Lucida Segunda, Affini Compact OCA Liner Mother Terminal (400 Lightyears from Sol (and counting!)) - One Year Later

Marfisa, her bright eyes and shapely hair glowing under the illumination of the promenade, walked along the densely tiled lane composing a fraction of an avenue designed for mostly vine-based locomotion. Arrayed around her was a landscape of eateries, open stores, and offices for personal services, painted by the tastes and needs of countless forms of life with which she was growing steadily more familiar. A garden of those countless forms went about their business and pleasure here, most accompanied by affini in a dazzling range of colors and forms.

The woman herself had naturalized well enough to add her own presentation to the mix. A home-sewn cloak with lace trim draped warmly over her casual dress. Her hair, grown out and dip-dyed to a blue gradient, curled over the cloak in turn. On one side, her forearm was wrapped in a prominent sleeve of swept panels thrumming gently with color and her other supported a bag packed with groceries and goodies from the myriad around her.

The Shops at 450° Transit Station had grown to be her favorite place to run errands, even if it was a long trip across the Outer Habitation Helix between it and home. Contemplating that trip, she retrieved her datapad. Before she could leaf through to her usual chatrooms, a system message covered the screen- 'Prepare for Ship-wide Announcement!' She heeded it, coming to a stop.

A distinctive chime warmed up then rang out from on high, carefully chosen to ensure it could draw attention without startling. Every sophont across the promenade became aware, though none of the affini appeared taken off guard. Marfisa couldn’t tell if it was due to prescience or grace, but her well timed pad check granted her just as much prescience this time, and she took a slight satisfaction in that.

A cheery voice rang out from every angle, so sonorous that one could be forgiven for mistaking it as song accompanying the chime. Despite several months of study, Marfisa could only parse fragments of the broadcast in Affini. Her pad prompted her to listen to an English translation, but she opted for a transcription, trying to follow along with the alien tongue.

“Heyyy, citizens and sweet little cuties, and beepers, and pets, and so many good cute little things aboard the Segunda! This is your active Captain Rhipsalis, letting ya know about a teensy change in our schedule. Due to some silly goings-on, we’re gonna have to bump up our timeframe on the Habitation Helixes coming out of spin. Whoops! Don’t sweat it, this’ll take care of itself soon enough. Please wrap up or pause your activities, prepare for deceleration and microgravity, and give a shout if you need a hand getting you and all of your precious, tiny lil pets and wards and cuties ready! We expect this’ll wrap up within the hour.”

Another chime sang in a different pitch and the active Captain’s voice began the speech again in a different alien language. English came a few down the line in Marfisa’s experience. Rather, English/Floret came a few down the line, drenching a simplified message in even more saccharine praise.

Many of the affini began to move with purpose or increase their tempo, securing their things (including their charges) and pausing or mobilizing their activities (including their charges). Marfisa bit her cheek, taking the time for a spot of mental math. It would take a lot to run to the 450° Station proper, and she would certainly not make it until after a tangle of hypermobile aliens did. By the time she made it to one, the railcar would need to slow drastically to suit her travel preference settings, or else take the time to synthesize a harness for her, slowing down everyone around her as well. After which, she just had to make it…all the rest of the way home, likely in microgravity before she even made it, liable to get stuck. She blushed for a moment until her thoughts were tempered by frustratingly familiar problems.

She would make it to the station quickly if she was carried by an affini. She would have no trouble on the railcar if she was held by an affini. She could be brought to her home- or anywhere, really- safely and quickly despite microgravity or damn near anything else if she was brought along by an affini. Doubly frustrating was the fact she could find one to help her do this if she simply asked. She was vaguely aware this was only a problem rather than a solution because of her own hangups and pride, and so tucked it away as a note to bring up in therapy next time. For now, her stubbornness stands.

Marfisa returned her focus to her surroundings having paused long enough to miss a few more translations of the announcement. Already, the promenade was clearing out, but many of the proprietors had yet to leave. She could make a concession and ask for help, but she’d rather ask one short favor from someone she was acquainted with than task a stranger with ongoing aid.

Marfisa stopped over at Bee’s Knees Teas & Treats a few times each week. The joint bore enough of a likeness to Terran cafés to be comfortable while incorporating enough elements of other stellar cultures to be terribly interesting. Likewise, the food had been a great way to test the waters while having easy fallbacks if a new dish didn’t sit well. Even the dishware provided some comfort to her, as the teacups and mugs were finely made and she could get food on plates that made her feel like an actual person!

As she entered, Marfisa witnessed those lovely dishes and every other lovely item in the shop being secured with terrifying coordination by the human barista behind the counter and the affini that owned them. Two of the barista’s connivents stood by the wayside; a beeple who rarely did anything besides act as eye-candy and mascot, and a fairly large but meek creature who was extensively modified to augment ser once-aquatic species’ biology. The latter noticed Marfisa enter and hurried over.

“Welcome, Lady Cam! We were just about to finish service for the day. I do hope that’s alright.” As little as she cared for the dynamic it implied, Marfisa smiled at having someone know her name and being able to feel their respect.

“Of course, Lyra. I have an unusual request, though. It’s a long way home for me, so could I perhaps have your help getting strapped in to ride out the microgravity here?”

Lyra hadn’t the time to think it over before the blur of plantlife tending to the store erupted towards them. The affini gracefully folded into the shape of an 8-foot tall wide-set human with petals approximating an apron rolling down her front, a hand on her floret to reassure ser and mouth open to answer before a breath had passed. “Marfisa pumpkin, of course you can stay over! A person or two besides myself was gonna stay around, and my darling lil Bennie in the back there asked to practice making milk foam art in microgravity. Pick a spot, and I’ll prepare the chair for you in a moment?”

While her smile persisted, Marfisa’s thoughts crowded her focus. Affini may answer for their florets. Her question would have been more effectively directed at Lyra’s owner anyways. She had chosen to be polite and gotten the result and offer for help she expected and still felt a sense of dissatisfaction towards herself. Added to the mental note for therapy. “Thank you, Laurel. Think I’ll head upstairs.”

While the footprint of the Bee’s Knees was spacious, the layout had a number of densely decorated dividing walls and cubby holes to provide cozy spaces for creatures so inclined. Marfisa’s favorite spot was up the long set of low stairs, round the corner, on a bench shielded from the room behind overlooking the serving bar below. Up she walked, around she went, and- -the other person Laurel mentioned was relaxing on her bench.

The affini before Marfisa was neither a tangle of unkempt vines nor recognizable in shape. Their limbs and body shape must have been based on some creature unknown to her, or else crafted to give impressions of familiarity while mimicking nothing at all. Their lower half resembled a dress not of styled petals or leaves, but moss-covered stones cobbled tightly together. They rested a pair of arms on the table and another on their lap with fingers twined, even as vines craned over their shoulders to manipulate the large datapad and cup of tea in front of them. Their face, distinctly nonhuman enough to avoid the uncanny valley, slowly turned from the pad towards her, and she marked that it didn’t bother feigning a mouth.

The two observed each other for a few moments and Marfisa wondered if her rival was aware of the contest of intense social strategy they had just engaged her in. She waved, putting on her most confident smile and giving a small nod. She needed to find a reason to be here, now! She turned as calmly but purposefully as she could muster, past the railing and overlook, towards…yes! Another table and chair across the way. Not only did she appear to have a reason for having come this way that would graciously save the stranger from the awkward position of thinking she expected the seat they were in, but she got to enjoy a seat by the overlook regardless.

The flaws in her victory made themselves apparent in rapid succession.

The chair, while very comfy, was intended for sophonts of a notably larger scale than Marfisa. The table, while sharing her usual spot’s excellent view, lacked the cozy backing that provided a sense of privacy to the room behind. This was also the singular seat which had a direct view of the bench in an otherwise empty restaurant, meaning she had settled as close as possible to the stranger without sidling into the bench beside them.

New objective, disengage. She would only have to look foolish for a moment before…

Before her hostess bolted up from the floor below, rapidly restraining Marfisa with a set of freshly compiled harnesses and belts. She was exceedingly precise. No hair out of place, no strap pulled too tight, and not a single leaf’s brush against Marfisa per her formerly explained boundaries. Disarmed by the unresolved self-imposed social conundrum, she flustered before her wits caught up with her.

“T-thank you. Laurel.”

“Certainly, pumpkin. Let me know if you need any help making adjustments, or have a snack, or anything at all.”

The two stared each other down. Marfisa intended to keep her composure for exactly as long as she felt like it, despite the pressure bearing down on her. Laurel had an almost predatory glint in her eyes like so many affini gave Marfisa. She had come to know it wasn’t hunger, but far more dangerous. Infatuation. Adoration. The drive to domesticate. A squeeze and gentle arrhythmic tapping on her arm propped up Marfisa’s focus so she could meet Laurel’s lingering gaze until the plant returned to her other chores.

She stretched and drew tension into her body in much the opposite way one might purposefully relax as she shook off that encounter. The harness didn’t limit her range of motion aside from keeping her seated but seemed terribly effective at that. Returning to her thoughts, Marfisa found herself utterly unable to disengage from the rival in her usual spot, who she now noticed had been watching intently throughout her series of blunders.

Tap, taptap. Focus. Square breathing. There was no reason to fret so much about a stranger’s perception of her decorum, in or out of the Affini Compact. Awkward or not, she was stuck here. She acknowledged her observer with a tight smile moments before the sideways tug of deceleration let her know just how close she’d cut it.

Marfisa didn’t have much of a plan for how to spend the spell of microgravity now that she’d been caught out in the rain. The teahouse was nice and her datapad gave her access to an unimaginable wealth of information and media from across the universe which she could ignore in favor of scrolling through chatrooms and memes. She had much more creative plans lined up for the originally scheduled block of low-g, all the sort of fun uniquely suited for the privacy of one’s own room. It was all she could do not to feel frustrated by that missed opportunity.

Her companion, however, seemed unfazed if not well prepared. Their datapad was larger than even most affini carried, resembling a wide tome at scale, which they pored over voraciously. A tall mug from the Bee’s Knees stock had been sealed by a valved top which was in turn idly played with by one of their tentacles and occasionally used to actually drink from. Marfisa’s intrusion thankfully didn’t seem to cause them any grief. She worried whether her occasional peeks over her pad could come across as rude, but they scoped her first. Besides, she felt like an affini could observe her as closely as they like from this distance without moving a fiber to do so.

“Do you expect something of me, small one?” Marfisa was damn sure they could observe her.

The affini had turned their head to face her expectantly. Six eyes scrutinized her in a cold, intense manner that left her feeling she finally knew what true predatory intent looked like in an affini.

Marfisa shifted in her seat and faced them as properly as she could. She picked her tone carefully; not too eager, not too meek, and absolutely not flirty in the slightest. “Not in particular. I haven’t seen you here before. How often do you come around?”

The affini’s voice was thick with characteristic choral accent, surprisingly distinct from dialects the woman was used to hearing. Each syllable was tightly plucked against a backing tone like a dirge, words picked fluently but articulated with a distinct lack of either practice or will to sound humanlike. “I have sought service here three times to date, 15 and 41 days hence.”

A pause, before Marfisa presumed she was expected to reply. “How do you find it? I’ve been stopping over regularly, enjoying the drinks a lot so far.

A pause. They looked upon Marfisa unmoving. “I have found a few drinks worth returning for. It has often been too busy for my tastes, but the lack of disturbances at present is enjoyable.”

That felt pointed. Was she disturbing them? She wouldn’t apologize for taking up space, but the thought still chafed. A slight pressure braced her arm as she grew worried. Her therapists hadn’t praised her ability to ask bluntly for nothing, though! “Would you prefer if I left you to your reading?”

“Not strictly, at this moment.” It felt like a prompt. They did not move, emote, or offer a lead in the conversation. She really felt like she was being put on the spot.

Squeeze, tap…tap. “Which…drinks keep you coming by? Our palettes are probably pretty different, but I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve had. The coffee is nice, even if I take it in flavored drinks and not black. The tea, too. I never liked tea with fruit flavor before, but some of the fresh juices work really well. I keep getting Terran black tea blends with juices of things I’d never heard of, and…it’s good.”

The strange affini seemed intent on giving Marfisa no reactions to work with. “Pretty different would be a remarkable understatement. I have scant desire to configure a sensory graft to simulate Terran taste. Though, the drinks…the teas of a more familiar bent have been enjoyable enough that I have considered sampling their Terran-drink-based mixtures.”

“I trust Bennie for my own stuff, their recommendations have been on point. I don’t know much about preparing food for affini, but I’d bet Laurel could work with…whatever tastes you have. She seems to keep a tight lid on this place.”

Laurel Seilan, Third Bloom, owned each floret that staffed Bee’s Knees Teas and Treats despite play-acting as Bennie Seilan, Sixth Floret’s assistant during open hours. She allowed her florets to delegate the functions of the bistro to each other, but she caught everything that could possibly fall through the cracks, sometimes literally. Bennie was allowed to run the teahouse but Laurel was the teahouse.

The affini across from Marfisa rustled like a shrill wind choked through a stone window, which she guessed was a muffled laugh. In hushed tones, they responded, “Good Miss Laurel Seilan spreads herself thin. I am not surprised by your impression; indeed, she must fuss over xenos, attended or otherwise. Someone in my position, as attentive as I can be, may notice just how many details the scatterbrained Miss Seilan misses.”

As if on cue, a loaf of fresh bread from Marfisa’s bag drifted into her frame of view. She turned to find the bag secured under the adjacent table with its open face allowing carefully packed items to begin floating away. She carefully scooped the loaf out of the air by the twine keeping it wrapped and pushed everything back into place. Unclasping her cloak, she struggled to pull it loose from under her harness, before fashioning it into a cover for the bag and settling back into her resting position. “Fair. Point taken.”

“Is it?” Huh, they sounded eager.

She turned to see as one of the vines outstretched from their back reared up. It guided Marfisa’s eyes along the overlook’s railing it was hidden behind. It snaked the entire way around her and out of her view, and she had no idea how long it had been there or what it was doing. Tap, taptap. Tap tap. The tendril was held over her head and the end of it drew up to the back of the oversized chair, just where she could see it. Somehow, this felt as intrusive to her personal bubble as Laurel’s full body encroachment. Squeezetaptaptap. Tap. Tap.

“What are you doing?”

“Holding the chair that you’re fastened to on the ground. Neither you or her secured it.” As they said that, however, they retracted the vine and ceased holding it.

Marfisa was stunned, searching for a reply and finding no more traction than she would if she tried to walk. Most affini that attempted to tease her used so much force that she could spark her stress into resolve and firmly tell them to stop as soon as she needed to. This one’s icy glare caused her to freeze up and she couldn’t burn through her natural response. The way they spoke and acted didn’t set off some of her alarms, the way others did, so her fluster was winning out.

Twenty seconds or so passed without a word. A vibration in the floor (or the force of her subtle squirming) sent Marfisa, harness and all, lazily wafting upwards. Her cheeks grew red as she realized the table and railing had slipped from her reach while she was stuck in her own head. She couldn’t just stay like this, and her reactions were like blood in the water to affini! And it was entirely her own fault for training herself to be so cute before she knew beings that would love to do that for her were waiting in the stars. Her rock-solid skill at honestly communicating what she wanted was one of the very few things that kept her from being taken before now, so where did it go?

Tap. Tap taptap.

She was losing control.

Tap. Tap, taptap…tap.

She couldn’t do it alone.

Squeeze. Tap.

Oh, thank goodness. There was the stress she was looking for.

Center yourself, Marfisa. Take it. Sharpen the feeling, even if it burns. Cut towards your aid and put away your stupid cute subby face! “I. I-I. D..d-do-”

The apparatus on her arm glowed to life. Panels filled with a prism of soft color that drew attention to Affini script along each one as blue lights pulsed in the spaces between them. It produced a foreboding if not unpleasant note, an alert that sounded much less graceful than those affini tech commonly utilized. At the same time, it gave a squeeze and jolt of stimulation to ground Marfisa so she could say-

The chair was already back on the floor. Huh.

She had been distracted, but did the chair get put back before her cuff even indicated her distress? It had only time for one chime before Marfisa calmed enough to send it to standby. Only dull pulses of blue between panels and an irregular tapping on the woman’s arm underneath them persisted.

The stranger used two vines laid in plain sight to anchor Marfisa to the floor and was now looking away from her. The whole exchange felt weird. Not affini weird, but weird for an affini weird. The new silence between them turned out to be far colder than their incessant gaze.

She metered her breath and wet her mouth that she might eventually break it. “Thank you for helping secure me. I was going to ask you to keep doing so until I could secure myself properly.”

This pause felt different. Words flowed with more trepidation than deliberation.

“You are welcome. Perhaps it would be best if you were secured properly. Excuse me.” The affini carefully lifted out of their seat and over the railing. They moved as if gliding to the floor below. It was unusually gentle, as if they were trying not to break something on the way. …the mug. They took the datatome and mug. Hell, they must be planning to leave after they tell Laurel.

Marfisa sunk into herself, sitting on the pile of negative emotions she’d used to quash the feeling of weightlessness. She wished she didn’t have to freak out. She wished she could just interact with this whole damn ship like normal! Except, it was normal for affini to do what they please to Terrans. To everyone else. Compared to wishing the benefactors of the universe were all different, it was hard not to wish that she was different instead. Squeeze. Tap.

A twisting vine pushed a lidded mug onto the table next to her. Marfisa followed it back to the stranger, who had reappeared by the balcony’s rail looking close to, but not quite at, her. “Bennie insisted that these were ‘on the house’. Laurel will be here with a solution for you shortly.”

“O-oh. Thanks.”

“I merely brought it up.’’

They fitted themselves back onto Marfisa’s regular bench, producing another fresh mug. They turned to look at her for just a moment before fixing their attention on the mug and continuing, “That beverage is made with alien leaves oxidized, steeped, and sweetened in a style comparable to tea. This is a mixture of Terran black tea and fruits, nutritionally enriched. I have been assured that both were made to suit our respective tastes.”

Marfisa sifted through those words and felt a hollow confidence. She wasn’t great at reading people. Scratch, wasn’t great at reading humans, let alone affini. Did they feel bad for some reason other than losing the chance to play with her? She hadn’t sensed the usual motivations driving them before, and she didn’t feel a bitten-back desire to coddle and bliss out her poor little brain now. Come to think of it, her aid turned on to ground her and call red, but she couldn’t recall it working to counter a biorhythm since Laurel’s earlier.

The encounter had not been comfortable so far, but the discomfort was disparate from that affini so often caused her.

“I wanna introduce myself. I’m Marfisa.” The creature looked quietly up to her. “Marfisa Cam.”

They tilted their head further. She was used to this part, where most folks waited or teased her to append a title of Floret that never came. She offered a real, if brief, smile. “You?”

Their body bristled and settled. She hoped that might be them relaxing. “Intriguing. I thought, perhaps, I couldn’t place anyone by that surname. Bryidreanea Armeria, Fourth Bloom.”

Shit, that was hard to audio process, even on her meds. Better say it before she lost it. “Well, Bryidreanea. Wanna try these together?”

“Perhaps. Yes.”

“Nice, let’s…oh! Wait. What are your pronouns? Mine are she/her and they/them.”

“I see. My English pronouns are thon/thons.”

Thon appeared to gain a bit of certainty back. …thon. Marfisa had heard that before. Which isn’t unusual for pronouns, but she had heard it specifically like once before, recently. “Actually. Hey, do you know Acre?”