Archive of Our Own

Things were getting better, but Cassie’s first week as a floret was kind of rough.

Cassie was a voluntarily domesticated floret. She had felt lost and alone prior to domestication, and volunteered for a sense of comfort and affection. A day later she had been moved to the home of her owner, Darla Decazyx, First Bloom, onboard the Affini Compact ship Nebula Bramble.

Cassie didn’t have any friends until then, one week ago. Immediately her owner introduced her to four amazing new sophonts who had only love to show her. Her owner, her friends, and her friends’ owners all made her feel so good… they appreciated her for being transgender, as both Cassie and the other florets were all trans girls, and while it had been a nasty time being told, everyone was quick to help her realize that being neurodivergent wasn’t such a horrible thing to exist as. All the other florets were, too, and all the Affini were… Well, neurodivergence wasn’t really the same type of concept for them, but Cassie had been assured by her new owner that everyone involved basically had whatever plant autism did.

It was… odd how foreign Cassie already felt to herself. A week ago, knowing she had autism was an extremely negative possibility… and she was still working on things, but felt much better. Thanks to having friends like her, and her owner especially, she felt she could hang on.

The ten of them were on top of a scenic hill, overlooking a park in all directions, relaxing as a group. The florets were all in a circle, surrounded by their Affini.

To the left of Cassie, Monica was currently talking to everyone, explaining what she had been doing earlier that day: she was taking flight lessons, taught by her owner, and was excitedly detailing her first go on an aircraft that was new to her, which she had flown in the vast interior of the spin-gravity spacecraft. The other florets — Izzy, Starshine, and Odette — were all listening, as was Cassie.

…Well, mostly listening. There was one other thing on Cassie’s mind.

And it certainly wasn’t something she liked being on her mind; hell, before the whole domestication where her owner quickly dispelled notions about neurodivergence being so bad, it was something she avoided thinking about altogether. But with the barrier gone, Cassie was getting nervous.

Cassie was, as usual, twitching. Very visibly. Around thrice in the last minute she had needed to swivel her head wildly around.

To Cassie, this was natural. The way she existed, for all her life. Her only way to experience reality, always interspersed with some kind of twitch here or there. More during stress, less during relaxation, but almost never none. And never none for more than an hour or so.

Just seven days ago, her owner had explained the many things Cassie had which influenced her reality so thoroughly. This one was CITD, a floret name for… Cassie didn’t really like thinking about the original word. CITD stood for Catastrophically Invasive Twitching Disorder , a name some floret had apparently come up with to avoid saying the only word that most sophonts knew for the condition. Said floret apparently felt it was too much like a slur… given Cassie’s own experiences? Yeah, she couldn’t disagree.

Cassie twitched her neck again, swiveling it around and clenching some neck muscles for a moment. She had to move her wrists, too.

It was irregular, but just as reliable as clockwork.

Her owner had explained what was really happening… despite what Cassie had been told all her life, the twitches — there was another word most used to describe it earlier in Cassie’s life, but it too was something she viewed as a slur after so long — were not actually voluntary. They could be stopped, but only at the application of enormous effort… Since being told, she had been wondering if most sophonts could even exert the effort, if it turned out that she had the whole time been suffering from involuntary demands for motion, rather than from bad habits that made her feel dumb for lacking the ability to stop herself. It was, given what she had learned about stimming so far… the opposite of stimming. With stimming, nothing happened if you didn’t do it, and it felt good if you did.

With twitches, doing it gave no reward, and trying not to resulted in severe punishment.

It wasn’t a normal pain. It was… some other thing. Something that hurt unbearably but wasn’t normal pain. Just… sometimes Cassie described it as her body demanding she move in ways her joints could not truly comply with. As if it was assuming she had an Affini body, not a human one.

The constant threat of having to keep doing random body movements or her bones would feel like they were about to explode was probably pretty stressful, but to Cassie, that wasn’t really the biggest problem. It was how visible she was. How she knew full well, her full life, that these “bad habits”...

Shit. I got distracted again. She tried to keep track of what her friends were saying. Stuff about flying an old airplane, and how it acted in the air.

…The “bad habits”. Not habits after all. But still very visible, and even now it was obvious everyone could see them.

So long she had wondered why nobody else had her bad habits… She was simply not like anyone else around her the whole time.

And that was the problem now.

Her friends, so adorable that they were, had been florets longer than she had and were, to different extents, stimming at the very least, or stretching themselves once in a while. But…

Having them for two and a half decades meant they were unmistakable to Cassie.

She twitched again… ugh.

Nobody else was doing it, nothing like it. None of them did the twitches.

Her owner had found her friends who were as crazily neurodivergent as she was. And as her owner had explained, having some stuff means it’s a lot more likely to have more stuff. It was the case for Cassie’s friends, and Cassie. But none of them… none of them…

They didn’t move like Cassie did. Like Cassie had to, out in the open, without any way to hide it, her biggest stress point out there for the whole ship to see.

Her friends didn’t twitch like Cassie did.

The Affini onboard the ship did not twitch like Cassie did.

The other florets, nor the few independents, did not twitch like Cassie did.

Oh fuck , Cassie thought. She was starting to feel… it didn’t feel good.

Cassie had seen a lot. A lot of lies, about neurodivergence, so incomprehensibly cruel that they were, surrounding her for her whole entire life. And the worst of all, the stereotypes about CITD, which followed her wherever she went.

In reality the twitches were the visible half. The invisible half was emotional. CITD made sophonts far quicker to be enraged. But such a thing did still affect her life.

Cassie had her whole life worried about her “bad habits”, not sure if she had been looked at the whole time by everyone else, and been constantly scolded for being too emotional, too angry, unable to “control her emotions”. She wasn’t really sure what anyone meant by controlling her emotions; they were clearly their own process. She hoped that whoever was saying stuff like that was simply out of touch with reality… the idea of someone actually controlling their own emotions freaked her out.

Cassie’s biggest issues in dealing with her neurodivergence were about her CITD. That which to her was shown as the most horrible excuse for a reflection of her that she had ever been subjected to. Portraying her as some freak monster, constantly in a blind dumb rage and looking stupid for lack of control over her body.

She had also been exposed to terrible things about the rest of her, but the rest of her was shared with her friends. Nobody else on the hill had CITD. Nobody else on the ship had CITD. She had seen thousands of florets by now and nobody did what she did.

Figures. I get brought out for a playdate in celebration of having real friends after all this time and I…

Cassie’s twitches intensified, and the rest of her froze up, bunching her legs against her chest, trying to look like she was anything but about to cry. She hated being seen when she cried.

They wouldn’t even understand, would they. Nobody else knew what it was like. Would they think something of her, seeing her as the only one doing all this? What if she freaked out and got angry, would… would they…

“Cassie?” asked Monica, now broken out of her infodump about radial engines. “Uh… dang, are you alright? Um.”

Cassie could feel her face scrunching up like it did every time she was about to cry… Please don’t, don’t see me like this.

Her stress spiked, and the twitches responded, demanding more of her, more often. She was being looked at. Everyone was looking.

…Again.

Her eyes were getting bleary. All she could think of was to turn around; she did so, diving into her owner, who gave a surprised yelp, then after a couple of seconds wrapped vines around her, pulling her into a half-submerged embrace as Cassie tried to hide from reality.

Cassie made a noise… a distressed sound with every emotion in the world packed into it.

Cassie’s owner, Darla, stood up with Cassie still engulfed, and held up a finger to let everyone know they should wait. In only a few moments the two of them had reached the nearest secluded space — like many in Affini parks, built specifically for any need of privacy or stress reduction.

Darla sat down, Cassie still partially inside of her. “Oh, Cassie…” she sang softly. “You’re having a panic attack, petal.”

Cassie made another unhappy noise. Darla simply held her.

A few minutes later, Darla was the only of the two to return.

“Sorry everyone.” Darla seemed somewhat distraught. “Cassie can’t really see anyone else today, it seems. She had a rather nasty panic attack related to social exposure. She’s not going to be in good shape to be in public for the rest of the day. She’s waiting in the relaxation space for me; we’ll have to leave shortly.”

“Um… what… what was it?” Starshine asked, clearly nervous.

“I doubt it was any of you,” came support from Starshine’s owner, Venus, who patted her head. “It’s okay, darling.”

“It wasn’t anyone here, more of an abstract problem,” explained Darla. “Cassie, as you all heard when you met her, has a lot of trauma about how she was exposed to abusive depictions of neurodivergence. Her biggest problem at the moment is CITD. Some of you might only know it by its more common name, Tourette’s Disorder. But to be clear, please don’t say those words around Cassie; to her, that is a slur, due to how she had only ever been exposed to it in negative contexts. This is a pattern that other florets have experienced, so one of them created that new name.”

“Is she, like, afraid of us seeing it?” Izzy asked. “Like, that’s the thing that makes her move around a lot right? I noticed it, but like, I kinda just assumed it was either stimming or some stretches she needed to do.”

“Well, I don’t think we need to worry so much about what you all think of it,” Darla continued. “The issues are a little different. She’s afraid of being seen with it simply because of the associations she has with how others reacted to her, or the horrible ways she’s seen it portrayed in the past. But the other issue… is a bit harder to solve. She started panicking because she was worried about how she got looked at, and worried because she realized none of you have CITD… nor does… anyone else onboard Nebula Bramble. ”

“Uh.” Odette interjected flatly, somewhat confused. “Like. Really? Nobody else has this one thing on a ship where I can’t walk ten steps without seeing a cute floret talk about how good it feels to stim now that they can let themselves?”

“Due to how Affini approach sophont care, yes, helping others with neurodivergence is both something attractive to us and something that makes many neurodivergent sophonts decide florethood would help them. But… CITD is, seemingly, um, rare. Not sure how rare, but Cassie has made it clear to me that she’s been looking very closely while onboard and has not seen anyone else twitch like she does. She also admitted she’s uncertain if she’s ever seen anyone else with it… it makes it all the more horrible to think about how it would feel to be the only one in her vicinity targeted for her experiences of reality.”

“Miss Decai… um… Deca… Decazyx, um, can we please see Cassie again soon?” asked Starshine. “I hope she’s okay?”

“She needs to be just with me for today, but yes, I think she’d be helped by seeing her friends again as soon as she’s enough recovered for it. I’ll keep you all posted; my promises to each of you.”

Several hours later. In the bath.

“I fucking… I fucking… I hate it,” complained Cassie, in the middle of swinging an arm around somewhat wildly, irritated by the demands of her… she wasn’t sure. Body, nervous system, brain… Cassie did not desire to know if there even was some origin. “I fucking… nobody… ugh! Fuck. Okay, um…” Cassie rubbed her shoulder a little. “Okay, ugh, it’s done… That was a bad one. Um. So. Like. I dunno… I kinda just… being in a situation where suddenly I’ve got friends and turns out I’m neurodivergent but they’re all just like me… except basically nobody else in the entire universe has the thing that makes me super stand out and have constantly been complained to about and… I don’t even wanna talk about those… those videos. All of that but none of them actually have CITD and nobody else does either? It’s… It’s…”

Darla placed a hand around her floret, who looked up at her.

“Mistress, I feel like I’m more of an alien than you.”

“...I’ll admit… a reasonable reaction,” Darla concluded, speaking slowly. “Again, I’m sorry I didn’t notice… and it’s… hm. Much more rare than I expected. I took a look at the ship register… nobody with CITD onboard with the exception of Cassie Decazyx, First Floret, she/her. Which is you.”

Cassie sighed. “Right.” She twitched her neck again. “Does anyone… um.”

“I checked. Nobody thought the slightest thing of your twitches. My reaction is simply ‘that’s what my cute little floret does because that’s how she is’. And even with the information, I’m quite sure that’s about what everyone else will think too.”

“...Yeah… though it doesn’t stop the panic attack… thing. It was really a panic attack?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Hmm.” Cassie swished her legs around in the water… at least she could stim a tiny bit when she felt able. That was kinda more voluntary. She could certainly stop it without consequence if she had to. “I guess the problem is no, um… nobody else, has, the um. CITD.”

“Right,” her owner agreed, applying soap to Cassie’s back.

“Oagh,” Cassie groaned, half-scoffing, dejected. “Fffuck.” She waved her hands around in the water, feeling it flow over her before her neck interrupted her, followed by her wrists. She let out another terribly defeated noise. “To be honest… I’m not… I’m not even sure I wouldn’t panic if I did meet someone else with it. Like… I mean I’ve only ever seen a bad reflection of that, uh, stuff that I have. But even an actual one… um… I kinda… worry. That I’ll still… you know. Panic. Just by seeing it all too close.”

“Another valid concern, petal.” Darla washed Cassie’s back off.

“And like. Even when I was meeting my new friends and all those other neurodivergent sophonts who said hello just to help me not want to… well you know. But even then a week ago, um… I don’t think anyone said CITD that day. Or any other day. The whole time, it’s just been… me and you.”

“Again… I am sorry for that. You do not deserve that isolation, no matter the rarity of what you experience.”

Another sigh. “I hope that there isn’t some… you know. Reason why it’s rare. Like… you know how terrans are with… genocide. Like that.”

“Ah… I’m afraid so, I do know about the possibility. And, well, I also do not know if that has ever happened, Cassie.”

“Yeah… at least that won’t be a problem anymore. Anyone like that is getting brainwashed, but still. I… feel alone. More alien than I view you as.”

“In that case. You’re the most wonderful alien in the universe to me — and obviously, incredibly unique. I am glad to have found someone so precious.” Darla turned Cassie around. “Still, I am deeply sorry, even if I cannot have done and cannot now do all that much about it. I was told that it’s hard for a floret to deal with the idea that they’d be unusually alone with something they have. I wish to do something. I know not what. But you deserve every ‘do something’ in the universe.”

Cassie pushed herself against Darla’s chest, sighing, looking to the side. Letting her cheek get warm. “I feel… so… ugh. What word… I guess just… useless. What can you… even do?”

“I can tell you you aren’t useless. The comfort you bring me is quite the function. But… I do not know. I will find out, I promise.”

“...Uh, hope this isn’t too harsh, but… can you keep it?”

“Affini, as you’ve seen already, probably as you’ve seen since the domestication campaign even started, can be a little heavy on twisting the meanings of words when we really want to. But things like this? Cassie, I will not fail. I promise. ”

“...Thank you. Let’s go to bed… I feel bad.”

Darla put down a snack bowl and three water bottles on the table in front of Cassie, who had a game controller in her hands. “Okay, I’ll just be out for a few hours; this should be plenty of water for you, and some peanut butter crackers… though you should wash your hands each time you eat some, otherwise the controller will get messy.”

“Ah, um, okay.” Cassie flicked around the main menu of Motorstorm , listening to the harsh-sounding music and the cool noises the menu made when she navigated it. “Uh… so where are you going?”

“I’ve got some important work to do at the ship’s main bureaucratic office. Every Affini has to at least once in a while; we use paperwork to track everything important and tend to have in-person meetings for some of the complicated stuff. It’s something I expected to just have a text conversation about, but they wanted me to be present for a meeting. It’s just one of those things everyffini has to do, once every, hm, maybe every fifteen years or so. It could be anything, really; last week I was over there because they wanted me to make sure all your name and gender stuff was fixed, since the Accord was pretty bad at respecting trans sophonts… or worse than bad, but you get the picture.” Darla petted Cassie’s head softly before walking to the door. “Be a good girl for me, okay? I only want to see video game violence,” she winked, “no getting hurt in real life.”

“Well, uh, that I can promise. I think. Uh. I’m less sure now that you’re asking about it but, I’ll… uh… do my best?”

“That’s the spirit.”

Darla shut the door, and began walking. It was just a couple minutes to the train station, a few minutes on a train, and then another minute to the bureaucratic office.

No hassle to get there or anything, and the view the whole way was gorgeous. Everyone knew a nice big Affini ship not only had the means but never failed to impress, and even comfort, in a visual sense. It wasn’t like it was annoying to go there.

The meeting, however…

Darla sat down in the train, sighing, feeling in over her core. She didn’t quite lie to Cassie, but she didn’t want to make the poor girl panic more. The meeting was something Darla had wanted to do… but it seemed to have grown out of her control.

The train ride passed by, as did the short walk to the office.

Darla walked straight through the front doors, and directly into the building. She didn’t need to turn; she simply walked right down the main hall, in the perfect center of the place, and into the huge set of doors at the end, revealing a huge indoor amphitheater, filled with Affini, many accompanied by their florets, with the ship’s entire Advisory Problem-Solving Council assembled down in the pit, with one spot open. And every single sophont in the room, minus the very high ones, had instantly turned to look at her, the room nearly silent.

She glanced up, at the large screen at the rear of the room, currently being used as a signboard. “Emergency APSC Assembly: Darla and Cassie Decazyx”.

Oh, everbloom. Why the heck did they want to do all this…? Darla put on the best confident attitude she could and walked down the steps. (There were elevators in the room, for sophonts who couldn’t use the steps. Access to proper transportation is important. But Darla took the stairs, which made her look very dramatic.)

The bottom of the room, where everyone could see, was where the APSC was seated. All around the rest of the amphitheater were a variety of more Affini, many with florets, plus a certain duck plushie (Ducky, she/her) present for good measure, as was tradition; for the ship’s meetings, each time one was held, the APSC invited the most relevant Affini to an issue, those with appropriate experience and expertise, for any and all needs of clarifying information. As stated in the message Darla had gotten back the previous night, today’s audience was selected from neurodivergent Affini (though it was hard to say that all that many Affini weren’t) who had neurodivergent florets. Same as Darla.

The paperwork Darla had submitted was for a simple advice meeting. It was meant to just be via instant messaging, maybe a one-on-one in person if really needed. But all this… how unfamiliar.

Darla had once, only two years ago, been in the crowd for the Nebula Bramble ’s APSC meetings. They had just fished up a terran naval vessel with a rather significant catch onboard: an overpromoted military leader of… whatever of the ridiculous terran titles allowed them to command a small battalion of ships. Darla couldn’t be bothered to memorize all those weird ranks terrans kept using; it just annoyed her anyways. It was just some weird hierarchy-of-nature fallacy. Said terran was rather notorious, for practices that were unsavory even for the Cosmic Navy. Even though she had read the report before the meeting day, hearing it all read out was still rather nauseating. The terran had, of course, only complained the whole time, before being dosed with, at least, class-W. Probably more, by the way they started getting clumsy. The APSC meeting had lasted hours, as the Council had to decide how best to handle such a delicate situation. They had ultimately decided to have them transferred to quite a far-away Affini Compact ship, to prevent anyone who had known them during those dark times from seeing them, as it could risk panic, and assigned them a quite thorough identity reversion in order to let them re-live their life, becoming their best self, finally free of whatever horrible circumstances had caused such cruelty.

Which is why it was so surprising for such a meeting to be called… because her floret was lonely. Flattering, sure, but… strange. Not for the delicate task of dealing with a sophont who had done so much incredible harm, but… because Cassie had a panic attack. Not great , but still.

Darla sat down in one of the big, soft chairs, surrounded by the Council at close range and the audience of experts at a longer range.

“...Did the doors close behind me?” Darla asked. “I didn’t look.”

“Yes, they did,” confirmed the head of the APSC. She raised an eyebrow. “...You look like you want to say something?”

“I obviously trust your reasoning, everyone… I am here. But… I’m unsure our issue warrants… um… this.”

“You just gestured to all of us,” remarked the APSC head.

“Y… yes. So, why?”

“Every floret at the very least has the consideration benefit of being very cute and therefore being quite tempting to have detailed discussions about. But Cassie in particular has a somewhat unique problem. Literally unique, aboard the Nebula Bramble. It’s a pretty severe wellbeing issue for a floret to have nobody to relate to when it comes to part of themselves. And even more so, it’s a very important aspect of Cassie, and extra quadruply so because Cassie is currently undergoing a very difficult healing process on the very topic we’ve come here to discuss. Simply put, it’s too big of a problem for one little pet to handle for any length of time past the soonest her issue can be fixed. So we called a meeting, as soon as possible. That’s…” she looked at her watch. “Now.” She stood up, “This meeting of the Advisory Problem-Solving Council is now in session. Darla: your opening statements?”

Darla nodded. “Thank you.” She stood up, turning to face the crowd as an image of her floret came up on the huge overhead screen. “ This… is my floret, Cassie.”

The crowd quickly broke out into cheers and happy shouts. Darla tried not to let them see her smile, she wanted to project an air of authority. Just for the sake of it; she knew the meeting was probably as important as the APSC said.

“Yes, yes, I know. My floret, naturally, is objectively perfect. Everyone knows already, thank you.” The crowd calmed down, amused but with their attention back on her. “Cassie is wonderful; the issue is me. Unlike her, I am not perfect. Truly, one of our greatest woes as sophonts is that we Affini cannot always quite measure up to the lofty heights our florets see in us. You’ve seen the briefings, I assume, so you’d know what the issue is. Dear little Cassie has CITD — and I do not. And… you do not. Nobody in this room has CITD. Nobody Cassie has met has CITD. None of her friends do. Nobody she’s seen onboard the Nebula Bramble does. And… her observations are entirely correct. On this ship, large and impressive to our little ones as it may be, our wonderful community is still not adequate for my dearest little Cassie.

“Nobody. Nobody at all. Nobody has CITD onboard except Cassie.”

Darla paused. She let the crowd have their few moments to murmur. They all knew, obviously. But like Darla had experienced, it was another thing altogether to really be told. She had to make that count, she supposed, for Cassie. Though, admittedly, that’s probably about what every Affini to stand where she was standing had thought.

“I won’t repeat the most horrible details; they’re all there in the messages you each were sent. What Cassie has seen in her still-so-new experience of a life has been… harrowing. Disturbing. Revolting. Over her whole entire life, Cassie had, prior to meeting me, not once ever heard a single kind thing about CITD. And nothing neutral either. All she ever had were complaints to her face… or barely veiled threats in online shows and videos.” Darla let venom drip from her voice, doing her best to signal her pure abhorrence at what her poor floret had seen. “It too was bad with the little one’s exposure to harmful ideas about the many other things she lives with, such as her wonderful autism and ADHD. But none so deep nor so thorough as how she had been told she had to look at herself for having CITD. It’s no wonder that our dearest florets have not often been okay with the original word for it, as I can only imagine how impossible it would be not to see it as a slur given what other statements had come alongside the word. The only sophont onboard to have it is not even here — but you already have your information, so I need not sully her wonderful warmth with such a phrase.”

Darla let herself, and her audience, breathe for a few moments. It was important to give everyone some amount of resting time to absorb how Darla felt about her dear pet.

“Yesterday, when Cassie realized how alone she really was for having something quite so rare, she was absolutely terrified. If you have not seen her, you could only guess as to how frightened the look on her little face was. She had friends to help her out with so many of the things she now has to reckon with… all but the very worst of it all. She felt so much more alone, knowing that she hadn’t seen a single sophont who moved the way she did, and she felt so exposed, too, for the fact that CITD does not relent in its demands so long as she is awake. Maybe even asleep; I haven’t checked but she’s at least a restless sleeper, so I would not quite be surprised. She hated the way she felt so visible when nobody else was, she felt… she told me she felt she was more alien to the universe than I was. Quite a poignant statement, given how far we came so that I could find her.”

Darla waited moments more. All eyes on her.

“And there’s one more concern: Cassie likewise worries about the extent of her trauma. She worries that she could be distressed anyways even if someone did show up. Worried that she’d only be able to see the worst lie-ridden reflections of herself in another.” Darla tried to think if she had anything more… she felt like she didn’t. “And that is all that I know about the issue, thus far.” She took a short bow, and got back in her seat.

“Thank you, Darla,” the APSC head followed up. “We will now take a few minutes to take notes on our first thoughts — both the APSC and the audience we have assembled. The audience will be able to read out anything they might have to mention first, then we’ll go around the group here, and call on audience advice as we discuss things. You can take notes and state them too, of course, Darla. Yours would be most important of all.”

The writing time went by; then, a few of the Affini in the audience gave their own statements about what they had observed or been reminded of, before each member of the Council did the same, plus a few more remarks from Darla, moreso about what others had been saying. The APSC head kept leading discussions, and gradually the Council was nearing consensus on a few things.

“...So then, here’s what we can summarize,” explained the Council head after a good long discussion. “As we all know. We considered but dismissed the idea of having more than one or two sophonts with CITD in Cassie’s vicinity; we have reason to believe that overexposure would risk allowing her to panic. Obviously, zero is too low, so one or two would be advisable. And a large event of any sort would make her feel exposed, and would be inappropriate. So, here’s what I, as head of the APSC aboard Nebula Bramble, suggest.”

The Council head shuffled her notes around. Darla shifted in her seat, glancing around.

“These are all… of course… suggestions. Every final say is within the vines of Darla Decazyx, First Bloom. Our official suggestions are as follows. (A): Make sure all her new friends understand what she’s dealing with, both emotionally, and in terms of how CITD feels to have. Let them engage with her CITD on some level, seeing her for how she is in this way. And, (B): She should start out with very, very small, non-overwhelming exposure to no more than one or two other sophonts, preferably florets, who share CITD with her. Not only CITD, but as many of her other neurodivergent traits as possible. Whether having some neurodivergent trait Cassie does not have is up to Darla’s decision, as Cassie’s sources of stress would likely be nuanced. CITD obviously has effects, very significant ones, on attention, touch… and as you’ve seen in the summaries, emotions. As do the other things Cassie has. It will be easier for Cassie to trade understanding with a sophont who thinks and feels how she does.”

The Council head now had her turn to rest a moment. And Darla was absorbing information this time. Darla idly slid her foot back and forth on the floor, taking things in.

“...And in addition, it would be a good idea for you to manage these actions yourself with help from your closest friends, Darla. As a Council, we could potentially keep going on your original request and now proceed to also plan things out with you, or even for you. But that personal touch would draw many benefits for Cassie, so I suggest.”

Darla nodded, long and slow. “I agree… to all of your advice. Yes, and thank you. I’ll be implementing it myself, with teamwork.”

Twelve minutes and twelve seconds later, Darla slumped into a lounge booth in the elaborate front lobby of the bureaucratic building, joined by Monumentum Orchidaceae, Fifth Bloom; Venus Verbesina, Forty-Sixth Bloom; Ascension Io, First Bloom; and Marie Calendula, Ninth Bloom. Her friends, and the owners of the four florets she had introduced Cassie to.

“I saw you all in the audience, you know,” Darla creaked. “Thanks for showing.”

“We do have appropriate experience. Though for privacy, we kept our florets at home, obviously. Mine’s asleep,” added Monumentum.

“That was… exhausting. But I guess, despite the whole… Council thing, we got some good instructions. Well, I got instructions, but. You’ll all help, right?”

“That’s one of several billion things which friends are for, Darla,” Venus declared.

“Uh… yeah, agreed.” Darla gently closed her eyes. “I hope Cassie will truly be okay…”

She sat up, looking at her dear friends.

“I just want to spend the rest of today with Cassie. We can plan later. And everbloom knows she’ll need a comfy time today. You’re all here, so… I guess that’s everyone I’d want to involve. So just see if you can brainstorm anything, I guess. I’ll try that a little, but mostly I’m gonna give Cassie attention. It’ll keep her mental health progressing, and… we’d both enjoy it.”

Her friends waved goodbye as she boarded her train, going back to Cassie.

Cassie had been brought to another park… for all Cassie knew, one of thousands onboard the huge plant ship. Darla had brought her out to have a picnic, and Cassie had been put in a very fancy dress… not that she could object. It kind of reminded her of Alice in Wonderland. But, maybe an anime game version. Much more fancy and detailed than it would have been in the 1800s. And probably not made of realistic materials or designs for the era.

The daylight may have been artificial, but the effect was real enough for Cassie — which was good, since she had been told she had some type of photosensitivity related to light. If she went too much of a day without natural sunlight, she’d get migraines. It was relaxing to lounge under the artificial sun in the sky, which featured scattered clouds for the day. Due to the size of the ship, even the sky and horizons looked perfectly normal, like a regular planet’s atmosphere, and the artificial sun would each day move from one end of the ship to the other, through the huge artificial gravity cylinder, allowing the angles of daylight to gently move across the sky, around every 86,400 seconds or so.

Cassie let herself enjoy the warmth of sunlight hitting her skin and soft clothes. It was always so nice, no matter what the day’s interior weather was like. It was always the right kind of rainy, sunny, cloudy, or whatever. Today it was somewhat cool but with a nice hot sun, perfect for a nice even body temperature when lounging in the light. And Cassie’s nice dress helped as well, being so loose and silky, letting through just the right amount of heat.

Cassie flexed her elbow back and forth, then her neck, grunting softly, before taking another bite of her sandwich. She glanced to the side.

There were other sophonts in the park — obviously, as it was such a nice day. Nobody was all that close to Cassie and Darla, but still. Cassie felt a little raw from the day before, even if having time with her Mistress and some prescribed time playing Motorstorm did help a little. She of course had the normal odd, slightly embarrassed exposed feelings of being a trans girl a little unused to wearing the correct clothing, though she had been well past beginning her transition by the time the Affini came — she had not really gotten that many girly outfits simply because she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. The real issue of exposure was her twitches again.

Was anyone looking closely enough at them to notice? Would they notice at all? If they did notice… what would they think.

She looked up at her Mistress, in a beautiful dress of her own, sipping at something in a teacup. It might have been tea? Cassie hadn’t thought to ask, and felt it would be embarrassing to do so after they’d been eating for a few minutes already. She never really “got” how manners worked. Cassie’s idea of manners seemed obvious enough to her, but nobody else seemed to agree. Really, she felt that others should try to operate on her level. Putting your elbows on a table was hardly a crime; the real issue with others’ table manners was when someone started scraping silverware on their dishes. Those horrible noises made Cassie want to start gnawing other sophonts’ hands off.

…Maybe that’s a sensory sensitivity thing , she admitted to herself. She bit off more sandwich. I’m still right though. Nobody’s good at manners except for me… and Mistress Darla.

Cassie put her sandwich down so she could twitch her wrists. Presumably Darla was noticing, right? Cassie felt… conflicted, in some odd way. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted her owner to outwardly notice when she twitched. Stuck between wanting and not wanting to be seen. To be recognized, which risked her being singled out.

I know Mistress wouldn’t do that… but. I can’t help feeling it.

“Feeling tense, darling?” Darla asked.

Cassie nodded.

“I can break the ice with educational anecdotes.”

She nodded again. Yes, please , she thought to herself.

“Well, I checked the news before we left, and there’s some nice positive news today, as Nebula Bramble managed to fish up some feralists a few hours ago. So there’ll be another influx of florets showing up over the next couple of days as they’re deemed able to go outside.”

“Oh, right, because of the whole treaty thing. They all become florets?”

“Yes, that’s right. We make some exceptions depending on what exactly the context of each pacification campaign is, but usually we stipulate that any rebels are subject to involuntary domestication, as feralism tends to pretty unilaterally end up harming the sophonts doing it and moreso the sophonts they interact with.”

“Wouldn’t, like… that scare them into doing it?”

“Yes, it does. Good observation, petal. One of the many things we work on long-term is how to mitigate that sort of thing. But it’s quite clearly safer, given what we know, to put every feralist into domestication. Usually not doing so isn’t going to be enough to placate them. Terran rebels, for example, often demand the returns of currency, their military, or their laws, none of which are acceptable, for reasons you’re well aware of.”

Cassie looked around the park for a moment. “Yeah, all that stuff is really bad… um, so, I guess if most of them act like that then they won’t stop doing anything bad just because they won’t be a pet.”

“Yes, correct. And another thing is that there are often quite a lot of abducted terrans on rebel ships, either who were on the ships already when the captain or crew decided to keep fighting, or who were taken from various extraterrestrial terran colonies.”

Cassie sighed. “You sure see some messed up stuff out there…”

“We can handle it; we’re built that way. It’s all worth it to rescue all the cutest sophonts in the universe. Which is all of them.” Darla took another sip of what might have been tea. “So, with some more terrans onboard, you’ll be seeing them soon, and I should let you know that some or all of them may be aggressive before they’re fully broken in; unlike you, being involuntary, they’re going to be a bit less excited about us. With a few particularly sweet exceptions. It can take up to a few weeks to safely break an objecting floret, and it’s quite an involved process, unique to each sophont, so that we can make sure they’re handled correctly: safely and healthily.”

“Mm hmm.” Cassie bit off more sandwich. She glanced to the side.

“For example, your friend Starshine was taken as an involuntary floret. It changed a lot over the course of its domestication, but the reality of the situation is that it became a truer, better version of itself. She acts much more shy now, and has a new name and her adorable she/her, it/its pronouns, but she’s just a more real version of herself. Though not the case for every floret, an awful lot of her prior behavior was masking, hiding herself, which she had done for her own safety, not questioning what she was doing. Terran Accord values encouraged it to hide itself and act dominant and in charge — but in the Compact, we encourage it to find itself. And it’s been much more honest about itself since getting captured, which I think says quite a lot about it.”

“Heh… yeah. Starshine is really cute.” Cassie twitched her neck. “Guh. Um. I mean, I was just kinda real sad when I volunteered, but I can definitely see how I could have gotten into the same horrible shit she was in. Deluding yourself is frighteningly easy when so many true parts of you are… so hard to see.”

“Self-discovery is tragically difficult. And that’s why…” Darla rubbed Cassie’s back. “...I’m so proud that you’ve come this far already.”

Cassie nodded, smiling a little. “Yeah.”

Cassie stopped before she took another bite of sandwich.

She looked up; Darla was looking down at her… observing.

“Um?” Cassie asked.

“Well, um. I noticed you were glancing to the side a lot.” Darla turned to see what Cassie had been looking at. “See anything interesting out there?”

“Um… kinda.”

Darla scanned the nearest walkways and quickly found what Cassie had surely been glancing at. 

In the near-distance, closely kept by an Affini, was a feralist, still in her naval uniform, albeit with a colorful collar on. She had an irritated look on her face… and she kept jerking her neck around, as if it lacked enough vertebrae to get into the position she was trying to find. She seemed to be tensing her arm and chest muscles in frustration.

“...Oh my everbloom. Cassie, does… does that look like how you move?”

Cassie watched a few more moments. “...She has CITD. I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm… a captured feralist, and she doesn’t look so happy.”

Cassie moved her spine around and flexed her wrists, then changed her body posture a little, making herself smaller. She felt weird, seeing such a reflection. It made her emotions ache. “Yeah… I get that way when the twitches get really bad. I don’t think she likes… well. You know. What I don’t like either. Being looked at. If she isn’t snarling in frustration now, then she would definitely be if she was alone. I go crazy when they get all full-body like that, it’s kind of awful.”

The two of them watched.

“I…” Cassie continued. “I can’t believe it. I don’t… think I’ve ever seen anyone else do it before.” She paused for a long, slow moment. She felt… longing? “It’s a little shocking to see it actually happening to someone else. And maybe distressing. Since I’m reminded of some… of the worse experiences I’ve had.”

“Cassie, do you want to meet her?”

“Um… hard to say. But definitely not now, trust me. Like… you know how we talked about the way CITD also amplifies anger?”

Darla nodded, “Yes.”

“Based on my own experiences… that floret isn’t likely to be in the mood to help me. For quite a while.”

“A while… as in hours or weeks? ”

“I don’t know, I’m not her. But she’s definitely in the mood to bite someone’s jugular vein. She probably wouldn’t, but if she’s like me, she’s probably genuinely fantasizing about it right now. Even if she doesn’t mean it.”

“Hmm.” Darla thought a few moments, sipping more tea. “I think tomorrow I’ll bring you to a meeting with my friends; though it’ll just be you and other Affini there. We can then plan out a safe way to do things. In fact, I met them all earlier today… that appointment I had at the bureaucratic office ended up being a little more severe than I let on, but I wanted to get it over with, and then have time to unwind, before I told you about it.”

“More… severe? Uh, hold on.” Cassie tried to comply with a twitch, wrenching her shoulders around oddly. “Oogh, that was an annoying one… um, how so?”

“ Originally I had requested a small advisory session… about you not having friends with CITD, which I intentionally neglected to tell you about until the meeting was over. I assumed it would just be a short text conversation where someone would be able to offer me advice… or maybe a conversation in-person. But the whole thing ended up with what you’d basically know as a court date, in which the ship’s emergency council was assembled.”

“An… emergency council? Like, because there’s exactly one sophont here with CITD?”

“Well, this morning there was, yes. Clearly not anymore. But yes, seems they really do consider it a huge issue to leave a floret so isolated. And I can’t say I’d complain about the help.” Darla sipped more tea. “I wanted to wait until tomorrow to explain it to you and start planning, and just relax today. But now that we suddenly know there’s a floret onboard with CITD, well, I feel like I have to speed it up a little.”

Cassie was, the next day, surrounded by five Affini, in a fancy room in a fancy mansion, where one of said Affini, plus one of Cassie’s new friends lived. The other florets were elsewhere, waiting while playing a video game Cassie had recommended from long ago so that they could report back to her after her meeting.

“...And that’s what we saw,” finished Darla. “So the question is whether we should go for it and contact them, versus wait things out. Weighing them hitting it off versus there being some kind of conflict. As Cassie noted, she or the other floret could be distressed from exposure to another sophont with CITD, depending on what said floret has experienced, and it’s also a risk that their high-stress state could still be applicable when she meets Cassie.”

Cassie added, “Um, yeah. Basically, CITD can make it easier to get angry. And I guess that can worsen if you, like she appeared to be, are particularly aggravated by too many twitches. Which both comes from and feeds into high stress.”

“A most interesting feedback loop,” Venus noted. “I can see why it would be stressful. Cassie, this floret moves just like you?”

“Like a mirror… a little scary to actually see for the first time ever.”

“It’s a big deal,” Monumentum commented. “It’s no surprise you’d be conflicted or stressed.”

“Agreed,” said Marie. “You’ve been through a lot in such a short time. I could likely not handle it at such an early point.”

“I mean… I’m totally not handling it,” admitted Cassie. “I have Mistress for a reason.”

Ascension wove faer fingers together, musing on the issue. “If I may suggest first, I think it’s a better idea for you to meet than not. Admittedly, it’s too rare a phenomenon for chances to be taken, given that yesterday there was nobody else onboard with CITD.”

The other Affini, aside from Darla, nodded in agreement.

“I do think so too,” added Venus. “The art of life is difficult to paint, and requires quite a lot of leaps of faith.”

“Then I think I agree too,” concluded Darla. “Cassie, any objections?”

Cassie sat in thought for a moment. “Worst comes to pass, I guess I wait for my implant and get some memories removed… though that would fucking suck. Hopefully not that far then. Um… yeah, I think Miss Venus is right. I gotta jump.”

Darla sent the owner of the new floret a message; said Affini quickly responded that yes, she could take a call. Cassie was sent to the playroom with the other florets, just in case something sensitive came up, and Darla made a video call to the Affini: Aethusa Swordstaff, Sixth Bloom (she/her).

The meeting went by quickly; Aethusa expressed surprise, relief and gratitude to have help. She had been trying to figure out the circumstances of her floret’s unusually high distress, and agreed that there was a chance having Penelope Swordstaff, First Floret (she/her) meet Cassie would help.

“...And you got my summary of Cassie’s neurodivergence, right? The Council suggested we try and match the two since it would have a large effect on psychology,” Darla finished.

“Yes, I did, and Penelope has a lot of the same things. Certainly autism, ADHD, and anxiety; other more detailed and nuanced things I’m still looking for, with both of them being trans girls as well. Unpacking her baggage isn’t going to be a short task, sadly, though that’s not so uncommon for feralists. Honestly what’s getting me is that she’s not even really reacting in a feralism way to the things I talk to her about; usually they’d be horrified when I, say, explained the haustoric implant or xenodrugs, but no, she just keeps the same infuriated posture. I hope she’s not going to hurt herself, really. And she’s definitely not ready to confront the idea she could have neurodivergence. She’s masking extremely deeply, hurting herself doing it. She’s… I can smell how afraid she is. It makes me feel sick to my core; it’s awful. I have no idea what she must have seen.”

“I’ll make sure to keep it on the down-low, thank you.” Darla considered her thoughts for a few moments. “For sometime later, Cassie has had similar issues, which is why CITD is such a deep and complex consideration for her. I know for certain she’d want to help explain to Penelope what her experiences were.”

Aethusa nodded. “Of course.”

“I suppose the only thing left to discuss is… if anyone has any ideas for how Cassie’s friends could learn what exactly CITD is like for her?”

A few head-shakes. Nobody had anything.

“...Okay. It’s alright, we can keep working on it. Thank you, Aethusa. I’ll see you later.”

Cassie was sitting with Darla, sharing a bench at a beautiful, wood-carved octagonal table under a heavily ornate, octagonal gazebo, in the rough center of yet another enormous, lush park. It served as a good meeting space, relatively private due to only one side being exposed, the rest covered in thick greenery.

The two were closely snuggled up next to one another, smelling the wonderful fresh breeze. Cassie couldn’t help but think that every moment in a world made by the Affini Compact felt like an incredible fantasy land. They were just so, so good at it.

Cassie was struck from her distraction of observing the way the leaves on the nearby bushes flowed in the wind.

Penelope and Aethusa were entering.

Darla waved. “Aethusa — thank you for coming, good to meet you.”

Aethusa nodded. “A pleasure, of course. Penelope, this is Darla Decazyx, First Bloom, she/her, and her floret, Cassie Decazyx, First Floret, she/her.”

Penelope didn’t respond. She was in a position that seemed to indicate she wasn’t sure whether to keep away from her owner or to stay behind her enough to keep away from everything else around her. 

“And for Darla and Cassie, I of course am Aethusa Swordstaff, Sixth Bloom, she/her, and this is Penelope Swordstaff, First Floret, she/her as well.”

Penelope was staring at Cassie, who wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be staring back or not. Cassie felt like she was being overexposed… like Penelope was projecting a nature of empty, terse dismissal and frustration at her.

“Nice to meet you two,” Cassie responded, giving a small wave, figuring it would probably be polite given what little she knew so far about how floret manners were supposed to work.

“Penelope, try to talk a little to Cassie, okay?” Aethusa directed the instruction at her floret. “It’s important to get enough socialization for your mental health. It’s okay if it takes you a while to open up, but I promise you’ll find her relatable given what I know.” Aethusa sat down, and began to talk to Darla in Affini, asking for insight to use for Penelope based on what Darla had learned from Cassie.

Penelope walked up to the table and stopped. Cassie glanced up to her, and over to the two Affini, and back, a little unsure of how to initiate. She couldn’t help but notice that Penelope was very rigidly not sitting down. It reminded Cassie… She knew that she would often act like that when she was younger, whenever someone with authority over her was making her do something really stupid.

…So she figured that might be what Penelope thought.

Cassie could see tension in Penelope’s face. Was that what she looked like in the past, in similar situations of her own? She uncomfortably twitched her back and shoulders, then her neck. Her hands were also moving, but those were just fidgeting with her dress.

I don’t fucking know what to do, was all Cassie could think. The two of them were just awkwardly waiting there for something to happen, as their owners talked about whatever it was they were saying.

Cassie was just barely able to notice Penelope twitching her own wrists a couple of times. It was a little obvious that she was trying to dampen it; to hide it. It gave Cassie a small uncomfortable feeling, reminding her of how irritating it was to try and stop the twitches.

“...So, um.” Cassie began. “Uh, you just became a floret right? I was told there was a ship capture…”

Penelope let out a tiny noise, just barely audible in her throat… a sort of snarl. “...Yeah.” She turned to the side a little bit, away from the two Affini and the one Cassie, all her muscles tensed up, shifting as if she was a machine long rusted still.

Tough , Cassie worried. She’s not fucking happy at all. “Um, I only just got here, uh, last week. So it’s still a lot.”

Penelope didn’t give words. But there was a soft grunt. If it were any more breezy Cassie wouldn’t have heard. Penelope’s hands twitched again.

“So, um, whaddya think of, um, the ship? Pretty, uh, weird, right?”

Penelope quickly glared at Cassie. “You know? This whole thing is fucking stupid. ”

“Uh—”

Penelope wasn’t speaking loudly, but her voice was tightly wound. “Not the ship, if you’re going to say that, I don’t give a fucking shit about it, I’m talking about this meeting. It’s stupid as hell, there’s no reason for me to be here or be anywhere. I don’t want to be here, and you shouldn’t either. Even if the fucking weeds take me as a prize it’s a waste of both of our lives to be brought to some ornate fucking fantasy park just to be forced to pretend to make friends with each other.”

“Geez…” Cassie replied, in a soft grunt. She twitched her neck. Something about Penelope’s face told Cassie she was definitely noticing… but Penelope wasn’t saying anything.

Penelope waited a few moments before speaking. “Well?”

“Um… what?”

“I mean, what is it you’re going to make me do. Do you even want anything from me?”

A thought crossed Cassie’s mind, and she couldn’t stop herself from asking it. “Do you even like anything?”

“NO.” It was almost a snarl. Penelope’s arms were visibly tensed up.

“So… what, you hate everything.”

“Hrng.” That one probably was a snarl, albeit a quiet one.

…It… it really was a little like Cassie was looking into a reflection. Penelope only had blind revulsion to show for everything around her… but it seemed to be almost entirely undirected. The Affini, the park, Cassie, everything got the same blanket treatment from Penelope. The last time Cassie had felt like that… was only a couple of months ago. Just undirected rage, whenever everything sucked so hard she wanted to tear the universe apart. She had felt it even more before her transition but it’s not like it went away entirely. It made her feel uneasy to see someone else behaving the way she did at her worst. Especially since someone seeing Cassie like that had only ever resulted in…

Cassie didn’t want to think about it.

“Did, um, your owner tell you why you were brought here?” asked Cassie.

“...She said it was because I need to make friends. Not that it matters. Everyone is fucking awful. The universe is full of dipshits. She’s probably going to try and make this about the fuckin’ neurodivergence stuff she won’t stop talking about. I hate hearing her bring it up all the time for no damn reason; just admit you want excuses for keeping me captive already.” Penelope spun around and rapidly sat down, facing away from everyone else, her arms tightly crossed, her whole body still tense.

This is making me feel a little sick , Cassie admitted to herself. This is kind of a lot… I don’t feel prepared for it. And given that reaction I probably can’t just say, ‘you have CITD’ or anything. If she’s seen what I have, she’ll… she’d probably interpret it as a threat and attack me, which, honestly is kind of fair given where that shit leads. Let alone trying to actually fucking connect with her on it… geez, I guess she was on a feral ship.

Cassie decided to try a new route. “I wasn’t on a rebel ship or anything, I just volunteered. My life sucked so I figured this would suck less.”

Penelope didn’t respond.

“Why were you on a fe- a rebel ship?”

“You’ll never find out. And it doesn’t matter.”

“I mean, like. If you were there, do you hate the Compact? Or the Affini?”

“It’s fucking stupid. The only solace I have in this hell is that nobody has said the word… the one that starts with K. Or a C, if I’m fucking stupid. I don’t remember how to pronounce it. The one that means harmony or something, I hate that fucking word. It’s dumb as hell. Whenever I hear it I wanna start slicing everyone’s limbs off.”

“Uh… yeah, fair. That word does suck ass actually.”

“I hate all the shit about how I’m somehow expected to be nice or whatever. It’s fucking stupid. It’s everyone else’s problem that they’re weak, all I can fucking think about is destroying everything. I’m not like any of these freaks.”

“Is there any world that wouldn’t be hell?”

“No. Everyone’s always trying to kill me; if not with guns for being trans if I don’t hide it it’s with inane bullshit from the weeds.”

Penelope was obviously twitching again… and clearly trying to hide it. I’d better not say anything to her about it. “But why even bother getting on a ship then?”

“I don’t owe — I don’t know, it’s the only way I can… fucking… have something to kill someone with if I need to. Listen, I don’t care about this. I’m waiting to go back to the fucking prison.”

Cassie sighed, looking at her Mistress. Darla rubbed her shoulder in encouragement, nodding, before going back to the conversation.

“You just want to destroy the whole universe.”

“With my bare fucking claws.”

“I kinda assumed you’d be complaining about the Affini being unethical, or how they invaded the Accord.”

“I don’t fucking care about that moral shit. It’s all fake. And I hope they made everyone in the government into whatever they’ll hopefully fail to make me into. It’s the only thing better than killing them — so that they can suffer forever in psychological agony. Every-fucking-one in the universe who isn’t me should.”

“And the neurodivergence stuff you mentioned?”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about that. Nobody ever says stuff like that unless they want an excuse to kill someone else. You’re a moron if you can’t see it.”

Cassie gave a frustrated exhale through her nose. Penelope wasn’t even thinking about what she thought was the supposed issue; she was burning so hot she refused to question the route she had chosen.

Cassie, again, found it distressingly familiar.

Aethusa interjected. “Penelope, darling. I know you’re under a lot right now, but Cassie really doesn’t need this. She’s had her own long life full of bad treatment, and she wants to make her life better.”

Penelope swung around, snarling as she spoke to her owner. “I don’t need this shit, from you or from this other floret! It doesn’t MATTER! None of this matters! And it’s bad enough that I’m gonna be fuckin manipulated or whatever by being exposed to some already-fucked-up pet of yours but you should be fucking ashamed of how you keep trying to imply I’ve got neurodivergence stuff. I don’t have anything. You want a fucking reason to hate me? Hate me because you’re too fucking weak to gather any strength to be clear about what you fucking think. You freak plants don’t even get angry or anything, it’s pathetic. At least this fucking floret thinks I’m an asshole like she should. Everyone knows neurodivergence doesn’t even exist, it isn’t real. A bunch of horrible monsters made the whole thing up to hurt people and I’m sick of their shit. I’ve seen what people think of when they say those kinds of words, I’ve seen those fake videos in school about their propaganda; and almost as bad is how none of the other fucking idiots ever actually bothered to question it. They all just looked at the screen, as if they weren’t seeing… that.”

Aethusa seemed a little more distraught. She turned to Cassie. “Is this… natural behavior? For what you have? Nothing a terran would condition someone for?”

“It’s natural,” replied Cassie, in a sort of grumble. Now Cassie was the one looking away from it all.

It was obvious to Cassie what Penelope was actually saying. The stuff about being a floret wasn’t an actual claim, it was an attempt at lashing out in fury. The neurodivergence stuff was a defense mechanism; Cassie had long refused to allow herself to be thought of as neurodivergent to prevent herself from being associated with any group she knew well was deeply reviled and framed as lesser, to the point of deserving death. That much Penelope was right about, and Cassie knew it sadly well; a lot of sophonts didn’t seem to really notice when a hate group was serious about just how much they hated someone. It pissed Cassie off as well, though problems like that were long gone thanks to the Affini Compact.

Aethusa stood up. Both Affini had disappointed looks on their faces. “Okay, you’ve made it clear you don’t want to be here,” she told Penelope. “If you don’t want to be stuck with Cassie, then we’re going back home.”

Penelope didn’t say anything, though her body got tense again, and she twisted her back in a twitch as she stood up, making a frustrated growl until it was over. She followed Aethusa out… not very closely.

Cassie let out a long, dry breath. “Ugh… didn’t go well.”

“You did your best, and an incredible job, darling,” Darla replied, pulling Cassie close and hugging her. “I’m very sorry about all that; it might have been a little too much to put on a floret.”

“She’s… burning.”

“...Hm?”

“The way… the way I do, she’s burning. White hot fire. She can’t think, she’s stuck. Everything is a threat to her, she wants to claw the whole ship apart, and then the universe with it. That stuff she was saying didn’t actually have any meaning; it was all fire. She likely doesn’t believe any of it — and I know that because I would say some of that.”

“That’s some good insight to know, thank you. I’ll be sure to include it in what I tell Aethusa.”

“I think the whole CITD connection thing can just wait. Telling her something like that? Penelope would just destroy herself if you said that to her. I mean, like… she does have an owner, but. That might not be enough to help her.”

Darla kept hugging Cassie tight, rubbing her back. “You look like you feel lonely because of all this.”

“...Yeah.”

Cassie and her friends were at Miss Calendula’s mansion, around a short table, each on the lap of their owner.

The group was having a doll-themed tea party, in the late afternoon, in a room with a panoramic view and lots of window space. Cassie didn’t drink tea; it tasted weird to her, so she instead had a separate supply of apple juice.

The couple of times prior that Cassie had done this, it had been a lot of fun — seeing everyone get puppetted around, then having it done to herself, every floret generally treated like delicate dolls. Compared to an Affini that was probably largely an accurate assessment — physically and psychologically.

This time, however, Cassie was pretty far out of it. And it didn’t surprise her to learn that everyone else could tell.

“Um, Cassie?” Odette asked in a half-sleepy voice, shifting in the weave of her owner Ascension's vines. “You don’t look so good.”

“I think Odette means to imply you look very worried, Cassie,” added Ascension. “And Odette, it’s polite to ask Miss Decazyx about her floret unless you’ve already been told it’s better to talk to Cassie directly.”

“Oh, uh… oops, sorry. Um Miss Deca… Decazyx, is Cassie okay?”

“It’s okay to address Cassie directly,” Darla replied. “And Cassie, would you like to explain the issue? I can if you would rather not.” Darla unwrapped the vines encasing Cassie.

“Uh… I mean, yeah, I can talk about it.”

Cassie spent a few moments shifting to a more comfortable position, and craned her neck in a few directions to work out a twitch.

“Gugh… um, so. We already found another floret with CITD, named Penelope, but. Um, we met up and it went kinda badly. Though it was at least not for the reason I was worried it would go badly. Surprisingly, I actually was somehow not distressed by seeing her twitch, which was sort of a surprise. But um. What did kind of frighten me is, um. Kind of a much more complicated thing. Penelope was just really angry the whole time. Um… in a way that I’ve experienced a lot before. A way that I have felt a lot but nobody else seems to at all, this kind of rage that just burns white hot and goes towards everything that inconveniences you.

“It was… um, a little frightening… to see someone so much like me, only who was doing as badly as I had ever been, too. And, in the past, usually the response to my own anger was punishment for just… just for feeling feelings as they naturally come at all, insulting me for daring to get angry about anything at all. When that happened to me I’d just… get hotter and hotter for the horrible ignorance I was being shown about my feelings, and any dipshit who was like that would only act even worse about it.”

Cassie twitched her eyes, then wrists, feeling uncomfortable. She tried to think of something.

“What’s… the angriest each of you has ever been?”

After first looking to her owner, Izzy went first. “In the physics program at my college, I had taken an elective and was shocked to find out that the professor in that one class was a huge asshole and was berating everyone; I had never experienced something like that before. I went to my advisor to complain and was able to get transferred, but I learned from a classmate that he was only in the program because he was friends with the dean, and that everyone hated him. He wasn’t fired until a few years after that, and only because he kept doing the same stuff. It made me so angry I grabbed one of my pencils and broke it after I left the class, and I wanted him to get fired.”

Starshine’s response was: “I don’t have very good memories from before getting domesticated — which is probably good considering what was happening. But there was one time a few weeks after, before we moved to a ship, since the first two months we were spending on a planet for one of the last major planetary domestication campaigns. Mistress and I were doing a presentation in public about floret cuts and how we were structuring them since we often produce them together. It’s really important to me because of the sorts of things that end up helping me to understand myself, but there’s a few things I can’t really watch normally anymore so I tend to need floret versions. Anyways, at the presentation someone not only interrupted but started yelling about how the floret cuts were ‘censoring terran military strength’, and considering how before Mistress helped me stop masking I was in the navy and stuck in that kind of mindset I really didn’t like hearing it again. As another Affini grabbed them and walked them to the domestication center I was hoping they’d get a lot of class-L because I was so angry.”

Then Odette: “Before the Compact got to my planet I was working for a defense contractor, and they had switched all the jobs to weapons due to the war, which I hated and didn’t want to do; I was there because it was the only way I could work with the kinds of technology I liked, and by that point I was completely stuck because it would be a huge amount of effort to try and find a different job, let alone one not doing military contracts. So I was stuck doing that to survive. The most insulting part, though, was when the CEO, who by the way was super horrible until they got their brain pumped full of whatever plant stuff and got their whole mind reset, put out an invite for the team I was on, which had been forced without a choice to switch to military development, to some kind of corporate award ceremony. It was just so insulting, and I never went. From then, until even a bit after domestication, I would sometimes get distracted by the thought of that incident and wish they got harsher treatment.”

Finally, Monica: “My worst one is something I keep private, only me and Mistress know about it. But the second one was when in school a teacher was making the whole class do weird spiritual exercises I didn’t agree to; I just stood there angrily the whole time, frustrated that everyone else was actually doing as they’re told. Also the whole thing was because of some scam the teacher had fallen for, don’t ask. I wanted to yell at her in front of everyone for being so inconsiderate.”

Cassie stared at them each for a few moments. “To me… all of those just feel empty. It’s like you hardly even reacted to any of those fucked-up things. It feels like none of you were any more than slightly miffed. My reaction to all of those would be to have a power fantasy about tearing all their bowels out.”

“W— wait, really?” asked Izzy. Isn’t that… extreme?

“I wouldn’t do it in real life , but my natural reaction is usually to fantasize about violence or murder, yes. Hasn’t happened in the Compact, though; they kinda made it less of an issue simply by getting rid of the horrible realities around me.”

“That is, admittedly, something to still look into for the sake of safety,” mentioned Darla. “We obviously aren’t going to let you or any floret keep thinking that way forever; though for you it’s more nuanced because your specific sort of neurodivergence makes that type of reaction a very deep part of you, necessitating very careful and slow treatment; it’s something we’ll be working on gradually. It will probably be best to at least start by maintaining a distinct psychological division between fantasy and reality to ensure you won’t hurt anyone, not that I’m worried you would, and to allow you your natural anger without letting it occur in ways that hurt you or hurt others. But you are right, most of the work is done by making things better overall in the first place.”

Cassie nodded, tensing her neck for a moment. “That’s fair. Um… I do get a little nervous about… being changed, though I trust you to not make changes that won’t make me, me. And it wouldn’t really feel like me without all my natural emotions, even if, admittedly, at their hottest they aren’t so healthy. Obviously when I’m angry enough to start insulting myself in my head that’s too far.” She thought for a few moments. “The angriest I’ve ever felt… I think is probably the main reason why I’m no-contact with my family. When my shitty abusive mom was trying to stop me from starting HRT. I never forgave her for that disgusting move, and ever since I’ve thought about her far more often in the context of maiming her for how much she hurt me than in any other way. See, to me, being in that type of situation makes it feel pretty obvious what an immense threat that type of display is from someone with power over me — the kind of thing that can only be responded to with all possible defense. I view my own reactions via anger as a necessary defense mechanism: to tell me when I’m being fucked with and to help me get back at the threat. And I view it as a threat on my life because I would not have been able to survive without it, and there are many situations where I’ve had reason to interpret a given sophont or hate group was thinking of worse ideas than the public seemed to understand. I’ve seen their opinions; they aren’t pretty. There’s a lot of sophonts out there who want anyone like me dead.

“...So, uh. Anyone able to… um, relate to that?”

The other florets glanced at one another, but nobody was saying anything.

“Um,” began Odette. “I get why you’d feel that way on a logical level but I don’t think I really think that way. The experience of that is pretty foreign.”

None of them truly understand, just know what I’m talking about , Cassie thought to herself. How can I describe to them what it’s like?

Cassie continued, “Well, um. I could also explain how twitches work; they’re kind of like the opposite of stimming: if you do them you feel almost nothing and if you don’t you get a psychological punishment in the form of abstract psychological pain. Not complying causes not a real pain but an internal, mental one. And I also can’t try normal full class-M, because even if it’s appealing for ADHD and autism reasons, it would put me into psychological agony to be unable to move properly for an extended period.”

Cassie asked again, and everyone got what she was going for, but nobody actually really understood.

She felt frustrated and lost, unable to find a way to properly convey her experiences to her friends. She turned to her owner. “Um. Can you please bring me to the quiet room?” she asked softly.

Darla quickly entangled Cassie in her vines, standing up. “We’ll be taking a private moment, excuse us.”

The Calendula mansion had a variety of quiet rooms placed around it; Marie and Monica had designed the building together, and Monica felt that she might need easy access to a less stressful space if they ever held parties there, as one of the main reasons Monica had asked her owner for a mansion was so it could serve as a grandiose backdrop for events of various sorts.

Cassie was brought into the nearest one, stashed with a variety of toys and soft furniture. “Thank you,” she told her owner, “I wanted to be able to think but I didn’t want to just make everyone else be silent.”

“No problem at all, darling.”

Cassie felt as though she was having a rather messy second week of florethood. She couldn’t show her friends the things she was truly feeling, and Penelope, who experienced the universe the way Cassie did, wanted nothing to do with anyone.

“So like,” Cassie began, “you had that whole council meeting thing right?”

“Yes.”

“And they told you stuff you could do?”

“To an extent; they suggested I plan it myself, but they instructed me to pursue helping you inform your friends of what things are like for you, as well as helping you find just one or two new friends who had CITD as well, plus as many other neurodivergencies you have as possible to ensure a strong overlap of experience — which Penelope does have.”

“Okay…” Cassie tried to get her thoughts in order. My friends need to know what it’s really like for me, and Penelope… I don’t know. I guess I just want to be able to talk to her about what each of us feels, in terms of basically everything we are alike in.

She needed a reference point; some type of story she could use as a jumping-off point to demonstrate herself from.

But she had never heard of anything that depicted CITD positively. It was hate crimes or nothing.

…Wait. There’s more I can look for. Like how old stories about being trans were extremely metaphorical, to hide what to someone transgender would be obvious or to conform to societal norms while still making a point. Cassie couldn’t think of any character, depicted in good faith, who literally had CITD. But was there anyone who… existed in the right direction?

She could think of one.

Cassie lacked direct control over her body. And when angered, she burned with white-hot rage every time.

It wasn’t really the most direct of a comparison, but she had, about a year ago, completed the entire campaign for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon , a mech combat game. And she was reminded of Ayre. Ayre didn’t exactly have any substantial depiction or even hints of CITD, and probably wasn’t supposed to even slightly be a metaphor for such a thing, but that wasn’t the point. A character like her could serve as a useful reflection of Cassie.

In the game, Ayre was effectively a ghost, though she piloted machines at a couple times in the story, as long as they were powered by the same pseudo-magical substance she existed as a part of. Likely not quite the same experience as having a body to control; not direct. So at least a comparative perspective to view Cassie’s own twitches through.

But more relevantly was how Ayre seemed to display anger. Unlike how Cassie herself would have reacted, Ayre only got enraged once during the entire game, though she burned with a familiarity to Cassie. Something that felt hot enough to be real to her.

Ayre displayed through the game a variety of other emotions, but tended to be primarily reserved and subtle in her delivery. Usually her stress reaction was distraught, which came up during a couple of bossfights when she reacted to uses of the magical substance, which she and many other similar “ghosts” existed within, to power machines.

Other characters in the story also got angry plenty of times, but none the way Cassie found familiar. Other characters’ angered reactions to a battle with the player varied from anger with an overlay of hope for victory, or fueled from an inane corporate god complex, or out of envy. Many other reactions Cassie was unsure were even anger at all, though she figured she might not be able to tell if someone’s reaction was so much weaker than her own.

Ayre, however, did not react like any of the other characters did, not even slightly. No distractions, no hubris, and certainly no weak response. She got angry only once, at the final mission of the game’s bad ending, in which she attempts to fight the player in a powerful experimental mech to prevent them from causing an apocalyptic interstellar explosion. Enraged by abandonment and betrayal, she gave the player character, Raven, only a single warning to back off from a fight to the death. In the face of a Rubicon which would be destroyed all over again, Ayre had at that moment burned white-hot, single-minded in her only objective, to stop Raven no matter the cost.

…Cassie wasn’t going to just copy the video game’s story, but she could use that. She could make that theming her own and show what life felt like to her.

Obviously, this was the Compact. Cassie wasn’t going to kill anyone just to make a point to Penelope about what they shared. It would have been horrible for her mental health to do such a thing, as well. Even a kill in full-dive VR might be too intense for her owner to accept, and she couldn’t deny that something so intense would likely still fuck her up anyways. She could certainly admit her owner was right about the need to prevent Cassie from actually desiring homicide. It would be far better to direct any such rage in the direction of changing things, constructively, now that the Affini were here and actually had the ability to follow through with meaningful change. If anything, pursuing such a thing as a metaphor could both help her move towards a better outlet as well as showing everyone else what she felt.

…So I have to think of an adaptation , she thought to herself, her thought processes reaching their natural conclusion. To show both Penelope and my friends exactly what I feel like… though I also want to still include the stuff about twitches, too. So what would feel like I feel, and look the way Ayre does to me? What sort of thing… acts like I do? Is there anything out there, from robots to mythical creatures, that I could use to demonstrate it in a way that can be understood implicitly? Something with directed anger and limited control.

“...Can I please have my tablet, Mistress?” she asked Darla. “I want to take some notes down…”

It was one day later, and the world came into form around Cassie over a few moments, as she finished loading into full-dive VR. She didn’t have an implant yet, but it turned out that the Affini hypnotic elements of VR headsets could manage the rest, along with an active brain scanner in each one. Hence, Cassie had decided to use VR for her plan.

The fictional universe faded in around her, and then so did Cassie’s friends, Penelope, and everyone’s owners. The florets each were dressed in various armored fantasy outfits, and the Affini were each “ghosts” for the sake of the story, since they’d normally be unreasonably overpowered, now showing up white and low-opacity, able to fly everywhere and no-clip through the virtual world. Spectator mode but visible to players, basically, though the technological setup was pretty different from any actual video game. It was more something Cassie, having created it last night, designed to feel like a movie, albeit one they could actively participate in.

Penelope spoke first, in a dead tone. “This whole situation is stupid, it’s childish. I don’t need to LARP some dumbass situation just to convince me I should be a brainwashed plant pet. I can’t be manipulated like my dumb crewmates probably already were.”

“It’s like that intentionally,” Cassie shot back, slightly growling. She turned to everyone else. “Okay, if it’s working correctly everyone with clothes on should be in their preferred medieval fantasy combat outfits, and if anyone wants to use this stuff more you can print your outfits on your compilers. Mistress and I designed these to everyone’s known aesthetic preferences.”

“I do look pretty cool,” agreed Izzy.

Monica added, “I look badass! Reminds me of a few turn-ons, really.”

Penelope seemed to be inspecting her armor, slowly moving her limbs around to see her clad form shift around. “At least the armor is good,” she admitted. “Seems like the simulation is working, however this stuff operates. It’s heavy, though I feel stronger.” She twitched her wrists a few times before settling down again.

“Yep, it’s supposed to be like that, to make pretend action fighting more doable,” explained Cassie. In a serious tone, she continued: “So, everyone is here to attend a simulation I made, with my Mistress’s help. For the sake of catharsis, I’ve brought you all into this fantasy simulation. This is being done for me. I’m going to confront my trauma by fighting a fictional villain meant to represent the horrible things I’ve been shown or told in the past that depicted neurodivergence negatively. I’m gonna kick his fucking ass and everyone has to watch, basically. In the hopes it gives me closure or something.”

Cassie glanced to the side — Penelope stayed silent, still looking somewhat outwardly angry… but her body had clearly suddenly lost some amount of tension, her face wasn’t as taut.

Penelope, internally, was surprised by the topic. Somehow the dumb fantasy idea was built in such a way that it felt real to her; Cassie seemed to at least grasp how revenge was supposed to work, unlike everyone else on the ship. Seeing a fight was sure to be better than whatever plant stuff she would have been made to do anyways. A violent victory over a cruel monster was how it was supposed to go; most of the worst freaks out there wouldn’t be fixed with just talking as far as she was concerned, which was why it had always pissed her off to see people being so weak-willed about some human monster destroying her rights.

“If everyone is ready, then let’s go,” announced Cassie, leading everyone into the adjacent town, approaching the outer castle gates. She assumed a terse walking posture, proceeding single-mindedly towards her objective. As she walked she busied herself with working out an annoying twitch in her neck, which was somewhat difficult in armor.

She approached the closed gates, stationed by a group of guards. “Where is the local lord?” She questioned sternly.

“What business do you have?” one of the guards asked.

“I’m here to demand revenge. Against anyone who says so many horrible things about those like I am.”

“I’ve heard of you!” came a smug reply from another guard, pointing at Cassie, who was again trying to follow the demands of her twitches, in her neck and back. “You bandits and those weird ghosts that follow you around, you’re just downright crazy. I get why you’d have a problem with Lord Valcom but you’re taking things too far to try and kill him!”

“Don’t those ghosts look kind of familiar?” asked another guard. “I swear I’ve seen them on a tapestry somewhere. Are they… made of plants? Like, a… a fae—”

“Hey, come on!” interrupted another guard. “Faeffini aren’t real, they’re probably dryad spirits or something.”

The first guard added, ignoring the others, “You rogues… You’re all just overreacting, you rogue types are always blowing things way out of proportion.” He gestured, and all the guards stationed around the gate grouped up, weapons ready. “This has to stop before you go too far, so you’re all under arrest. Lord Valcom will talk to you after his weekly speech in the castle grounds. I’m sure he’ll have some choice words for you lot, with all the— What are you doing—”

Cassie snarled, lunging for not any guards but rather the iron portcullis: with a single hand, she grabbed it, her feet buckling the cobblestones beneath her, the metal at the sides of the portcullis crumpling and loudly shearing apart, the stones in the wall either coming loose or being crushed under the force. In a single swipe lasting but a second, she wrenched two tons of wrought iron from the doorway, with even the beam she had grabbed entirely buckling under the pressure from her hand, throwing it through the air behind her, where it crushed a small nearby building in a thunderous crash.

“Hey!” shouted a guard, the group readying their weapons at her.

“BACK OFF,” Cassie snarled, slightly crouched with her arms swung out, fingers posed as if they were claws.

One guard still tried to approach, trying to swing his halberd at her, and was swiftly met with a short charge from Cassie, who then kicked him square in the gut, sending him careening into every other guard behind him, knocking the rest over.

Cassie, after trying again to let her neck twitch properly, turned back to the doorway and gestured for everyone to follow her, as she stalked through the forming split in the crowd, backing away from her. Everyone had been stunned silent in surprise at the sound and sight of the door being torn open.

She approached the tall wooden stage at the front, upon which stood Lord Valcom, the constructed representational villain who metaphorically stood for that which currently plagued her.

“What’s going on?” yelled an indignant Valcom as Cassie stomped up the steps, still trying to work her neck, with the other florets, unsure of what to do, waiting at the bottom. “What do you think you’re doing? Interrupting my speech with destruction?”

“I’m here,” she growled, “to kill Lord Valcom, for harming me and those like me, who experience each of the things I do. For those of us with autism, you say we’re burdens on the world who ruin others’ lives and are incapable of nuance. You say that those of us with ADHD are rampant vagrants, made into your idea of a disobedient child, or as lazy, or simply strange and unwanted. You frame those of us with CITD as rampaging, uncontrolled beasts, mindless freaks who can only attack the world. And so many more things, for which we are reviled for being unusual.

“And it all disgusts me. Now after all this time, I know how I truly exist and live, and know full well how revolting and wrong all these things you say about all of us are. For so long I was prevented from learning these parts of myself, for fear of being something wrong. Of fear I had something, anything at all. For all of this and more, you have brought your own sins upon yourself, and I will bring ‘round your ‘fuck around’ to my ‘find out’. You’re going to see what it means to play with fire. ”

The crowd had erupted into jeers, loudly shouting at her. Cassie heard someone say she was wrong and that Valcom was right for casting out and killing off burdens like her, who destroyed families and civilized society. Another loudly yelled that she was overreacting, and was clearly insane to be doing such a thing. Another said she was indeed none more than a foolish beast, unable to properly control her feelings; only a freak like her would be so illogically angry.

Unexpected to her, Cassie’s stress surged, and the twitches she had been trying to work through surged in turn, burning her inside with discomfort and pain. She loudly snarled, then trying to contort her body every which way to get the pain out, growling in frustration.

Once the surge had concluded, Cassie realized the crowd had now switched to laughing at her. Disturbingly, all these monsters thought her twitches and rage were somehow funny. Just the reaction that kept prompting those horrible, horrible videos she had seen in the past. Her eyes narrowed, turning to Valcom, preparing herself for action.

“Ha! You see?” Valcom announced, leading the crowd on. “ This is exactly why I’ve been right all along, why I’ve been purging the world of things like her! She’s not but a beast, and her true nature is here shown today! And with her here, we shall make an example of her to prove it to the world that she can be killed like any beast, too. Guards! Pin her!”

A large number of castle guards swarmed over Cassie, pushing her to the wooden stage floor, as she snarled, trying to lash about.

“You’ll all see that there’s nothing here but a beast!” Valcom announced, reaching for his sword.

Penelope, from the bottom of the stairs, looked on, unsure of if she should be doing something, eyes darting around at the chaos. She couldn’t feel annoyance, with Cassie having so openly declared herself to be fighting the horrible things Penelope too had seen, only to get pinned down. She felt confused, distraught. She slowly climbed the stairs, trying not to make herself obvious, trying to think of if she could do something. She looked back at the other florets, none of them seemed to be making any moves, all looking very worried.

Is this really supposed to be her fantasy? Penelope wondered. What the fuck… What is she doing?

Under the pile of guards, Cassie yelled out in rage, then growled and snarled as she began to change. Her body suddenly grew bigger, her armor and padding all breaking and shredding around her, guards having a harder time keeping her down by the sudden growth.

Revealing her transformation, into a huge wolf.

The audience quickly panicked, the many people in the crowd yelling and screaming, trying to back away from the stage and get out through the torn-away castle gate. “Wolf!” and “Werewolf!” many of them screamed, suddenly terrified by the sight of something they viewed as both unnatural and incredibly dangerous.

“Hold her down!” cried a guard. “Oh god… she’s huge! What do we do?”

“If this is a werewolf… then are those ghosts with them really fae?” another worried, trying to keep himself on top of Cassie.

“Who cares, just stay away from them if they are, and don’t let them drop you in a portal to the wilds! We’ve got a werewolf to—”

Cassie snarled again, using her maw to grab a guard, and toss him off of her body, into another, then doing the same again, and again. When she could stand up once more, the half of the guards that weren’t incapacitated backed away, their weapons out in front of them, looking nervous, unsure of what to do as Cassie rumbled back at them, her head low. Many of the guards that had put two and two together were also looking worriedly at the other vagrants and the oddly plant-made spirits.

“Beast!” shouted Valcom. “Unnatural freak! So you’re a werewolf, is that it? Figures! You’re nothing but a monster from the wild, spawn of Satan. No wonder you’re so quick to sinful rage! You’re just a wild animal!” He ran back to the castle doors, yelling to the guards. “Guards, keep that wolf out of the castle! Kill her!” He pointed to more, “You lot! Follow me, up to the armory!” Valcom and a group of guards ran into the castle, the doors quickly being barred shut, with most of the remaining guards running to block the doors from Cassie, all weapons out. 

Cassie, snarling and growling, lunged at the group of guards, the other florets chasing after her. With her jaws, she latched onto pikes, halberds, and glaives one by one, wrenching them out of guards’ hands and throwing them off the stage, then began to bite guards by the arms or legs in order to fling them at each other, knocking several over with each hit.

With most of the guards cleared, she backed up, then ran full tilt at the castle doors, jumping at them, and with a loud crunch, they were broken out of their holds, buckling inwards, and crashing onto the tile castle floor, newly crushed rubble shaken loose from the doorway, and the floor now covered in shattered cracks.

The guards revealed inside the castle went into a terrified panic, most of them clambering away. Cassie kicked and threw a few more guards out of her path before charging up the stairs, then with Penelope and the other florets lagging behind.

Penelope was feeling more focused and hot, running as fast as she could after the enormous werewolf Cassie had become.

After flights and flights of stairs, Cassie reached the top of the castle, with the other florets behind her, and charged straight through the wooden door, into a large room full of weapons, revealing more guards and the villain. She grabbed another guard with her mouth, throwing him and several more with him to the side of the room, and snarled loudly, stalking up to Lord Valcom.

He drew a sword, swinging it at Cassie, yelling with the exertion each swing. Cassie at first kept out of range, crouched down, waiting for an opening. When he swung too hard, she leaped closer, biting the sword at the base of the blade as he tried to swing it back, holding it in place with her jaws. She bit down, clamping on harder and harder and harder, Valcom unable to wrench it from her grip, and shattered the blade.

Valcom yelled out in shock, stumbling back, and ran into the next room. Cassie bounded after him, and reached the next doorway — but as she did, there was a huge, loud boom. A cannon was fired, hitting the top of the doorway, tons of stones crashing down onto Cassie, buckling parts of the floor beneath her. She was stuck.

Valcom grabbed another sword from the racks, along with a flintlock pistol which he holstered, marching up to Cassie, a horrible self-righteous look on his face, full of himself. Cassie was struggling, trying to move herself out from under the stones, but not finding a way to do so. Valcom held the sword out in front of himself. “Foul beast! You never stood a chance! Now yield as I send you back to hell.”

Penelope was watching from the back of the room, a distraught look on her face, as Cassie was trapped under the rubble — then her anger grew as she saw Valcom approach her. Penelope growled in fury, and turned, charging to the side of the room. Nobody noticed her move but Cassie.

“I’m in the right, for what I’m about to do!” Valcom gloated, sword at the ready. “I was always right, and beasts like you can’t see it for what it truly is. You’re right; you are a pain on society, a rambunctious troublemaker, and a mindless monster at heart. This world needs you excised, and I’m the one to do it! You’re unworthy of life, wasting it with your disgusting burdens. ”

Just as Valcom raised his sword, the whole building shook, sending him stumbling as a large section of the castle roof caved in with a thunderous splintering and grinding storm. He looked up in shock to see what the roof gave way to: an enormous, vibrant red dragon, engulfed in flames, the sky suddenly having changed, lightning flashing in the distance as clouds covered the sky.

“Guards!” Lord Valcom shouted, getting up and running to the back of the second room. “The cannon! Fire at the dragon!”

The dragon simply reached inside with a huge claw, grabbing the cannon and tossing it out through the collapsed roof, and slithered inside, flames going out as it approached Valcom. Lord Valcom drew his gun. “Stay back! Back, vile thing!”

With Valcom distracted, the four remaining florets had approached Cassie, and were quickly pushing rubble off of her, allowing her to get up, the huge wolf then turning to stalk back towards the lord.

Valcom kept backing up, the gun trained on the dragon. “Guards! I need—” He was cut off as the dragon, breathing fire, instantly burned a huge hole through the floor, cutting the guards off from where Valcom was. Valcom fired at the dragon, the lead shot bouncing right off of it.

Valcom, backed into a corner, turned to open a window, climbing out onto the castle roof, backing up further. He could now see that much of it was beginning to burn. Rain was beginning to fall, and the lightning was edging closer already. Cassie followed suit, meeting him outside, and the dragon simply burst back through the roof to get out, enormous form unfolded, the creature growling. The dragon set itself alight once again, its whole body bursting into flame.

“Werewolf, you’re nothing!” Valcom lashed out at Cassie. “There’s nobody like you left, after what I’ve done! I’ve already burned you out of the world, and I’ll finish the job! A beast like you deserves no life! Your blind rage has left you stupid, all alone in the world.”

Cassie spoke again for the first time since she turned. “No,” she snarled, twisting her neck to work a twitch out. “You’re wrong. There’s another just like me, the Great Red Dragon Penelope.”

“Y— you’re insane!” he yelled back, sword in front of him. “That dragon? It’s just some huge monster! You really think that thing could be your companion? It’s more of a beast than you!”

“Hypocrite,” the Great Red Dragon Penelope snarled in return, letting out a deep voice. “You’re a hypocrite for thinking there are any monsters here to fight but yourself. Cassie is right to say who I really am. If she cannot beat you, then we both will. Because we two are of the same kind, designed to destroy the real monsters: like you. ”

Valcom’s eyes widened as the rain truly began. “A were-dragon…” He sidestepped to be higher on the roof, holding the sword defensively, trying to watch for where the flames were slowly eating the roof away. “I can never be beaten by beasts! ” Valcom tried to run to the other side of the roof, in order to jump to the moat — but Penelope, far more quickly, clambered across the roof, and then scorched the other side, incinerating much of it, even burning through the top-level floor. There was nowhere for Valcom to jump to.

As she stalked across the roof, engulfed in her own fire both fueled by the castle and the abilities of her own body, she twisted her neck around, dealing with a twitch. “Much easier than normal,” she commented. “This body is something. I needed a long neck like this the whole time.”

As thunder roared across the sky and rain pelted the roof, he was gradually backed against the edge of the building above the courtyard, unable to get to the moat or back into the building without breaking bones and being burned alive. He looked down, seeing guards spilling out of the building across the castle grounds, onlookers shouting from farther away. Valcom looked to the wooden stage, considering using it to possibly at least break his fall.

He was interrupted. Penelope flew, up over the top of the building, then hovering above the courtyard as she sent fire down onto the stage, setting the thing ablaze, flames now reaching up the sides of the building, beginning to char away at the many available parts that weren’t made of stone. She set herself back down opposite to Cassie, preventing Valcom from exploring the roof any further, danger closing in on him. The town was now doused in heavy rain and surrounded by flashes of lightning, such heavy thunder causing the building to shake.

He backed away from the edge, where incredibly hot flames were creeping up the building, feeling harsh against his face. He turned to Cassie, getting haughty again. “You plan to kill me, do you?” He yelled as they both approached, each growling. “I’m not worried about death as you should be!” he gloated. “My preaching the Lord’s will has surely earned me a spot in heaven, or any afterlife should I need it! I have no reason to fear!”

“Death,” declared Cassie, “is too good for you. Instead, we will give you worse. Your very being will be unraveled!”

In the reflection of his sword, Valcom noticed a bright glint against the flames. He kept the sword between him and the two florets, looking behind him.

Two of the ghosts, made from plants, that followed the group were floating between Valcom and the flames. They each grabbed at the air, then backed apart, opening up a round portal with a gleaming edge, stretching it wide, right behind where Valcom stood. Through the portal there could be seen an otherworldly forest, one that played tricks on the eyes.

“Wha… what?” Valcom yelled back at Cassie through the storm. “What is this?”

“A portal to the fey wilds,” Cassie declared.

“You wouldn’t! Anyone who goes in there to that forest maze is made unrecognizable, hardly ever making it out, let alone unchanged!” He glanced back behind him. “Wait… no! Those ghosts you have with you— Those are faeffini! You’ve been bringing faeffini around with you of all the wretched things? Do you understand what monsters you bring with you? The very biggest danger of the fey wilds is corrupting the very earth thanks to you! They could be turning the city into an overgrown, impassible maze as we speak!”

Lord Valcom approached Cassie, swinging his sword, trying to push her back. Before Cassie could make a move, she was struck immobile again; her twitches had suddenly surged once more, making her fall onto the roof, trying to wrestle herself back out of it.

Valcom startled for a moment, then ran at her, raising his sword. “Hrraugh!” He yelled, about to bring it down.

Penelope rushed in, her head no longer ablaze, to replace Cassie, clamping down on Valcom in her huge jaws, pulling him back and off the ground. He yelled again, and fumbled for his sword before getting a grip on it, and pulled it back, trying to figure out an angle to swing at. He could at least breathe with the dragon’s head not lit, but only barely, surrounded by so much immense heat from the rest of her body.

Cassie had already recovered and was back in, running up to a mostly restrained Valcom, biting down on the new sword, and pulling his arm away from Penelope, holding on tight as he tried to pull the sword back. Cassie snarled, biting harder and harder, shattering this sword as well.

“No!” yelled Valcom. He reached for his belt, fumbling with it to try and grab his knife or another pistol, only to have Cassie bite at it too, tearing it out from his armor, and throwing it off the roof. Penelope bit down harder, causing Valcom to yell in pain as she took off into the air, hovering above the flames… and the fae portal.

“Rrrgh!” Valcom roared, trying to wrestle free from the dragon. “Coward! You’re cowards! Cowards for not even trying to kill me! What are you, weak? Can you do nothing at all the right way? Letting the most inhuman, dangerous creatures in all the fey wilds do your dirty work for you? Not even understanding what horrible ungodly things you’re playing with — you’re both nothing! You can do nothing!”

“All that matters ,” Penelope snarled in fury, her grand voice shaking Valcom’s whole body, “Is that you cannot do anything more! Instead of killing you, it will be far more satisfying to let the faeffini have their way, to see you live so that you can suffer change after change until your very soul shatters. So thoroughly replaced that what you become will not share a single thought with you. So changed that your only idea of heaven is the fey wilds, trapped there and made inhuman for eternity, not even wanting to leave or go back to how you are now. Until nought is left of you but whatever be the desires of the first faeffini to find you.”

“Rgh… no, no! Let me down! Foul beast, you’ll go to hell for this! Willingly dropping me into their lair— You can’t do this to me!” Valcom tried to pull himself from the jaws of the Great Red Dragon Penelope, struggling to get grip through his metal gloves in the slippery environment from the rain. “S— sinners! Rgh… you don’t even understand what you’re doing! The horrid faeffini are never satisfied, they always want more, never taking reason for an answer! Don’t let them have me, fight me yourself!”

“Obviously,” she continued, growling, “I do want to kill you. But I know what will truly satisfy me in the end: that you fear your own doom as you are erased down to the heart. And unlike you, only Cassie and I have the strength to truly do this to someone. Because the two of us are better than you, and all those like you, at every single thing. Most of all, in our fury!

“You are weak, Valcom. Only using your petty little excuse for anger to harm others. We use our rage, that burns true, our real anger, to fix the disgusting little problems you cause. Your fire is nothing compared to what burns in us; you could not even hope to comprehend it. We burn white-hot, outshining the sun.”

Valcom still couldn't wrestle free, stuck in Penelope’s jaws. He could feel the hot burning light of the flames all around him, and from above he was pelted by cold rain, and was losing options to keep himself from being dropped into the portal.

Penelope continued. “And because your pathetic excuse for rage is so weak compared to ours , it should be a fitting punishment for you to be left incapable of ever even feeling that fury again, left powerless to the fey wilds, taken by the faeffini and made part of their world, regardless of your thoughts on the matter. Not that you’ll miss it. As far as I see it, you’ve never been angry in your life.”

Valcom was panicking, and tried to wrestle against Penelope’s snout, trying to grab at her to pull himself onto her. Penelope opened her jaws wide, the enormous daggers of teeth pulled out of the holes she had bitten into his outer armor. Valcom could grab no handhold, and slipped out, screaming as he fell, crossing through the portal. As he did, the whole world melted all around Penelope, all the colors of the bright fire and dark thunderstorm fading from view.

Everyone was left in an empty, white void, and Penelope, still as a dragon, set herself down from flight. She looked over to everyone else; Cassie was also still a wolf, and the other florets still had their armor on, though the Affini had their normal bodies once again.

The other four florets were quickly grabbed by their respective owners, doted on, asked if they were doing okay. Each was surprised to see such a scene but overall alright.

Cassie approached the rest of the group, and Penelope stalked behind, extinguishing herself.

“That fantasy,” Cassie began, still as a wolf, “is a reflection of the way I so often fantasize about things. Not all of my fantasies are like that, but very, very many are. Before the Affini Compact came and gave me domestication, I had fantasies like that almost every day. I wanted, desperately, for the ability to do something and stop evil sophonts from continuing their harm. To me… and I think maybe also for Penelope, such fantasies are the most common I, or we have.

“The reactions of Lord Valcom, and every other fictional character in that setting, show things Penelope and I have so often heard. That we need to control our emotions, and stop ‘overreacting’ to things. Or things we’ve observed, too, such as how even when someone seemed willing to admit what I had reason to hate, they always seemed to stay unreasonably calm no matter the situation, or even the danger, refusing to react properly with the rage that comes naturally to us. As if they were unwilling to react to the horrors around them.

“That white-hot flame of righteous rage is something I felt every single day before I was safe in the vines of the Compact. Even as a floret, I still have some of the same fantasies. Like this one, my more recent fantasies have evolved a little bit to use florethood as an intimidation tactic towards my enemies. Some are still much more violent, however.”

Cassie waited a few moments before continuing to let everyone absorb her speech.

“The werewolf thing, and the weredragon thing, were both tools by which to win and metaphors as well. They both represent, together, the rage and the twitches. After all, it’s a pretty good reflection: uncontrollably turning into something much like how the twitches are so ingrained in how we live, and that something having the strength to defend yourself and others. I got the idea from a post I saw on the internet, about how being a werewolf could be a signifier for the parts of yourself that never yielded to threats and always lashed out to defend you. As if to show that these parts of me were not something to be seen as pathetic but merely how our lives work.

“So… for Izzy, Starshine, Odette, and Monica. I want you all to remember what I showed you all, and what it means about me and Penelope. I want you all to try and engage with me on this basis, and continue to learn about these parts of me, which so few others have, which I have so little ability to attain relation to others by.”

Her friends all nodded.

“Of course, we will,” Starshine agreed.

Odette added, “Yeah, we will. That was… kind of amazing.”

Cassie turned to Penelope, who wasn’t expecting to be suddenly given attention. “Penelope… thank you, for participating. I’m… I’m genuinely honored. Honored that you would willingly assist with it all, even if it’s a seemingly pointless fantasy experience. It made it feel so much more real, with real closure, in ways my fantasies can’t manage.”

Penelope stared for a few moments before speaking. “...What you said… it was so familiar. About what you said you’d gone through. I had never heard any terran… though I don’t know if you count as one if you turn yourself into a werewolf, I had never heard any terran claim that… um, CITD, was a positive thing, ever. And. Um. Only what you had said ever made it feel like you or anyone understood how I feel. I’ve never met anyone that I know of with CITD either. And it’s so othering. All I ever got from others was rejection for ‘having’ something, and insults for not being normal, whether or not they knew I had anything.”

Penelope crouched down, looking smaller, though still enormous. “Ugh… I’m sorry. I was so fucking enraged, and it was just pointless—”

“ NO! ” Cassie shouted back, interrupting Penelope, who was surprised. “You… no, it wasn’t pointless. It’s… important. It’s important because it showed that you felt even more alone than I did. You needed help that otherwise would have taken longer to receive. If that extra time had actually gone by, you would have been in an even worse condition. We can only burn hot for so long, only so much before we are hurt. We each have all this fire but we can’t just use it forever, it will still hurt us. You were asking for help by revealing you couldn’t turn yours off alone.”

Penelope stayed silent for a few moments before speaking. “Th… tha… thank you. For telling me such a thing.” She let out a long, deep sigh. “So… the whole simulation is over?” Cassie nodded. “So, um. Is there… something we do now? I’m unsure if there’s some kind of next step.”

“Eh…” Cassie replied. “I think that’ll all just happen naturally now. Aside from what our owners will help with, I mean.”

Cassie opened her eyes. Not immediately after, but several hours later. The six friends and their six owners were in the park again, and Cassie was lying on a blanket, with Penelope lying on top of her. Everyone else was having a picnic around them.

Cassie had been gently scratching Penelope’s head as she rested against Cassie’s breasts. For the past hour, while everyone else was conversing, the two of them had remained silent.

Cassie stopped scratching.

“...What’s up?” Penelope finally spoke.

Cassie looked up into the beautiful semi-artificial sky. “I… I don’t really know. I was… um. Kind of hoping something would somehow happen to make me… feel… more satisfied.”

Penelope stayed silent for a few moments. “What would make you satisfied?”

Cassie exhaled and inhaled again. “The Affini have solved every problem in the universe, and freed me from them. But I… I dunno. I still feel like something important is… missing.”

The two rested for a few moments, silent. Cassie tried to think.

“I feel,” Cassie continued, “like… the issue is… I still don’t… really feel as good about CITD as I do with, like autism and all my other stuff, which all my friends have helped me with, plus Mistress. I’m still working on that anyways, but I mean, like… like… I don’t know how to feel proud of it. I don’t… I have no clue what I would even want to celebrate about it. Like, all that stuff I did for metaphors about twitches and anger was kind of just guesswork. Other than some random guesses that sounded badass during the fantasy, I have no references for things about CITD to… to feel good about. Like, there are lots of things sophonts have been discovering to celebrate as wonderful about autism and ADHD and a bunch of other things I do or don’t have, but not for CITD. I don’t know anything that someone would celebrate about it. Hell, at a glance, it doesn’t even seem like there is anything.”

Penelope thought for a few moments. “I… have no idea either.” She shifted her weight around and got up off Cassie, to look at her. “Um… how about we work together, and find something? Or lots of things.”

Cassie nodded. “Yeah.”

As the two talked, their owners were watching the two of them.

“Aethusa,” Darla said, “thank you.” She was crying slightly.

Aethusa held Darla’s hand. “Of course. I’m here for you.”

“I’m… glad to see our florets like this. I was worried we couldn’t.”

“Well… you know how it is,” Aethusa mused. “I guess it was going to happen eventually, but better to do it sooner. The hardest cultures make the softest pets: those who know how much better things are.”

“Mm hmm… yeah.” Darla wove her fingers through Aethusa’s, looking back at her floret. “It’s just… well. Look at them. Compared to a couple of days ago… they look so happy.”