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Terrans are never as independent as they say they are.
In all the packets Anthira Mulfier received upon her assignment to the Jovian moon Europa, that line always stood out to her. She was only a first bloom at the time- long into it, but she still had the tendency to get overwhelmed by all the details of xenosophont care - feeding regiments, proper dosage of medication, activity rates and enrichment schedules could elude her at the best of times. On top of all of the generalized rules of engagement, there was another packet about the specific Terran ecosystem she had been assigned to - underwater and cramped, where the citizens had spent the past half a decade fighting for every breath of air. In the maze of diagrams about readjusting to proper oxygen levels, water pressure in relation to the bloodstream, and building code, there the line sat.
At first, she feared for latent feralism - the Domestication treaty had just been signed, and this population was one of the last to be picked up before the Compact had reached the heart of the Sol System. Anxiety welled in her vines as she and her squadron made their way through the dank, unkempt city streets- she didn't want to pacify anyone, she really wasn't good at it, but her captain had entrusted her with xenosophont wellness, and so it was her duty to do it to the hilt.
So when she had been assigned as a warden to a woman late in her life, it was equal parts sadness and relief. To a degree, she had convinced herself that there was no better way to adjust herself to the deaths of a new xenosophont species than to have a hand in making it the best one she could. When she got the profile, she had steeled herself - a former showgirl well into her eighties, living alone in a tiny apartment in a college district that seemed to have all but left her behind. When she shaped her form to fit through the corridors, came up to knock on the door, she was expecting a frail shell of a Terran, left withering away by decades of Accord injustices.
That was not what she found upon opening the door.
"Ah, hello Miss Baustille, please don't panic I'm-"
Frost, she wasn't even allowed to finish her spiel.
"Huh, so you and your lot finally decided to show up, eh? Took you long enough, I was running out of excuses for the siphon company. Come on in, I'll put on the kettle."
Mei Baustille was a small woman, relying on a cane to walk and whose lithe frame was covered by a tracksuit almost bigger than she was. But she moved fast on that cane, insisting that Anthira sit as she prepared tea for them both, "seeing as I can finally use all the water I feel like now and Project Europa isn't going to piss their pants about it." Any insistence on helping was met with a tut and "You'll get whatever you want out of me soon enough, right now you're my guest and you best damn well act like one."
Anthira didn't even know how to begin correcting the language. Her head brushed against the short ceiling, her pink and purple flowers and bustling foliage taking up all the space in the room but none of the room. It was a small apartment, but not sparse - every inch of the wall covered in photos, paintings, posters, blessings and shelves full of necessities and all manner of tchotckes. Everything was worn but well maintained, from the wood of the floor to the upholstery of the chair she sat on.
So instead, she waited for the kettle to boil.
The tea was a treat to even the senses of an affini, and throughout the whole conversation there had been a rebuttal but otherwise total understanding for what Anthira had thought would take a million questions she had prepared every answer for.
"Right. Wardship to determine my independence? Darling, there's nothing to determine," her voice was raspy with age and a lifetime of smoke and passion. She shook her head over her tea and laughed, warm and full of memories that Anthira struggled to even conceptualize. "I am a very old woman who has spent every last speck of independence I had fifteen years ago now. I'm in independent debt with my own body. We are not determining anything about my independence here."
When she brought out the form for voluntary domestication, she brushed her gray bob out of her eyes and pulled out a pair of readers to properly examine the text. The only response was a shake of the head.
"No no no, that's not how we're doing this either. Not before we both learn a little more about each other. This wardship is for you as much as it is for me. You can't care for someone without knowing what they need first, and that's a hell of a lot more than food , water , shelter, and meds."
"I'm aware, Miss Baustille."
"For the love of the stars, call me Mei. You're too old to be calling me Miss and you're sure as hell not calling me Ana."
"Ana?"
"Auntie, roughly. It's what everyone around here calls me. You'll see soon enough, I'm sure - and you'll learn, because I'll be damned if I talk to my 'owner' in blasted Terran Standard. My kids don't talk to me that way and neither will you."
"If it's your regional dialect, I have gotten the broad strokes so far. You have children?"
She laughed only once, a sharp ha! that cuts through the tension in the air. Just as quickly as the question fell over the room, it was interrupted by furious knocking at the door. A woman's voice heard clear through the paper-thin walls on the other side.
" AUNTIE! AUNTIE ARE YOU IN THERE? ARE YOU OKAY? I CAME FROM THE UNIVERSITY FAST AS I COULD I- THE AFFINI- THE AFFINI ARE HERE! "
"I am a woman rich in children, Andy. There's one of them now- hold on, I'll get the door," initially Anthira had rushed to get the door, but Mei held her hand up and made her way for the entrance. Louder than thunder, her voice booms through the apartment.
" GIVE ME A DAMN MINUTE AMMY, I'M TALKING TO ONE!"
In the doorway was a woman with a full foot over Mei but still dwarfed in comparison to herself. Pin straight black hair slick with sweat falling over her eyes and shoulders, bright blue eyes dilated from Triangulum and back with a wash of emotions, clinging onto a leather saddlebag for dear life until she saw her ward, in which that energy poured into an embrace.
For a moment, Anthira fell into the background as the girl's words babbled out like a stream.
"Oh my stars Auntie there you are I got so scared I- Rooney's gone to the engine with one of them and I don't know what's going on with him and I didn't know where you were and I didn't know where to go and I wanted so badly for you to be okay and-"
"Shh, shh, it's okay Ammy, I'm here dear girl," Mei's voice was lower now, patting the girl's back as she hunches over her like she were trying to swallow the smaller woman whole. "World was going to turn upside down one of these days dear, but Ronan's a grown man, I know he can get out of whatever he got himself into. Now, do you want to sit down? We're having tea."
"We? Who- oh," the girl identified as 'Ammy' looked up at Anthira with tear stained eyes , and for a second she was quiet, the silence sitting horribly in Anthira's foliage. She had to say something. Introductions?
"Hello my dear, I'm Anthira Mulfier, 1st Bloom, she/her - I'm here with the bureau of xenosophont wellness. You are?"
Ammy sniffled, but obliged. "Oh stars I'm in no state for introductions right now I- fuck, uh, Amelia Byrd, she/her. Are you here for Auntie?"
"I am here to help acclimate her- and everyone here on Europa - to life under the compact, yes."
"She's not domesticating me yet, if that's what you're asking," Mei tutted again and reached up to ruffle Amelia's hair. "Now come sit down before she gets half a mind to get you next. You can tell me everything that's happened to you, Rooney, and anyone else after a few deep breaths and some tea. Got it?"
"I- okay yeah that sounds great,"
As Amelia came to sat down, Mei leaned on her more than the cane - squeezing her hand as they walked. Anthira watched, careful not to interfere - to interfere now was to lose the observation she came here to do. As the two of them sat down, as tea was poured into a third cup, Anthira thought she knew what the pamphlet meant for the first time.
The second time was a month or so later - the time all blended together in a whirlwind of paperwork and adjustments to living situations. The city she had been assigned to - New Asteria as she learned it was called - was falling apart structurally and literally suffocating under it's own weight. Many sophonts - mostly captured ferals- were being temporarily or permanently relocated off planet to reduce the strain of resources while re-structural work was being done. Many sophonts even volunteered to relocate - to find greener pastures, a mistress, or frankly just a bigger house.
"No, listen to me Mini - I am not going to deny you this opportunity, you've wanted this for longer than I've known you. I just need to know where you're going," Mei Baustille's reading glasses were on and open before her was a massive binder, Anthira left to watch as she repeated a process she's been going through like clockwork since the artificial sun came through the false sky's screen this morning. Scrawling out notes next to pictures and plastered-together paper memories while Anthira picked up one half of a conversation. "Can you spell that for me ? You know my hearing's not good - okay thank you honey - and when are you leaving? Okay, okay, well Ammy and I are going out today but if you leave without at least spending dinner with me I'll haunt you no matter where in the Protectorate you are okay? Good, good. I love you."
The conversations were never the same, but they all start and end the same way. Yaho - 'hello', a casual greeting between friends and loved ones, and j'ai ni - 'I love you'. Sometimes multiple times in a row, like she were desperately trying to tell the person on the other end something words struggle to express. The phrase was like a chirp, the way ai clips up before being softened by the n without losing the pitch.
With the many tones of Anthira's voice, she struggled to get it just right. She could replicate the sounds perfectly - she got that the first time, but her core yearned for the punch it has coming out of Mei's mouth. The way it meant something Anthira can't understand.
She understood love, at least in the Affini sense, the want, the need to care for something in a sense that overtakes your entire body and has to escape - there was more of that in Mei than many other Terrans she had met thus far. But there was something in her voice, the way the ai cracked just so - that sounded like she was trying to hold onto it for one more moment than she's given.
When undertaking the wardship, Anthira had been made aware of Mei's past as a caregiver. After retiring from show business, she took her tidy savings and opened up her home to people needing a place to stay as they moved to New Asteria for the first time - mostly foreign students from the university but not always. Whether they stayed for three months or three years, she called them her children - kept note of every birthday, every milestone, and always kept in touch - all from the analog, pen-and-paper binder that sat before her here. 'Project Europa read everything you type, and some of them had names or histories they wanted me to know and not them,' she told her what feels like forever ago now, 'after a while, it just became easier.'
At that point, Anthira had asked how she could do it for so long into her old age. Mei never even thought about her answer - 'they all care for me too, you know. Ro- Sage brought me plants so that I could have enough air in my house- yeah , my house wasn't always covered in vines! It feels like it's more so their house nowadays. Emile still brings me leftovers from the shop - though I hope he gives it a rest soon, my fridge is overflowing! Sid took me to doctor's appointments, Io helped sew up my good dress, and Mini? Mini was practically my bodyguard back when we were rioting! It all comes back around, Andy.'
Anthira heard it again.
"I love you, Mini. I'll let you go I promise just - you're going to be good to my girl, right? If I hear a peep of you getting yourself in any trouble I'll cross galaxies in a step just to get to you, alright? Good. I love you. Talk soon."
Another pattern presented itself as the morning unfolded - it was never Mei that hung up first.
In the silence after the phone dial finished droning, Anthira moved herself over to the desk, the room tone only broken by her shifting petals.
"It's time for a break, Mei."
She didn't even take a beat to process it. "No, I still need to-"
This time, it was Anthira's turn to cut her off. "I don't think you heard me. This isn't a 'no' situation, Mei. I was allowing you your ritual as you seemed soothed by it, but now its started to cause you distress. What would you like for lunch?"
It was only now that she paused, and her hand shook from how she was gripping the pen. Her arthritis no longer bothered here thanks to new medication and a physical therapy regiment, but it was clear her strength was not what it used to be in her youth. Something was stuck between her mind and her mouth.
"I want to know where my kids are going, Andy. I don't want any of them to get lost,"
For the second time, the phrase from the pamphlet rolled around in her thoughts again. Independence for a Terran as a network, bound so tight so that everyone may be able to hold themselves upright with the collective weight. Her eyes full of loss, knowing exactly how the loss happened and being unable to prevent it. Anthira's core stings. Despite being twice her age, she couldn't meet her gaze in understanding.
All she could do was try.
"…Lay down, Mei. I'll give you something to calm your worries-" Mei moved to speak, but Anthira first raised a vine. "For all the talk of using the people around you, you seem to have forgotten a very important one. Affini are master bureaucrats- while you rest, I will make sure to find all of your children."
The look in Mei's eye that she got in return was discerning - but not unconvinced. "All of them?"
In the split second that it had taken her ward to formulate her question, Anthira had already processed all the information on the binder sheets that were open- as well as estimate the time it'd take for her to get through the rest of the binder herself and all the databases she could look into to do it. "I'll check every page twice, and make sure you have two copies of their records in case one goes missing. The promise of the Affini Compact is that no one falls through the cracks."
There was no argument this time, no rebuttal or come back or nugget of wisdom that gave Anthira a glimpse into the Terran condition. Just a sound, relieved and like a thousand hours of tension had come out through her lungs.
"Thank god."
And without another word argument, she made her way to the table to eat. A leftover rice dish full of salmon and green onions, with just a few drops of medication to ease the rest of her worries. Even with half the dose she had usually been prescribed, she was full after half the dish and slept for 12 hours after. Anthira attached a scanner to her arm to keep track of her vitals as she worked.
Dozens of names were in that book - a lifetime of care rivaling any affini unfurled before her methodical eyes as she plugged every name diligently into a spreadsheet. Less were leaving New Asteria than she expected - more tantamount were the names that were already gone. Some had moved to ships long before the signing of the treaty - others had just moved planets , dates logged long before even first contact. A diligent , hand-kept data table of names, places, and dates, marriages and divorces and name changes and PHDs, all meticulously synced with the records at the Bureau of Xenosophont Transport and scrawled back into the binder by vine. Some hadn't been back to New Asteria in decades - and still into the records they went.
This time, as the webs of names and lives sprawl out before her, she can't help but wonder what the definition of independent could even mean at all.
"Ammy! Andy! Are you coming? I'm not exactly getting younger over here!"
The third time was during a scheduled outing - once a month Mei would go out to the salon with the young woman who practically burst through the door on that fateful day where they first met. It was an occasion for self-care, for spending time with loved ones, and, most importantly to Mei, catching up on the neighborhood gossip. The tracksuit had long since been replaced with a sundress and matching hat - a stunning getup that showed the decades of perseverance and battles she had won- and a fair few tattoos to commemorate them. In the few months since Anthira had come to care for her, she had gained such a fondness for her body - worn and elegant much like a well loved doll from an era long gone. She had gone to such lengths to maintain it as any warden would - bathing, brushing, and dressing - except for cutting and styling her hair. That ritual was not hers to have, it was hers to share.
"Coming, Auntie! Stars forbid a girl window shop."
Amelia's changed so much in the few months since they've met - Class Gs will do many things to a Terran's body, but the light in the eyes are a gift that only the whole of the Compact can provide. Every time she saw her - or any of the other sophonts that ran through that tiny apartment day to day like a revolving door - her core swelled with pride. There was always merit in the work, but it was always nice to seeing one's effort pay its dividends.
Those dividends had paid throughout the whole of the city - the once-sparse ocean had already begun to look like the night sky - wandering schools of bioluminescent seaweed floating just outside the glass of the undersea dome and sparkling like stars. The once cracking and festering streets paved over and full of every walk of life - eyes that were once afraid sparkled with joy and carefree wonder. What still remained, though, were those multicolored lights coming off of every building - painting the streets they walked on in a rainbow of saturated colors so vibrant it was like they were strolling through an illustration.
"You can rubberneck when I'm dead, girl. I will not be late! Andy dearest can you pluck her for me? We have places to be!"
Mei had gotten very used to being carried by Anthira - but whereas most wardens and florets alike take it as a premium place to doze the day away, Mei had taken to her vines like a queen to her throne - or at least a director towards her chair. She got the sense that she liked to lord over everyone else a long time ago.
"Of course, Mei, but I have to ask - you're much more relaxed about getting to these appointments according to my memory, and we will be arriving at the salon quite early. What's got you in such a rush?"
"That question tells me that you affini-types aren't nearly as all-knowing as you tout yourselves."
"I beg your pardon, Mei?"
"Isn't that typically reserved for florets?"
In the desire to not be picked up, Amelia had hustled to catch up with Anthira, and was now very keen on keeping pace. "Uh, yeah Auntie - we still have like 15 minutes. What's the rush?"
"Neither of you have a sense of punctuality or gravitas," Mei shook her head, which was a giveaway in and of itself - something was being planned for someone and nothing short of a Class-D would have her out with it. Something she did not think to keep on hand. "So either you can keep asking or keep moving!"
The salon was on the 10th floor of a building hidden in the backstreets - had Mei not known exactly where it was, Anthira probably never would've found it. It's small, the only signage outside and within bearing the local dialect with nothing so much as a translation button anywhere to be seen for the lost newcomer. Such a place wasn't made for the newcomer, she supposed, especially considering the warm welcome they all got from the stylists once inside.
Every month when they came around one more person had a collar and one more affini hovered in the back area, but it never changed the warmth of the choir of chatter that came when the door opened. Just a lot more hugs and plenty more drugs, but that had come to be expected. No matter who it was, or why, whenever someone had come under an affini's care, Mei would take their hand and smile, and the wording would be a little different each time, but she'd always say 'you look well.'
With the same appointment every day and every month, Anthira had gotten used to all the regular faces and names that were at the salon this time of day - little Miriam in the chair across from Mei and her owner Kheelesi, the hairstylist Genevieve and how she perfectly laid out her station every time to give Mei the same haircut she always wants without asking - but an outlier makes himself known very quickly.
" Auntie! " it wasn't that a man in this establishment was unusual , not even at this hour, but Anthira would've been lying if she had said that she wasn't a little taken aback by his tone of voice. It was trying to be soft - like his body was too big for his own voice - but failed in the way it projected across the room. The man it was attached to was tall- lanky frankly - with a growing out blonde undercut that needed a trim more than anyone else in the salon chairs, as well as the beginnings of a beard coming through. Bright green eyes shot up to meet her gaze, before quickly being averted back to Mei.
"Sage!" was her response - and she had heard the name before. The man had gotten scooped up during the pacification of the university and was let out on good behavior, and was rarely around otherwise - at least, around Anthira. The discomfort with her presence had never been exactly hard to place.
Amelia's more surprised than Anthira is. "Ohmystars HIII!!"
"Ah, beat me too it - just as I expected," Anthira lowered Mei from her vines, in which she used her newfound ambulatory freedom to give Sage the warmest hug. "Must've left you here in a tizzy while Amelia was gawking at notebooks."
"He'll forgive me I bet," Amelia also ran over to join the hug, which left the man looking more like a startled doe than any other sophont she had laid eyes on. Pleasantries were shared between the three, and Anthira's eyes are left to gaze over the scene before her. Her eyes lay focus on a radio, the varnish worn to threads and still crackling soft jazz through the body of the salon, loud enough to be felt but quiet enough to not overpower the connection happening before her eyes.
Before coming to the Terran Protectorate, all of the stories coming out of the Accord-era had been, for the lack of a better word, lonely. Quiet ships of rust and mistreatment floating out in the open ocean of space with no way to call out for home, sophonts slowly wasting away in habitations they couldn't 'afford' and left to fight off the world stubborn and alone. In the first days of New Asteria she even saw it - the surprise in their eyes when they were told they no longer had to pay to breathe was nothing like she had seen before.
But this place existed in the Accord - she could tell from how her antennae were almost squished against the ceiling. From how the radio had been there probably longer than most sophonts in this room had been alive - chugging along with nothing to keep it from falling into disrepair other than those in the building that cared for it.
"You want him to what?"
Amelia's shrill voice cut through the air and brings Anthira back to the moment, something she nor Sage seemed to appreciate by the way they both tense. Mei waved them off.
"It's mutually beneficial-" Mei placed her hands on her hips, and all the attention in the room is on her. For a moment, Anthira is jealous of the command she always managed to have over a room. "Sage has been chewing at the drywall trying to find something to occupy his time, Andy's been looking wilted, and I don't know anyone else who can bring a plant back to life than the master of horticulture himself."
"It's not a bad idea Ammy-" Sage's face is flushed as red as her flowers, but despite no blood relation, Amelia's behavior fell directly from Mei's tree.
"You're a xenobotanist Sage not a barber! You don't have to do this- Auntie what were you thinking?" Amelia was also getting red in the face, but for a different reason. "You know he's-"
"I do not see what isn't xeno-botanical about Anthira," Mei's affect was blunt and her stance unwavering. "Besides, what's wrong with being a barber, Amelia? You keep telling me how you wish Andy could participate in our outings, I have solutions."
"That's not what I-" Amelia's eyes meet hers in a glare - the first time it would happen but not the last. Her gaze only softened when it fell upon Sage. "Are you sure? "
"I mean-" Sage was almost falling in on himself when he shrugged. "I prepared some stuff for it - I…thought it'd be fun?"
In New Asteria, as Anthira had noted, Terrans talk very quickly, so it was only then that she found some sort of in into the conversation.
"Mei dearest , this was very sweet of you to offer, but you do not need to worry about the one who's taking care of you, petal," she was specific in not just her words, but how she said them. The New Asterian language was rhythmic as it was tonal, and with the right patterns it was easy to disarm any ill will in the room and bring the attention back to her. Mei never shifted an inch.
"I see your petals flaking off whenever you think I'm not looking, and as I said, the kid needs something to do," despite her age, she could still huff like a floret half it. "Indulge me, will you, Mistress?"
Though Amelia and Sage both looked incredibly queasy, Anthira couldn't help but fold at the comment.
"Alright, if it'll make the little dear happy, I'll see what I can get done."
" I'll be happy if Auntie never calls you Mistress or anything ever again thank you. "
Everyone laughed, and Anthira couldn't help but wonder.
Perhaps Affini aren't as independent as they think, either.
The thought hadn't crossed her mind again until the very next March. The whole year was a blur of little moments and an endlessly-expanding wardship, and throughout all of it Anthira had begun to treasure Mei as her own - she had been, in earnest, just without anything official to stand for it. Call her noncommittal, call Mei free-range, but that is how she liked it, their lovely little limbo they danced together.
Mei's health had never been fantastic, but it took a turn for the worse in the winter. A cocktail of painkillers and other drugs filled her days with blissful lethargy, daily walks throughout the city turned into phone calls across the galaxy while laid up in bed. A variety of social gatherings and events turned into a whirlwind of people visiting every day with food, gifts, and Mei's favorite, stories. January and February had been spent fretting with the xenoveterinary office on some sort of recovery plan, but it was by March that she had accepted that she was rubbing up against the Affini's only remaining enemy - entropy.
Even without the haustoric implant, a Terran could live decades beyond their previously expected years, but that's only with early enough intervention and care. For a sophont as old as Mei, as battered as the years had made her, anything under the knife would only serve to make the end more painful.
"Hello, petal," her voice was soft, had to be, as she entered the room. Mei was awake - rare in these times but precious all the while. A lot of people were in the main living area, cooking, looking over boxes, and had been coming to see Mei intermittently as to not overwhelm her. In the main room, there was loud music, lots of conversation, and all kinds of lively ruckus - but here it was quiet. Candles lit up the room in a small, cozy glow, incense billowing gentle smoke and filling the room with sandalwood and myrrh, leaving her own scent of roses and currants to fall into an after-note.
"Hey Andy," she knows that it hurts for Mei to laugh, but still she does. In her bleariness, the look in her eyes is still full of fondness, a comfort that stings harder than any nettle. "Everything going okay out there?"
"Lovely, dinner is about ready. I - have something for you," her antennae twitched with nerves - it's the first time she'd ever done something like this and the timing couldn't have been more awful. Mei stirred in affirmation, and Anthira could have practically watched the moment fly away from her. A piece of paper- lovingly edited and laid out to the margins - was presented, and Mei needed only a moment to understand what laid before her. The processing was only a second for Mei - but an infinite hold in time for Anthira. Fear held her vines in suspense, core aching for something, anything -
"Took you long enough," a weight fell off Anthira's body as Mei laughed, that tired, well-meaning ' hah! ' that lifted the morbid blanket from the room's atmosphere. She scoffed mostly to herself as she felt around for a pen. "Why save all the pomp and circumstance for now?"
"Because, I-" Anthira's leaves wilted into her, a whole speech fizzled out by the perfect simulacra of the future colliding with the messy, awkward reality of the present. "My core hurts that I couldn't have found you sooner. That I- couldn't have made you mine sooner, that I couldn't give you the wonderful life of a floret that you deserved."
"Oh Andy don't give me that," finally a pen is found, her hand shook as she grasped it but still she remained steadfast. "I lived a full life, full of bullshit yes, but all lives are. I'd take all the shit this world put me through, fight the Accord thirty times over, just to keep everything else. I wasn't meant to be a floret, Andy."
"Don't speak like that, Mei!" She typically hated to interrupt, but Anthira couldn't have watched while precious time slipped through her foliage. "Everyone deserves the life that the Compact gives, it breaks me to know that you only got a taste, and I just-"
To say she shook like a leaf was an understatement. She wrapped her vines around Mei's wrist to prevent her just that brief moment of pain, and against her head in a desperate plea for the chance to hold her one last time.
"I want to make sure I always remember you as my first."
Mei smiles, the lines against her mouth and the crow's feet at her eyes extend the expression across her face, like all of her experience and sincerity were hidden in the nooks and crannies of her guise for Anthira to find.
"You sure know how to woo a girl."
Mei finally lifted her pen from the paper, and went to the next line. As Anthira scanned the document for her amends, she continued.
"I will be your first, for as long as you will have me, but I have my own clauses. Chief among them is that you let me finish."
Right underneath the clause about Mei Baustille becoming Mei Mulfier, was thus ;
"Anthira Mulfier, 1st Bloom, will watch over the adoptive progeny of Mei Mulfier, 1st Floret, until the final one has passed."
"Anthira Mulfier, 1st Bloom, will love New Asteria as it loved Mei Mulfier, 1st Floret."
"…I wasn't made to be a floret, Andy. I was too much of a fighter, and I was already too damn old to make anything of an interesting feral. I knew this when the war first started - I just had to wait it out until you got here. I needed to make sure that everyone was going to be okay."
Weak as her grasp was, it was firm around Anthira's vine, something still imprinted in her bio-system to this day. Her eyes - the stormy gray was still as sharp as the day they met - burned into her core with the last embers of a raging bonfire. She points out the door.
"Promise me they will be okay. They know what to do with me, what I wanted and where, but I need this out of you, Andy. Promise me they'll be okay. Love them like they did me."
It was an overwhelming prospect. Even distantly, taking care of so many sophonts across of many star systems was a tall order for any affini - let alone a 1st Bloom. It was a least seventy - if not well over a hundred - years until this promise made in a moment could be reasonably fulfilled. This was, realistically, the rest of her very first bloom.
She didn't hesitate.
"I will move the stars themselves to guarantee it."
Without another word of affirmation, Mei signed the document, rolled it up, and handed it to Anthira.
"To forever, Andy."
"…To forever, Mei."
When Mei laid back down, the temperature in the room dropped in an instant. The clock had run out.
"…I'm quite tired, Andy. Could you start bringing Emile and the others in? I have something to tell them, privately."
"Of course," She didn't have to ask, but she had to. "Will we speak again, Mei?"
She couldn't cleave herself from the moment, all of her willpower sapped to just to keep the present from moving ever closer to its inevitability. She was dependent here, loose in reality and hunched over this bed like her only anchor as it all unraveled before her. Roots that grew into the floorboards, into her lifestyle, into the way she called her Andy cut at the tap and left to bleed dry.
Was this what free will left someone?
"Oh, Andy I don't know," her voice was gentle, still light with humor. "I guess I'll have to see if the Affini can talk to ghosts."
The wake was beautiful, it was always going to be. Almost an entire district, a village in and of itself mobilized like dancers in a choreographed ballet of mourning. Mei's body was wrapped in a shroud, put in a casket, and marched around town as pallbearers rang bells and yelled stories of her life.
"She housed us here in New Asteria, now may she find home in our memory!"
"A breath of life when we had not air to breath, she sings Beyond us, Glory be her voice and Everlasting be her impact!"
Of the pallbearers was a man middle into his age, a chef at a local market in the city. Anthira watched as his skin grew pale in pallor, eyes under his eyes dark, but still he lead the charge. With a brassy bass voice that could carry through the ocean, he lead the traveling mourning choir in Mei's final parade without as much as a single tear shed.
"She protected me when I had nothing," he later said in confidence to Anthira. His name was Emile, and he was quite appreciative for the casual way she went about what was ultimately a very serious wellness check. "When I got kicked out onto the streets young, I found her at a kitchen I was helping out with and benefiting from at the same time. I could go into what all she did just - fuck. She was home for me and so many of us. I don't know how I'm going to pack up the night's leftovers without thinking to drop them off with her. I don't know how I'm going to reach to send her an article and know that she'll never read it."
Several people in the community built a shrine out in the center of the district, with photos and candles and places to send their regards. Until the night the monument was torn down, there was a small lunch box under the main photo every night- and if she got there early enough, she could watch the steam dissipate into the early morning air. At the time, she had asked Emile what he wanted to do the least.
"…I can't go to the post office. While I was organizing the funeral, Io led a force that sorted through all of Auntie's stuff and got it packed up for those in the will but off-rock. I agreed to just send everything off because the office is so close to my shop, just seeing everything in the front I-"
Just nothing, so Anthira was on her way to the post office.
The night cycle was in full effect when Anthira found herself at the doorstep, a verifiable mountain of packages to be sent off to every edge of the Terran Protectorate as fast as Affini postage could take them. The floating constellations of bioluminescent seaweed acted as an amphitheater of eyes upon every judiciously marked shipping label and attached letter color coded by Solar System and labeled numerically by weight. Everything double checked to guarantee swift travel with nothing being lost along the way. So lost was she in making sure everything was organizationally above board, another sophont had practically barrelled into her by the time she opened the door.
Recognizing everything was erratic and piecemeal. A head of thick black hair, cut into a familiar bob. Icy blue eyes that stare into Anthira's core to freeze it solid, all but her face hidden by a thick leather jacket that she got only recently.
For a moment she saw Mei.
The next-
"Sweet Amelia! Oh how are you I-" she hadn't seen her at the wake! She had been so worried about how she had been doing! Relief and joy swelled in her veins until-
"Hi Anthira," her voice was cold, sharp and blunt like a smack to the head. "Sorry, I'm in no mood to talk."
"Oh, I'm sorry petal, I just, your Auntie wanted me to-"
"Please don't tell me anything about what Auntie wanted."
For a second, they look not at each other, but up at the same sky. Unlike the stars of the wider universe, the schools of seaweed move much more at the speed of clouds than planetary bodies, so two people can watch the time pass in perfect natural synchronicity.
Maybe they were even looking for the same insight.
Is this what free will does to you?
"Of course. My apologies, Amelia."
"You're fine," her tone was flat but her intent sincere, in as so far as it was hiding a pain neither of them were getting out on the street on a weekday night. "Thank you for helping with the wake. Sorry I can't stay. I'm late for dinner plans."
She left. Without another word or injection or argument, she stomped out into the new spring air and left Anthira with a pile of packages. She's alone. Independent.
A failure.
The world was cyclical, here she stood again in almost the exact same place as she was almost exactly a year ago, arms full of overlabelled, redundantly organized things that get lost in the shuffle of real life. Stuck in the crossroads between a conversation perfectly envisioned and the brisk remnants of it crumpled at the feet of Terran and Affini emotion alike.
Love them like they did me.
Her senses extended beyond the immediacy of herself, and she was surrounded by her floret's family. The wind of the electrolysis engine filling the underwater city with air, chitter chatter of a lively street where a community lives, the swaying of Affini and Terran alike in an interconnected orchestra.
A list of names on packages, in a binder, and in her core.
She stepped into the office about as independent as any other sophont in the city, and let the present bring all the possibilities that only others can give.