I lived for so long, Monica thinks, petrified that nothing would ever change. Then change came but I’m still petrified. 

The fear doesn’t leave just because the threat has passed. 

Change is awful. Change is scary. It is always painful — so, so painful — but it’s also living. If changing is living then stagnation is its own kind of death and Monica refuses to die, refuses to yield, refuses to surrender. The air in her lungs is sacred and the stories in her mind are vital. 

She didn’t like her body, once. She hated it, she despised it. But then she’d heard her grandmother’s stories, how the delicate fingers of her hands had once been used to climb, how the world used to be full of trees and grass and animals that ate people whole, how humans had been animals. Just animals. And it had helped — so, so much — to know that she was just an animal in the end.

When she couldn’t be a person, she could be that animal. That undefined animal, that simple terrified space between person and creature. She could retreat, then, imagine herself as a beast rather than a woman. When she was small, so very small, she had wanted to be an animal more than a human being.

Human is a word full of beauty and struggle and obligation. The affini entered the human world and cleared all of that away with a few swipes of their graceful vines. So now, human is a different word, small and shuddering and soothed down by blissful vines. 

She wonders if this is what ancient predators had felt, before they became the same cats and dogs kept pampered and chained up in the menageries of rich men. If they felt the same hollowed out fear for a future she can’t recognize, had the same damning knowledge that the future will arrive no matter what she does, if they knew the temptations of warmth and safety with a creature that she knows would feed her and tend to her and keep her safe — if they too felt the certainty of that contradicted by the very same instincts which kept them alive. 

The same good that let her survive is not the same good that’s going to let her thrive. 

Cinnabari, she thinks, could be the key here.

When did she start thinking that? Because it’s not right. And it doesn’t feel wrong but she knows herself, she should be angrier than this. She’s been angry for decades. Anger is a biting, burning, blazing energy not this churning, sluggish frustration. It almost feels performative. 

Strange. Tiring. Anger is good fuel but nothing lasts forever. Wrath is a fire but it’s burning itself out. Is it Cinnabari? Was the dream last night Cinnabari? She’s not sure what she’d do, if it was.

The last part was so thoroughly not-Dracaena that Monica feels like a fool for even entertaining the comparison. The first, though, felt at least a little like her Mi — her Cinnabari. Not Miss, of course. Never Miss. Maybe Miss Cinnamon, but that’s just a silly nickname and means nothing at all, like the way they’d say little aspen instead of their Aaspan floret’s real name—

Would they say her name? Would they call her by her last name, by Parolles, or would they—

She needs to keep her last name. Oh God, she hadn’t even thought — so focused on everything else about the affini and domestication and her Cinnabari — but losing her last name is beyond what she’d be willing to accept. That name belongs to more than just her, she doesn’t want to give it up. There are others out there who share her name — sons, daughters, cousins — and if she ever meets them again, she’d like to have that connection. That familiar thing. She wants to stay as…herself as possible.

She could change her first name to Parolles, leave behind Monica. She could do that — Monica’s not as important as Parolles, not nearly as storied.

What do affini eat? she wonders. Water?

Tea, she decides, can’t go wrong. 

But then she remembers a passage about the Aaspan, remembers bitter scents in the air, remembers the sound of their deep, creaking voice. And she orders the house robot to make her chicken broth, then pours that broth into a mug. 

Monica does not know how to cook or season things. There’s nothing you can do to synthcubes that make them taste like anything but synthcubes — which is by perfected, miserable design — and even when they had access to actual food seasoning existed as nothing but a fever dream. Expensive beyond expenses. The rules said people should share those but a pin-sized bottle split in more than two is virtually nothing, so that half the bottle was claimed by whichever family was willing to get robbed later that week. They always got robbed. Monica never did the robbing herself but that’s just because she knew she’d never be strong enough to keep anything rarer than a packet of flavored ration-paste safe.

She wonders what Cinnabari would say, if she told them that. She wonders if they’d remember it, if they’d care, if they’re capable of caring for her and her tiny mortal little mind. If an angel can love a human. If a mountain can love a molehill. If she’ll eventually introduce herself as Monica Cinnabari or Parolles Cinnabari or maybe even Parolles Dracaena. 

She wonders what their Aaspan would think of her. Then, as she asks for the house robot to add a few finishing touches to her wedding rings, she wonders if the world can let this happen. If good things can happen, truly good things, only good things. Good with no caveat or price or condition. 

The answer is no, because even if this is the affini everything has a price. But the price is so low compared to the relief, the joy, the divinity of giving up. What does it even matter? Who would even care if she gave up? No one’s looking at her. No one’s seeing her. Zoysia will probably end up asking to pet her when she’s a floret, the Stranger will probably smile like they’ve heard good news, all of heaven will beam down when she finally stops insisting that she matters or is important or…

She doesn’t…matter. She doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. The world barely matters — who cares about it — compared to the touch of her affini — compared to the taste of sweetness — compared to the luxuries she finally gets to have—

What, she thinks, is free will? What is freedom, when I could have a library and a lover and a book opened up to page 27, as both of us read, as both of us complain, as both of us live.

She doesn’t matter. Her choices don’t matter. Her entire life — sixty years — and she thought that meant something? She thought it meant something? It means nothing. 

It means…nothing. 

“You know,” Monica says to no one. “I always did say meaning was meaningless. I didn’t…when my littler ones asked about why I just spat out some saying or another,” she winces, lips pulled tight. “I think that was a mistake. Because I kept telling them to not think about the answer but that was just…to cover up that there was none. Why? Because someone decided it. Why? Because someone wanted it. Why? Because the world is unfair and wrong and you are a part of that world now. I’m sorry.”

“But we got to live,” she croaks, “does that mean something? That they lived? That I lived? I want it to mean something. This deserves to mean something. But you’re so big, Cinnabari, and I’ve never been more scared of a thing in my life.”

Monica speaks to no one. Because no one is there. Because nothing is there. But that nothing is shifting, she can feel it, the air itself shuddering in anticipation. “The space around me isn’t dead, I can see that, it’s livelier than ever. I’m livelier than ever, I’ve got meds for pain, I’ve got fresh food and constant water and a fucking robot at my beck and call — I’m the one controlling a house robot, do you even realize how mad that is? Heaven’s sake, I have more than we — more than I thought anyone could ever have. I have everything I’ll ever want and I could still ask for more and—”

“And it doesn’t matter,” she admits, throat closing up. “Because what I want is you but you aren’t here and that…I think I want you. I think that scares me almost as much as the…teasing threats. I think this was inevitable.”

Dracaena is there. They pulse alongside her. She breathes to their meaning and rhythm. Beyond that door, listening in on the tensed up dread, even if they didn’t quite manage to hear her words.

Monica wants power, so she can give it away. She wants choice, so she can give that choice up. She wants freedom, so she can do nothing but sit in a room full of love and books and ugly, beautiful reality. Learn and eat and live to be fat and sweet and safe in the vines of something so bitter, so lovely, so hers.

Dracaena is there, pulsing sweetly alongside her. Dracaena is there — afraid, so sweetly afraid — and together they sing with plucked heartstrings, angel’s harp-strings, music of the heavens. 

“This isn’t enough,” she says, though it feels a bit like sacrilege. “Cinnabari, this isn’t enough for me to give up my…me. I’ve seen what happens to people. I’ve been what happens to people, I’ve bent so far my bones cracked beneath the pressure. I can’t let that happen again, I love you, and I can’t. The company — the Accord — God, they drove us like working drones, stole everything away, sold us and sold us and sold us until I was…and I can’t let you do that to me, I just can’t.”

Doubt. Disbelief. A steady drip of confusion, like the very concept of this comparison is baffling. An odd feeling, like someone’s plucked at a string deep within her and left her echoing. 

“I don’t trust you not to hurt me,” Monica says, because it’s true. And above all, they are honest. “I can’t trust you not to hurt me, I’ve never been more afraid — and I still love you. But I can’t.”

There’s none of the squawking indignance she expected. None of the bristling rage or wry, mocking amusement. Just solemn, quiet pity. A familiar kind of pity, one felt over and over again, for a sea of faces she doesn’t recognize over an amount of years she can hardly even imagine let alone process. “You need me,” they say. “That’s enough, seedling. Fertile soil.” 

“Come in,” she pleads. “Properly. Don’t just…explain it to me. I don’t want to hear it yet.”

“You’ll need to.”

She laughs, croaking and snorted, yawping and squawking. She laughs until her belly hurts, until she can barely breathe, until tears cloud her cvision. “Nothing can make me listen,” she giggles, actually giggles, as she speaks. “Nothing short of a cattle prod will ever work on me. Tough-shelled, you said, tough-shelled. I’m not cracking until you come over here and pry me open — or until we…we talk.”

Cinnabari doesn’t wince at the mention of cattle prods so much as they burst into a tidal wave of concern, of reluctant anger, of quiet yet terrifying and terrified emotion. They want so badly to make it all better. They know they could make it all better, if only she let them in, and at this point it really would take just a little nudge to have her blooming. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again and nothing short of concrete, repeatable evidence that it’s wrong will ever make them stop.  

It’s not enough to need and be needed. “I want you to listen,” she says. “You don’t have to answer yet, I’m not…fragile. But I do need to at least say it, to admit this, and that’s not a conversation that can happen with you outside my door.”

Hesitation. Doubt, lingering doubt, the certainty that they shouldn’t have waited this long, the eagerness to finally claim/see her, the rushing current of need need need that prods at their psyche. They feel so much she could drown in it — half those feelings echoed by nostalgia, tinged by memory, shadows of the past casting light onto the future. She knew they were old, the way she knows all affini are all old, but the depth of that truth never hit her quite like this.

And still, she thinks, you’re a brat. Maybe we’re both brats, despite it all. “I’ve got tea, Cinnabari. Or broth. I’ve not got any finau leaves but something tells me you’d prefer it if I weren’t poisoned so…”

Cinnabari slithers into the room, their mass of leaves and vines looking very out of place in Monica’s small, ordinary home. Their mask of a face moves now, lips wobbling into some attempt at a pout. Monica spots the eager waggling of a few vines, twitching desperately towards her, and it makes her feel an emotion there are no words for.

“Oh God,” she breathes in sharply. “You look like something the horse dragged in. Let me see, love, come closer.”

Love is echoed by two minds. She has no words for how sappy she feels now. She’s fairly sure something in her either melted or finally snapped under the pressure, because there’s a heat to her cheeks and a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, even though they’ve done nothing at all yet. Not a meaningful word has been spoken.

“Seedling,” they murmur, lips out of sync with the word itself. 

“No,” Monica retorts. “Come — you heard me, Cinnabari, you heard me say it. Need you…I want you near me. For this, I need you near me, or I won’t — can’t do it without you.”

That’s what breaks, yields, forces them forwards. A slithering, somehow graceful crawl. Bundles of vines, white thorns stabbing through lush pink moss, eyes of hammered metal reflecting endless inky depths. Shimmering, iridescent, like a polished beetle’s shell. They want her. 

They want her. She blinks at that, even as it seems obvious, even as feelings bleed into each other like dripping ink, like paint mixed together. She wants to be wanted. She wants to be needed. She wants to be loved. 

Something melts like snow, something heated cools to the touch, something in her solidifies. Resolve. Or maybe just…certainty. Cold but soft. Aching.

“Take a seat,” she says softly, “and then we can…talk about what we missed. You can keep me up to date on all the — all the ancient angelic gossip.”

They don’t hesitate here. They don’t touch her, they don’t claim her, they don’t force her hand or deride her for the wait or have some sort of breakdown over it. Cinnabari isn’t mad or disappointed in her, isn’t cowed by her or resentful of her. They just…feel bad. They wish she’d been quicker. They wish they’d been quicker. 

Centuries of hard-won lessons brush up against her mind as Cinnabari settles in beside her.

Somehow, it feels like she's lost.