A few days had passed since Seni's encounter with the Affini Kaltxi. The card they had received had been placed on the desk in their bedroom, over time covered up with books and electronics, as Seni had spent the previous few days drowning themself in studying in an attempt to forget what had happened.

Despite not needing to work for money or go to college anymore since the invasion, Seni thought it a nice way to spend their time to learn as much about their special interests as possible. The thing they loved to study the most was Earth nature. They would often focus on reading for hours on end, until a call or message disturbed them, or until they got so tired they had no choice but to go to sleep. Sometimes the urge to study would come back the next day, and they would continue their trance until they fell asleep again. Sometimes it wouldn’t, leaving Seni to spend their time in a less productive way, like playing video games or watching silly mindless TV shows.

The past few days had been as uneventful as possible, which Seni regarded as a blessing. They hoped that it would give them rest after their encounter a few days earlier, and hopefully, help them forget it ever happened. Throughout those days, Seni would wince at themself whenever any thought of florets even came up – rejected it even more than ever before.

Despite this, it lingered in their head now, and they knew they couldn’t get rid of it. They had to know more, somehow, but heading to the xenoclinic place was out of the question for them. The Affini were well known for their unfair tricks, and even the one that recommended them to go there had drugged them into doing what he wanted just minutes earlier. They didn’t want to trust that place, trust that Affini, and yet, they were out of options for ways to learn.

Seni looked at their mini-tablet again. It showed 14:00. They had woken up at around 9, but they had no idea what they had been doing until now. They ate something, and then watched a show, maybe? Or stared at the wall?

The notification light had been on ever since those few days ago, but they didn’t dare check their messages since. With a shaky finger, they finally opened it, and saw the very thing they had been fearing. A friend request, from Kaltxi Ngari, First Bloom. There was a message attached to it, but they didn’t dare tap on it. It wasn’t the highest notification on the list, though. In the meantime, they’d also managed to receive a few memes from friends and group chats they were in. They didn’t look at those, either, and instead opened up their whole friends list and began looking for someone.

Seni’s friend, Anne, was someone that had always intrigued them with her thoughts about florets. While Seni had been skeptical about Affini, domestication and florets at first, Anne had been incredibly curious, constantly bringing up articles, documentaries, propaganda, and of course, stories of florets she had met personally. She was very clearly fascinated by them. Sometimes Seni would listen, taking in as much as they could before the difficult feeling rose too high in their chest and they had to change the subject. It had only been a matter of time before Anne finally broke the news to Seni, just a few weeks ago, that she was finally choosing to become a floret.

Seni sent a brief message to Anne:

-"Hey, do you want to hang out today? We could go to a fast food place at the mall."

They remembered that she had never been one to hang out without a good reason, so they quickly added:

-"I have something important to talk to you about."

Seni’s immediate thought was that their message sounded too ominous, so they went on to clarify, trying to explain that everything is okay but they do really need to talk, but half way through them typing their message, Anne responded.

-"Yeah, sure! I'd love to hang out!!!"

The weird enthusiasm in the message stood out to Seni. They thought, at first, that their personal anxieties simply didn't apply to her friend. But on the other hand, Anne rarely showed so much excitement – so could it have been another effect of her domestication? Would they also stop worrying about every little thing they say if they become a floret? After all, they had long decided it was a negative trait they had to work on, and that was exactly the kind the Affini would always offer to help with. The thought was surprisingly nice, but Seni decided to push it away with the others for now. They could work on anxiety without an implant in their neck. Humans had been doing that for centuries, after all.

-"You available at 17?"

-"Hello?"

Seni realised they had got so lost in their thoughts they didn't notice minutes had passed. They decided to think about this later and hastily wrote back:

-"Yeah, that works for me!"

It was already past noon and Seni didn't have anything better to do but wait until 17 and think. They and Anne had been good friends, so they had talked to each other a lot both before and after her domestication. At first they had got the impression that she was making a hasty decision. It had only been a few weeks since she'd met her Affini "Mistress". Even so, the Affini had been on Earth for years by that point, and she had always talked a lot about them. She'd looked up to them and talked about getting domesticated constantly, though she would always talk about finding the "right Affini". This made sense to Seni, who had always been anxious about commitment. So they were incredibly surprised when they got a message, just a few weeks prior, as nonchalant as "Guess who's becoming a floret!".

As it turned out, Anne had changed her mind about the whole commitment thing, and decided – realised, in her own words – that it does not matter to her who the "right Affini" is, since they were going to shape her into the right human for them either way. At least, that's how Seni understood it. Anne did clarify that the Affini she'd found was interested in keeping her in the exact way she wanted to be kept, that she was nice and kind to her, and that she didn't think she needed to look further. But still, a few weeks didn't feel like nearly enough time for Seni to get to know someone enough to become their property forever. It was so scary to them, the thought giving themself up just like that.

They were also anxious that, from their questions, their friend would assume they wanted anything to do with being a floret – or worse yet, try to talk them into it. Anne had always been the persuasive type, but Seni didn’t want to have to deal with that. They were just curious, right? They didn't really want it. How could they want something like that? They just wanted to know more about it, and that was it, right?

... right?

After a little bit of waiting, Seni saw Anne walking over to them in the distance and waved to her. They decided to take this opportunity to stare her down a bit.

Anne wasn't wearing one of the frilly, cutesy companion dresses Seni had got used to seeing florets in, but instead she wore clothes similar to what they'd had grown familiar with her wearing. Hoodie, skinny jeans, loose hair, with the only addition Seni hadn't seen her wear before being the collar. Though there was something vaguely more feminine in her, maybe it was the way she stood and walked, or the smile on her face – they couldn't put a finger on it.

As she approached, they took a closer look at the smile in question. It was Anne's smile, alright. Nothing unnatural about it, except it felt... unrestricted? It was unapologetic, the kind of smile that says "Of course I'm happy – why wouldn't I be?" Then there were the eyes. Her pupils were just a little too big, and it felt like she was looking slightly beyond Seni, rather than at them. They had already got used to seeing that look, but it was still a bit weird to see on a friend. Even so, despite all these differences, the thing that surprised Seni the most was that Anne was alone.

"Hey Anne! It's so good to see you!" Seni exclaimed. Anne reached out for a hug in response. Seni wasn't in the mood for one, but they let her embrace them lightly as a greeting. Seni skipped right to the question that was bugging them. "You're alone? I thought you'd come with your, um... mistress?"

She looked surprised. "Oh, should I have asked her to come too? She let me go on my own because I thought it would be less awkward for you. I know you're still not accustomed to it." Seni was touched at the consideration she showed them. They hadn't been expecting that.

"No, actually, thank you, that does make me feel better," Seni responded sincerely. "I guess I just didn't know you were allowed to go places alone."

"I guess it's different for everyone, but Mistress trusts me. Well, it's not like I am able to keep secrets from her anyway." She threw her eyes back briefly, as if trying to gesture with them towards her implant. Seni gave her a worried nod in response.

They walked up to the restaurant counter. Seni was about to head for the automatic kiosk to order, but Anne stood in line for the register. This struck them as weird, she had always been just as socially anxious as them, if not more. Curiously, they stopped and walked back up to stand in line after her. It wasn't long, so after only a minute it was Anne's turn.

The person behind the register stood nearly ten-hut before them, making perfect eye contact with Anne, with their familiarly glassy eyes. They had a smile on their face and emanated a sort of confidence Seni had never seen in a fast food worker before the invasion. Of course, Seni figured, they were a floret. It didn't really surprise them. Florets usually seemed to love making themselves useful, so you could see a lot of them in service jobs, while most of the free humans were too busy being lazy or doing things for themselves, since there was no necessity to work. Though that was only for the most part; Seni never would have personally had a problem with a job like this... if only they had the motivation to wake up for it every day.

"Hi! Can I take your order?" The enthusiastic tone of the worker threw Seni slightly off guard, though it didn't seem to have an effect on Anne.

"Hi! I'd like a triple cheeseburger with fries, no pickle! Oh, and a flat white!" Anne's voice was just as unnaturally happy, even more so than when she was talking to Seni. They soon made their own order too, which was also a triple cheeseburger but with a soda, and after picking up both of their orders, the two sat down to eat.

Seni was expecting the floret subject to come up right away, but instead they mostly talked about the same things as usual. Anne infodumped about her favourite video game at the moment, and Seni did the same, then they talked about how the food was, how they had been doing, what they had been up to. Through Anne's descriptions of her recent life, Seni understood one thing: she was undeniably happy. There was no way around it. Every time she mentioned an issue coming up in her life, it was something trivial and always quickly resolved with the help of her Mistress, whom she spoke about only with the highest regard.

Her, Seni was particularly curious about, but they found it pretty hard to find out anything substantial about her. Everything Anne said about her was a compliment, so Seni could not help but imagine her as more of a deity than a person - eternally forgiving, kind, merciful, benevolent. It was almost difficult for Seni to believe, if it weren't for the fact that they knew Affini would often describe themselves as impossibly kind and loving, at least compared to anything one could expect from a human.

After a while of talking, they seemed to have reached a point where neither of them had much more to say, so Seni took it as an opportunity to bring up their question.

Seni’s voice was shaking, and they found it difficult to speak. The very thought of asking the question was making them nervous, but they felt like they had to do it. "So..." they gathered their courage to say after a while. "What's it like? You know, being a floret."

"It's amazing!" Anne responded, closing her eyes and making a wide smile, as if she was recounting a beautiful dream. "It's everything I asked for and more!"

"I'm happy for you, but..." Seni sighed. The smile on her friend's face got smaller, and her eyes became wider in curiosity and worry. "Well, I don't know how to say this, really."

It was only half the truth. Seni knew what they wanted to say – they wanted to ask her if she's still 'her', if she misses her old life, well, if it's possible to miss anything with an implant that removes all your negative emotions. They wanted to ask if she's still able to think for herself. It was just too difficult to summarize it all into one question.

Anne kept staring at Seni with curiosity. She had interrupted them often in the past, so they were surprised to see her listening so intently. Maybe that was deemed a harmful trait and removed from her, Seni thought briefly. Still, they felt like they owed it to her to finish their thought.

"Well, I'm mostly worried about your freedom," they finally blurted out. "I know, technically, you just don't have any, right? But still... It's not like you can't ever do the things you want to, right? You can spend time with me, like we are right now, and you can play your video games and... well, all that."

Anne gave her friend a familiar look, the all-knowing attitude they'd come to love her for clearly showing on her face. It actually calmed them down a lot, seeing the same expression on her face as they had seen a thousand times before. Her glassy eyes and ever present calmness were still there, but it was like they had taken a back seat.

"What are you talking about? Of course I can do what I want! I wouldn't have agreed to it otherwise. All that changed is that now I belong to my Mistress, and she oversees that I do not do anything that makes me hurt."

"Of course, it's just..." Seni was at a loss. They desperately wanted to know more, to find out what it's like, but it felt like anything they could ask they already knew the answer to. After a while of pondering, overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions, something in Seni snapped, and caused them to simply pour their heart out right there.

"It's just that I'm worried! I don't know what it is, but it scares me! I don't want to lose my individuality, I don't want to feel like someone completely different, or like I'm just an empty body being puppeteered." A tear appeared in Seni’s eye. "And on top of all of it, I don't want to lose my family. My friends. I know it'll be all the same to me if I become a floret, but it matters to me now. I don't want to be just... flown out into space, away from everything I know." They took a few breaths and braced for what their friend was going to tell them, when they realised--

"Wait a minute,” Anne smiled so widely, she looked like she was on the verge of laughing. “You're thinking of becoming a floret?"

“Oh shit,” Seni thought, “oh shit shit shit, was that actually what I said?” Panic filled them again. They were just letting out their emotions, and then they’d said it. “If I become a floret”. That can’t be what they really said, what they really believed, their tongue slipped, that was it… That must have been it…

“I don’t want to be a floret,” Seni told themself in their mind. “I don’t want to be a drone! I don’t want to lose myself! I’m a free human! I want to be a free human! I can’t be happy as anything else… I think?” Thoughts were overwhelming them to the point their vision began to blur.

“Seni?” Anne’s voice was like an echo in Seni’s head. “I was just kidding… I mean, you don’t have to be a floret!” Seni didn’t know what to say. Of course they didn’t have to. They didn’t want to! It was so unfair… so unfair…

They began crying and Anne reached in to comfort them with a hug, which only caused them to lash out and nearly hit her in response. Anne backed off and tried pleading again.

“Seni, look, I assumed wrong, okay? You don’t want to be a floret! I get it. I was only joking!”

Taking deep breaths, Seni finally managed to calm down and return to reality. They didn’t know how much time had passed while they were stuck in their head like that. “I’m sorry,” they said, breathing heavily. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“I’m sorry too,” Anne said. Seni wanted to retaliate saying what just happened was their fault, but they stopped themself. “I shouldn’t have laughed. It seems like this is a heavy topic for you.” Seni responded to that with a nod.

Anne quickly returned to her cheerful self from before once she assumed Seni was okay again. "Well to answer your questions, you don't need to worry about that. No one's going to make you stop being an individual - it's not a hive mind, and you won’t be a ‘drone’ as you called it, either. They don't take away anything that isn't actively harmful.”

Seni didn’t look reassured, so Anne continued. “I'm sure they'd let you keep in touch with everyone if you become a floret. Hopefully including me!" She smiled, and Seni smiled back at her awkwardly. “Well, hypothetically, that is,” she smirked and Seni could only respond by looking down shamefully.

“Mistress let me keep in contact with you, and with my girlfriend, and all the other people I care about. The Affini won't do anything that's bad for you. Besides, a floret can mention everything they’re worried about in their contract."

"Yeah," Seni responded with little conviction, then sighed and looked back up at their floret friend. "I guess it comes down to trusting them, you know? That they really do have your best interest in mind."

"If that's so hard, you can at least trust me. I can promise you that they do. I don't regret this a bit."

Seni noticed that there was a philosophical question in what their friend said: wouldn't trusting Anne be the same as trusting the Affini, since they controlled her mind? They quickly decided that they were in way too deep to worry about that kind of question.

"Thanks, Anne,” was all Seni could muster to say instead. “I'm glad I could talk to you about this."

After a somewhat awkward pause, the two returned to chatting about all sorts of things, the topic moved to their everyday lives, and then their families. Seni noticed that Anne had trouble recalling much of the bad things in her family life, only being able to recount that she had been traumatized and that she didn't like her parents. Seni sympathised and talked briefly about their own family issues, expecting the floret to brush them off with some happy-go-lucky phrase like "Don't worry about it!", or worse yet, tell them that getting domesticated will get rid of those issues. Instead, to Seni's surprise, she was very empathetic, suggested solutions, offered to be there to support them... it felt unlike what Seni had previously thought about florets, but it made sense in terms of what they knew about Anne. Despite her slightly cold exterior, she was someone who really cared about her friends. The only difference, Seni thought, was that the Anne they knew before would've taken a bit more talking to before she finally melted down to this degree of sincerity.

Then the topic moved to Anne's partner, Tanny, who lived just a few blocks away from either of them. Seni was also good friends with her, though they didn't know much about what happened since Anne's domestication. According to Anne, Tanny also knew her Mistress (she had not mentioned her by name in the conversation yet, and Seni felt too awkward to ask her about it), having met her in person many times. Anne even said that the two of them were waiting at home for her right as they spoke, though the Affini had apparently promised not to make any efforts to domesticate Tanny or influence her through any xenodrugs. Seni didn't believe that at first, but then they reassured themselves, looking back to what Anne had said - that the Affini don't mean any harm, that they only want what's the best for humans.

The topic of partners was in itself also curious to Seni. They didn't have a partner, but they wanted one, and they had been talking to various boys over the past few months, with unfortunately little result. They had assumed that a floret's relationship with their owner had to be romantic. Anne corrected that belief, saying that it was only up to the specific pair to decide if that's the case, and that her Mistress was okay with her having romantic partners, and that, again, it's all in the contract.

After that, topics shifted to more mundane things, and Anne's being a floret came up less and less in the conversation. Seni came to the unavoidable conclusion that Anne was still Anne, just happier, nicer, and with much fewer worries - the best version of herself, as many Affini would say.

Laying in their bed that night, Seni realised that they had allowed their curiosity to turn into something just a little too serious. The feelings they’d been bottling up had burst, and they were all over them now. They were on the verge of crying, barely holding it back. They felt like they weren’t in control of themself anymore.

[5:04 AM]

-”Anne, are you still up?”

 

-”Yes, why you ask?”

-”Anything you needed to talk about?”

 

-”Yes, well, I thought about what you said earlier”

-”About florets.”

 

-”?”

 

-”I think I do want to become one.”

 

…

 

-”Yeah I know lol”