It means more to the Stranger than just the euphoria of getting to be someone. It means more than just the pleasure of giving out a name. It means more than…it just means more. 

Names, when changed, need to be checked and hidden. Spoken hushed amongst family and friends, shared throughout the community, provided with plausible nicknames that don’t draw any untoward attention. The company didn’t provide for people that the higher-ups didn’t like seeing. The company didn’t want to see anyone providing for people tossed outside of its iron-clad grip.

Danger. So much danger. And the affini said no, so the world changed, so the rules don’t matter anymore. 

They matter to the Stranger. They matter to Monica. But she has no illusions of them mattering to anyone who wasn’t part of this district. 

“Mendelson,” Monica says, “failed you. He’ll burn for that.”

The Stranger blinks. The affini blinks. Together, they blink. Together, they cock their heads. Together, they pulse as one. 

Monica has never felt so, so terrible. She knows why. She doesn’t lie to herself — she hates lying tk herself — and she knows why. She feels awful. She feels sick, just looking at these two, just watching what they have. She feels wretched. Wretched. She knows when they notice because Zenith’s face goes shock-still and then the Stranger twitches worriedly and both of them feed concern into one another in a duet of beautiful complexity before devolving into something she can barely even comprehend because this. This is not hers. This is not her song. 

Angels, she thinks, were supposed to play harps. Monica doesn’t attempt to relieve any of the tension built up, because she refuses to acknowledge its existence. She has better things to think about, like her Miss—like those robots that are…those awful robots. Terrible things. 

Monica looks up at Zenith, terrifying affini, terrible affini, a sprout in comparison to her own. This one couldn’t tame her, could he? No, the song is too soft. Too mellow. Sounds hollow and empty and banal like everything else in this wonderful new world. 

Monica glances at the Stranger, new and soft and barely-known but thoroughly cared for. “You did good,” she nods with approval. “Polite young man. You reeled in a good one, Stranger!”

The Stranger balks at her, clearly trying to keep up with the mood-change. “Wait, we’re not — I mean, I’d, I’d like to be, maybe — not that we have to, Zenny — I just…well…”

Monica leaves before she does something mortifying like scream or cry or some combination of both. She’s a fully grown woman. Not a child. 

She doesn’t leave the house after that. Not once in the next day. Monica is taking a break from walking, her old bones ache, there’s a crick in her knee that calls for rain. Yes. That’s it. She hates rain almost as much as she hates liars and her own damned self and stupid, bratty, cunning Cinnabari. Cinnabari probably knows. They’re probably scheming, planned all of this out from the very start, had all the power over her, trapped her—

That shouldn’t sound good, she thinks, that should sound bad. That is bad. This is bad. 

Fifth day, hour 2. Fifth day, hour 8. Fifth day, hour 11. Fifth day, hour 11 and a half. Fifth day, hour 12. Fifth day, hour 12 and a quarter. Fifth—

“Heated blanket,” she mutters to herself, half-dazed in honey-drenched dreams. “Remember that? Heat pads. Had those…in the winter. They gave them out, one per home, we kept them for the littler ones…”

Her home robot is silent, because of course it is. 

A knock at the door. Someone there, someone there, sent by the company — she needs to get things in order — quiet down the rebellious ones — keep them all in line — get out the way before they shove her out their way…

“Sophont check-in!” chirps Zenith. Minus the Stranger. Where is the Stranger? “Is everything alright in here?”

“Yeah,” Monica croaks. “Wanted to…use the thingy. To make a…heated blanket. Won’t do things for me, my house robot.”

“…why don’t you show me what you were doing?” Zenith asks. 

Monica shows him. She starts rambling. About the company, Terran house-robots, Terran heated blankets, everything and anything but the rules or Cinnabari or the terrible emptiness in her. 

Zenith shudders by the time it’s over. The Stranger’s missing notes show through the dim of steady drums — it’s an empty song without their higher tune. Emptier than even Monica’s. Hollow. Zenith looks angry, in a human way, face screwed up as his hands clench together. She hates it. She hates it so much.

She misses Cinnabari and the way she’d unspool with emotion and the ways she forgot to pretend at being human. She misses her Miss Cinnamon, her lovely Miss—

“Capitalism,” Monica says dully. 

Zenith nods in response. Good. Polite young man. He knows a lot about house robots. 

He shows her how to make a heated blanket with the house robot — calls it a ‘hab unit’ or some such nonsense, just like all the other kids these days, with their new slang for houses and planets and such. Turns out she needs to speak like she’s ordering oatmeal. The food nonsense applies to everything. The robot isn’t smart enough to just hear her talk and get right to it, it needs directions.

“Give me a heated blanket, twice my body length, made of…wool,” she orders, staring down the ceiling of her home. Cinnabari could probably make something softer than wool, give her books about creatures she’s never even heard of, listen when she speaks like Monica is the most fascinating puzzle and an infuriating pest and a precious little creature—

She has the blanket. Her life is complete. (It isn’t.) She’s perfectly fine. (She isn’t.) And maybe she’s lying but she doesn’t want to lose like this. (…)

Monica Parolles is sixty years old and she has more than earned the ability to boss around young men. Most of the time they don’t listen but affini are kinder than humans. Softer, sometimes.

“Carry me, will you?” she frowns up at him. “I went out for too long, last time. Was…a bad decision.”

Zenith melts, soft as cotton. Monica Parolles feels distinctly like she’s made a mistake. Not because of him, God no, this plant’s about as dangerous as the grass he so closely resembles but there’s…something deeper. A discordant little tune that echoes into a dissonant , like it knows what she’s done, like it’s watching. 

She shivers. Good. Cinnabari is watching, Miss Cinnamon is waiting, her Dracaena is seeing her. Monica deserves to be carried and if Cinnabari doesn't want to do the carrying then that’s fine, it’s perfectly alright, she’ll find a way to just…leave. Even if her world is emptier, greyer, worse without them in it. It’s still a world she can live in, which is more than enough for her tastes.

Zenith keeps himself looking human, which is a decent choice but just makes her think of Cinnabari, Cinnabari, Cinnabari. 

…she’d probably be thinking like this no matter what, actually. 

It’s nothing but bad luck that he happened to be here while she was moping. He’s a perfectly fine young man. Very good with robots and computers and such. He’s fine, really, he’s just…not Cinnabari. 

“You be good to your Stranger,” she says, because this is a person. This is a person, not just Affini-Who-Dares-To-Not-Be-Cinnabari. “I’ll have your…your stamen if they end up hurt, young man, they’re — not delicate, none of us are delicate — but we’re all scarred over and the pain lingers. Don’t force them. Don’t hurt them. Don’t break the rules.”

“I won’t,” Zenith says simply. A bit puzzled, like he can’t even consider the idea of hurting the Stranger. Good. 

Monica finds herself sated, in this sense. She is so far from satisfied in every other possible way that it’s gotten ridiculous. “You’re a good man, sprout. But if you leave the door open I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”

Zenith replies with a bright, “Of course!” 

And Monica is left alone again. In a slightly less grey world, missing her own music a little bit less, wondering if this counts as making a friend. 

(That night, her dreams are better—

Worse. Are worse. So much worse, this is bad. She’s falling in more than just love. She can touch the envious vines around her, taste the spiced liquor of their sap, see the flash of bright white anger lancing through a delicate melody like a roaring wildfire. Blood dribbles down their face and wood pares back to reveal a dozen hungering eyes, lovely eyes, eyes that she could drown in.)

She wakes up with a name teetering on the tip of her tongue, a name so bittersweet it makes her feel alive again.

Monica catches herself and spits out, “Zenith,” instead.