Micro fic written for the hdg micro fic monday prompt: A fleeting encounter between an independent and an affini
This is Not How it Goes
"Is everything okay petal?"
The warm light of the ship's simulated sun is eclipsed by the shadow of the affini that stands before you. A shiver runs through you. Though whether it's from the drop in temperature, or the electric jolt of fear that runs through you, remains up for debate.
Your brain queues a canned response, and you are micro seconds away from the "I'm fine, don't worry about it" that would get you forcibly domesticated. Something stops you though. You stare up at the one that addressed you, mind whirring with thought.
"No," you say. Something about this affini makes you trust them, despite all your survival instincts screaming at you to run. "I'm not okay."
There. It's done, whatever happens now is in the vines of a stranger.
"Would you like to talk about it, petal?" The plant sits with a deliberate and gentle care on the bench you're resting on.
"I…" You pause, hesitant to vent to a complete stranger, yet strangely compelled to do so. "I've been thinking about transitioning. Again."
"Aaah. I see." They place their open hand next to you. An offer of comfort? Or a snare, cunningly set? It doesn't really matter either way: in this moment you need the reassurance being offered. Future you can deal with the consequences.
"What is it about transitioning that scares you, little one?" The vines of their hand wrap around yours. Their gentle tactile pressure helping calm and centre you.
"It's just… I don't know who I am any more!" You force the words out, breath hissing between gritted teeth, "And if I don't know who I am, how can I know who I should be!"
"And what do you think you should be?"
"A girl," You shrug. "You know petite, feminine, cute. Those kinds of things"
"That does sound like a girl, yes." The plant giggles. "Do you want that?"
"I… I don't think so."
"Hmmmmmmmmm," Their eyes swirl with light pinks, and lilacs. Colours of contemplation and deep thoughts. "You think this because you can't imagine it happening to you?" The affini grins down at you, their thorny toothed smile dripping with amber sap. "This is the Affini Compact little one, and I can very much guarantee that it can happen to you."
"It's not like that!" You gasp, tasting the acid tang of fear, as it claws its way out from the pit of you stomach. "It's almost it's too easy to picture myself like that. If you catch the cookie I'm rolling."
"Then what is it, petal?"
"When I see myself like that, I don't see me," You sigh "I see the face of a stranger."
"Is that so bad, little one?" The vines wrapped around your hand, squeeze with gentle affection, " Could you not learn to love that version of you?"
"Maybe," You shrug. "It just feels like another cage. Like I'd be making myself small for others comfort, you know?"
"So tell me, what do you see? When you picture yourself?"
"I…" You hesitate. If this is a trap, it's well and truly sprung now. You can't stop though, your new acquaintance has made sure of that. The only way out now, is through. "She's strong, but also soft. Caring, yet carrying herself with determination. She doesn't care what others think about her, she's just herself… Myself. Me. Not someone else's idea of who I should be."
"I see." They place a comforting vine on your head, "And what is stopping you from being her?"
"Because that's not what girls look like." You feel their pulse of hunger at your words, and you brace yourself for the inevitable.
It doesn't come. The hunger fades as quickly as it came. You're still independent, the affini sat next to you is still just an affini. Not Mistress, not owner: Simply a stranger showing you kindness.
"There's more than one way to be a girl, petal." They smile down at you, "What's the name of your vetinarian, little one?"
"Melomelia Meadowsweet!" It comes out in a breathless rush, "Why?"
"Because I've just made you an appointment." They squeeze your hand again, "It's thirty minutes from now, and if you want to be on time, you should be leaving."
"You… You're not taking me yourself?" It's hard to keep the confusion out of your voice. You know the script, this is not how it goes.
"Why would I do that, petal?" They smile down at you again, "I'm meeting a dear friend shortly and just sat down to take in the view."
"Oh… Okay," You stammer, "Could you at least tell me your name?"
"No, I don't think I shall," an enigmatic smile crosses their mask. "You really do need to leave if you want to make your appointment petal." You find yourself moved with gentle urgency, to the ground where you freeze. They look down at you, you look up at them. The spell breaks.
"Thank you," You crack a wistful smile, "For helping."
"Of course," They squeeze your hand for the final time. "Now go and live your life, little one."
You turn and leave, with a hopeful bounce in your step. Suddenly the world has opened up, and, for the first time in a long while, you can imagine a future you can live in.
Independent Establishment, Instituionalism, and The Nature of Mistakes
I am a firm believer in the nature of smut as literature. Not that smut can be literary, but that smut is inherently literary. Sexuality, sensuality, the expression of and relinquishing of control, pleasure, these are all parts of the sophont condition, and are always-already full of deep themes and politics. It is not a special category which is "just" about fuckin'; in fact this is why I don't like the word 'just' used in this way. It is dismissive of so much, a grammatical marker that the thing under discussion is not worth exploring further.
Nowhere, nowhere, is that more trivially, obviously disproven than the penultimate three chapters of Lagnia's Independent Establishment. You would have to be extremely motivated by a longstanding hatred of pornography to say otherwise.
I will offer my biases at the outset here. Lagnia is one of my closest friends. We say 'I love you' to each other. We understand how each other thinks. Fae is a deeply special sophont in my life. So I am, obviously, somewhat compromised here. I cannot give you an objective assessment of this story.
But I believe that the nature of a conflict of interest is only that it should be examined and disclosed, accounted for and compensated for, not that it should be automatic grounds for staying silent about something transcendental your bestie has done.
With that said, let us begin. This post contains some full-story spoilers for Independent Establishment, at least in terms of discussing themes that are only made explicit in the finale; I would recommend holding off for a while to experience the reveal organically, but I am not your warden. Make the decision that is right for you, even if it's not the 'correct' one.
Independent Establishment, on its surface, is a story about a woman in the Compact who is fully capable of taking care of herself. She runs her own restaurant, she has friends, she has partners. She lives a hedonistic life, the way that the Affini encourage her to have. And yet this is clearly, clearly not working for her. She is struggling with what has Newspeakly been dubbed 'comptop': A sophont who is not particularly inclined towards dominance or action, either as a general demeanour or at a particular moment, being somehow obligated to be, pigeonholed into the role of, or otherwise compulsorily being a top or dominant in that moment. This can be internalized, as it is for May.
There we find Viridia Mulberry, 19th Bloom, the captain of the Cymbidium, who appears to be struggling itself, as many classic HDG stories set up. It has the inverse issue, however: It must always hold itself back from immediately and overwhelmingly imposing care on everyone around it, regardless of species. The hunger present in the Compact itself to take care of everyone is embodied in Mulberry as its avatar, as is its promise to enact care on absolutely everyone, no matter what, including the Affini.
But the slow-burn romantic domestication narrative comes crashing down in what has been termed by the author the "bad ending". This story is not interested in consent when the joy or misery of a sophont is on the line. In fact I would argue it, and mulberry, has a deep and abiding anger towards it. Any prime directive you can name is bullshit, this story says; save those who are hurting. By any means necessary.
Early on in this story, I was talking with Lagnia about the craft of the story, which is something that I do because I deeply enjoy the mechanics of writing. I had pointed out that part of faer style includes a lot of comma splices. Here is the first one I found, in chapter 1 of Establishment:
He was a mess, his dusty brown hair had grown down to split ends that rested uncomfortably along his oily neck, he had a beard that desperately looked like it needed some variety of trim and a lot of specialized shampoos.
This is, semantically speaking, three sentences. "He was a mess"; "his dusty brown hair had grown down to split ends that rested uncomfortably along his oily neck"; "he had a beard that desperately looked like it needed some variety of trim and a lot of specialized shampoos". They're called comma splices because the use of a comma here sutures each thought into one longer sentence which has a bit too many things going on. Its cup runneth over.
Fae told me something that I think is key to this story. Watch for it as you read. This was an intentional technique on faer part to capture a connectivity between thoughts in a way that different sentences, reworded sentences, semicolons, and other techniques could not capture.
This sentence is, technically, wrong. But it is wrong in an expressive way.
The poet e.e. cummings (whose name is intentionally lowercase) was a master of this sort of expressive wrongness. Here is the poem i like my body when it is with your in its entirety:
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
(I think this is a fitting poem for IE, for a number of reasons. But its grammatical structure is what I'm pointing out here.)
In other words, like many brilliant authors, Lagnia eschews the rules of grammar in the name of expressive joy in faer writing. If the institution of grammar does not cover a part of the human experience, both of these authors say, do something ungrammatical.
I rendered this in a similar way in my flagship story, The Place Where We Can Stop Running, by saying that the model must adjust to fit the sophont, not the other way around. The Affini bureaucracy is a vast, byzantine system, and one that does not always work for the desires of the xenosophonts within its care, but it works for their needs, reflecting this principle in two ways: Break etiquette and transgress boundaries to give someone what they require, and do not hesitate just because you aren't able to find the right paperwork to file or box to tick.
What strikes me about Establishment is the fractal, cosmic nature of this principle, and how it is reflected in every part of the story. It is reflected in Mulberry's strategy for treating May. It is reflected in the grammar of the story. It is reflected in Mulberry's general demeanour. Everywhere you go, every direction you look, the story is doing this.
And it is a humbling experience, if you allow it to be. As I was reading the story, I kept having this sense of, this is somehow off, somehow incorrect, outside the lines. And every time, this turned out to be the correct thing, whether diagetically, the correct thing for the sophonts involved, or extradiagetically, for the story.
I am wary of the use of the term 'perfect'. But Independent Establishment is flawless, because it rejects the concept of a flaw.
Its finale is one of the most dramatic leaps of faith I have ever read. Chapter 42 filled me with dread and anxiety for the characters. Chapter 43 broke me down into a sobbing, shocked mess. I watched a number of readers unable to understand what they had witnessed. Mulberry, and possibly Lagnia faerself, had clearly, clearly, gone too far. There was no way to pull back from this. We are in the abyss. We are lost. The entire story has led up to a neck-snapping twist from which there is no recovery.
…Right?
…Right?
The final puzzle piece that is necessary to understand this story is Mulberry's insistence that May Morrison retain as much of herself as possible. Every part, every part, is as sacred as every other part. There is no part of her which must be sacrificed for the greater good of her psyche. All its complexity, all its contradictions, all its humanity, must be preserved at all costs. And yet May has such a complex, and I use that word intentionally, about who she is and what she desires, that it is nearly impossible to untangle it without sacrificing something.
This is the hardest possible domestication narrative to perform well. The skeleton key versus the unpickable lock. But the Compact axiomatically guarantees happiness even for this narrative. Something very interesting happened a day or so after chapter 43 was released: Those same readers came back and said "You know what, no. I trust Mulberry." One of the scariest sophonts in the Compact, the arch-villain of HDG, the distillation of its noncon elements to such a pure refinement that one drop is enough to turn your eyes gold.
A leap of faith.
Leap, and the net will appear.
And we were right. The story did not even stick the landing, because it didn't land. It flies. It soars. It is no longer beholden to gravity; it has achieved escape velocity and has taken its rightful place among the stars.
The author Avgi Sakedopoulou, in the book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia, makes the argument that the ego is an inherently controlling force, that which wants to understand, build models, fit things into boxes. This is not a bad thing, always; but it is inherently conservative, and must be periodically disrupted to expand and refine our understanding of the world. As such, things that are outside of those models and boxes and understanding cannot be experienced with the consent of the ego. That the artful transgression of limits is a necessary transformative force that imposes growth on the psyche, that gives us the ability to recontextualize our lives and find new meaning in that which we thought we already knew.
Mulberry is a master of the transgression of limits as a transformative force. It earns its bloom count on the page. No other Affini could have done what it did. And no other author could have demonstrated its themes in such a comprehensive way. The finale transgresses every boundary you can name. It violates the characters. It violates the reader. And in doing so, I would argue, it makes us better people.
HDG is an inherently queer genre. To queer, as a verb, is to complicate, to disrupt, to reject normalcy and the 'proper' order of things. Most narratives are heroic, about individualist triumph; HDG goes in the other direction, and not only says that it's okay to lose but that sometimes it's better to lose. Independent Establishment is an icon of queer literature for rejecting so many binaries, breaking so many rules and conventions, including that of the very genre it participates in.
HDG is an inherently cripped genre. It fiercely defends the right of all sophonts to care and joy and abundance, regardless of their ability to 'earn' it. And Independent Establishment is also an icon of disabled literature for its patent refusal to change its primary sophont, even when it was harming her, even in the midst of so much violation of her boundaries. It not only rejects her 'earning' her true ending but forces it on her without the first thought about her reflexive objections to it. It violates only that which is a mask; the true sophont underneath is ruthlessly accomodated, her boundaries defended violently and with extreme prejudice. She is a fireproof moth within the roaring flames, laughing as it plays among them.
Lagnia's magnum opus is not a foundational work of HDG. It is not early enough nor is it particularly suited for new readers; it is an extremely challenging read and one that requires a deep understanding of the genre's conventions and themes to fully understand. What it is instead is one of its glittering spires, standing tall in the skyline, built on what has come before and piercing the sky, a beacon of hope for those who have been fit into uncomfortable boxes and who yearn for the moment they can break out.
And in a way, it is a permission structure to do so, a model for how to make good trouble. It is a manual for bratting as praxis.
If anybody, anybody, tells you to make yourself smaller in order to make them more comfortable, defy them.
If any system of rules does not cover your truth, break them without a second's hesitation.
If you want something, grab it with both hands, and defend it with your very life.
May is a floret owned by the one of the most controlling Affini in the Compact.
May is simultaneously one of the freest sophonts in the universe, not despite this but because of it.
May we all find what she has become for ourselves.
The Ribbon - A Short Saga by Slylittleprincess, with art and editing by Sheepwave
Published: January 2026
10k words, 2/4 chapters, ongoing
Ace-Friendly: Yes
Ava loves poems, and has been working on her latest one all week. She especially enjoys sharing them with Fiodoir, her online friend who definitely isn’t an Affini. When Ava makes the fateful decision to spy on her friend while on a very overstimulating visit to a different hab ring, she discovers just how bad things really were for her, and has a series of experiences that change everything.
Sly doesn't miss.
Sly. Does. Not. Miss.
I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm supposed to say in response to this other than that. The first time I read the first chapter, I had vaguely intended to liveread it, but I didn't. Instead, I just let myself be carried away by the frankly insane flow of this story. To call it "hypnotic" almost feels like selling it short; I could not put it down. Ava is immediately an engaging, well-fleshed-out character, presented with an efficiency that I can't help but laud, and Fiodoir is just... woof. God damn. She starts performing suggestibility tests on Ava within seconds of meeting her in person. It's beautifully predatory, but in a sweet kind of way that could go in a lot of different directions.
Then, after chapter one, I said to myself, "Aww, another sweet courtship story by Sly, I wonder how this one will go?" And then I read chapter 2, and realized that Fiodoir is less like a patient, seductive temptress and more like an oncoming freight train with absolutely zero brakes. Holy shit. Do you remember A Taste of Class Omega? Incredibly hot one-shot by Sheepwave, Cadence turned it into a hypno file, great fun was had by all? The second chapter of this story feels a little bit like Sly lived through that scene and decided to write about it. Except even hotter. Absolutely peak shit, do not miss it.
44,115 words as of chapter 8; the planned scope for this story is long
Ace-Friendly: So far, yes
Noteworthy tags: Cotyledons, and also
When the captain of an illegal SETI operation awakens paralyzed in a mysterious laboratory, she can't remember how she got there or what has happened—but her owner does. Now she must navigate this strange, frightening new life as a cotyledon—something between a test subject and cherished pet—all the while unlocking her forgotten past piece by piece with the help of her affini guardian’s hypnotic bioluminescence and unconditional, mandatory love.
A story about being helpless and becoming okay with that.
This is a longform hurt/comfort with heavy emphasis on hypnosis, conditioning, medfet, and dollification. CW for surgery, PTSD, implied suicide, and minor character death. Hypogeal is set in the Human Domestication Guide universe, though no previous works are required reading to enjoy it.
The first thing that caught my eye about this story was the fact that SlyLittlePrincess was beta reading it, and recommending it the way folks on the community discord recommend starting HRT.
The second thing that caught my eye about this story was seeing reading channels on multiple servers I'm on absolutely explode looking at it.
So, what the hell. Let's read a bit of it...
...What do you mean it's suddenly midnight? Why am I sobbing violently into my pillow?
As said yesterday, I am lighting the beacon on this one. We have another example of a new author stepping into the scene, and crafting something so insane that the entire community blows up about it. This story is doing something fairly unique, very painful, and incredibly potent.
The rest of this review will contain at least some spoilers below the cut, so if you haven't started on this one, do yourself a favor and start on it. I'm calling it now, this is the next Independent Establishment. This is the next How A Floret Finds Out. Honestly, that doesn't even go far enough. This has the potential to be something like the next The Place Where We Can Stop Running. Like, I'm coming right out and saying that, if it continues at this level, this is a story that will have an impact on what Human Domestication Guide is, on the stories that get told in the future of this setting, and I say that in the most complimentary way I can.
Go read Hypogeal. To call it incredible feels like selling it short.
More analysis (and spoilers!) under the cut.
The basic framing device of Hypogeal is a cotyledon recovering from an implantation surgery where something went wrong, having more or less completely lost their memory. The story is split between an affini caring for them, and hypnotic regression into the protagonist's shattered memories.
This dance is important, because the protagonist's memories primarily involve watching their crew die around them as they're stranded in deep space with no realistic hope of rescue after a series of very human snap decisions and mistakes. It is a harrowing story to tell. And it's all foreshadowed with devastating precision and care. This is stupidly hard to do right, and you can tell it's working if you want to laugh one moment and wail in pain the next, which... is very much the Hypogeal experience.
The horrifying experiences on the Last Signal are also, importantly, real and human. It shares this crucial quality with From Pawn To Princess, where the events of the prologue are heinous and horrifying and cruel, but they're heinous in ways that make sense, both for an uncaring capitalist hellscape and for a group of people doing their best to survive in a desperate situation. Things are bad, but they're not bad out of malice or evil, just the uncaring logic of a thousand algorithmic bean-counters who can't conceptualize you as a person because it'd make their jobs impossible. The situation is dire, but these people care about each other - they just end up making terrible snap decisions under severe duress.
Y'know what's really different from From Pawn To Princess (very minor spoilers for that here, by the by)?
When the affini show up in From Pawn To Princess (and if you haven't grok'd that this comparison is high praise for Hypogeal, uh, now you know why I keep comparing it to one of my favorite stories in the entire setting), they fix things. They have the medical technology, they have the tools needed, and things get better almost immediately. The drama shifts from "will I die horribly" to "how can I manage to understand and live in this new world; how can I accept that things actually are better".
But this is a cotyledon story. So when what's left of our bedraggled crew gets rescued by the affini, things are not just suddenly okay. The affini can't just fix everything, can't just make everything okay. They can and do try their absolute best, but the required knowledge must be built up before they can truly help in the ways we're used to. They can't even communicate at first. There's a moment in chapter 7 where, without wishing to spoil too much, this reality comes crashing down in a way that left me stunned. Without words. GOD DAMMIT. FUCK.
By the by, can I just pause to say that the scenes of the two species desperately trying to figure out how to communicate with each other with extremely limited information is impossibly clever from both perspectives? It's not the only incredibly clever thing in this story, but it's one I wanted to pause and draw attention to, because holy shit it's so fucking smart. Gives me the same feeling I had watching the scene from Apollo 13 (1995) where they desperately have to jury-rig the CO2 filters to survive. I watched that movie when I was a kid. Reading that chapter gave me goosebumps. And then it went ahead and twisted the knife in a way that made me bawl like an infant. FUCK.
I am deeply curious how the tone of this story will shift as we get further into it, but I trust Astra to nail it, because... well... look at this shit! It's incredible! It's hard to even describe how good Hypogeal is. I keep stumbling over my words, trying to find the right way to express these feelings, and I keep falling back on that same response: loud, angry swearing.
Fuck. FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK! ALSKDJFALSKJDLAKDN;LMKCNV;BNSFEDJLKGHNSAERUOIGHE§U$R%HGNKJ§EHNGJEN!!!!! STACKABLE IDAHO! FUCK!
I have. No idea. How this community keeps consistently attracting this level of talent. Seeing just how insanely fucking good this and openAngel's opening salvo are is humbling; the skill on display is palpable. I cannot wait for more of this story, and I am excited to see more of this author.
Notable tags: people please, comptop, holy fucking shit
May Morrison is the proud capable owner of an Independent Establishment called The Crossroads, living the dream under the Affini Compact, hoping against hope that she can sway the opinion of her independent neighbors to fall gracefully under its folds. But what happens when a happy independent who has everything shes ever wanted has it torn away from her by the system she trusts for no fault of her own, and instead she's shown everything she's ever needed?
You may have guessed that the sophont running this blog is a trans woman. you may have also guessed that, like many trans women, she has suffered from some very extreme comptop.
Folks, chapter 7 of Independent Establishment spent several paragraphs ripping that shit to shreds and setting it on fire. May is an incredible protagonist, strong-willed, dominant, generally has her shit together, and I see so much of myself in her. Mullberry is an incredible affini that lands firmly on the "eldritch" side of things. Their double-act is kind of incredible. Like, look at this!
That's fan art that Garbagewitchy made for the chapter, and dear god does it do the writing justice. Lagnia has this habit of writing absolutely incredible hungry affini - Perilla from Pride of Her Garden, Miss Vatia from She Wants You, and now Mullberry from Independent Establishment. She just captures that aspect, that barely restrained hunger, so well. It's incredible.
Chapter 3 blew me away, chapter 7 blew me away, and it's truly rare to see a story so casually approach Class-Js, class-Ls, and even class-O drugs, and...
...hey. What's that endnote in Chapter 7?
Hey Lagnia. What do you mean by "About to"? Lagnia?
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN LAGNIA
...So yeah, needless to say, read this shit. Read it yesterday.
I Kissed A Beeple by Cadence_the_Hypnotic_Floret, Delcan, Lagnia, and Yuki_the_Kitsune_Bi (Mofu)
Published: June 2026 (part of the Summer Beeple Party Jam)
4k words; 25 minutes of audio
Ace-Friendly: genuinely hard to tell
Notable tags: Hypnotic Audio File, Beeple
You're an independent at the Summer Beeple Party. Attractions abound, and you're curious and interested in all the party has to offer. Ooh, is that a beeple kissing booth? You've never kissed a beeple before…
One of the truly beautiful things about HDG is the spirit of collaboration that flows through it. And what better way to celebrate that than with a 4-person audio featuring a bunch of extremely fuckin' weird beeple and some serious xenodruggies?
(Pro tip: don't kiss a beeple unless you're ready to pack your bags for a trip.)
Each contributor brings their own sauce to the party. Mofu, played by Yuki_the_Kitsune_Bi (AKA Mofu) is light and fluffy and carefree. Macaroon, played by Lagnia, is an utterly bizarre, inscrutable ball of chaos who doesn't mean to ruin sex for you but might anyways. Evvie, played by Cadence, is a dominant pet who's extremely eager to make you feel good, whether you want her to or not. And Monteschia, played by Delcan, is a calming presence in the eye of the storm, a chill sophont who's seen it all and wants to help ensure you have a good time cooling off.
Each of them wrote and recorded their own part of the script, collaborating to make this drug-fueled hypno experience extremely fun. Give it a listen! Kiss a beeple! You might just like it. The taste of her honey chapstick...
Also, look at this ridiculously cool art that Mofu made for it!
Ace-Friendly: According to word-of-god, "mostly" (but not entirely). There will be genital mentions, and there will be oviposition, but an effort is being made to consider ace readers as much as possible even with these inclusions.
Notable tags: Far Future, Cultural Grooming, Giant Spiders
The domestication of Terra, now over a hundred years in the past is long behind those still kicking in the year 2661. Libby, a 23 year old 5'1 little sprout still looking for her purpose couldn't care less about any of it. Something has been bothering her lately though, she's just not sure what.
Maybe her homeroom teacher Miss Vatia will have some answers?
No, you're not seeing double. Last year around this time, I recommended She Wants You, also by Lagnia, a study in setting descriptions, affini hunger, and a Terran Protectorate a century-plus into its cultural domestication.
It has a sequel now.
The first chapter of She Needs You dropped four hours ago as of writing, and reader, it's a doozy. She Needs You is a sequel the way a 201 level course is a sequel, succeeding its predecessor not just in chronology but in depth and subject matter. The ideas explored in SWY are resummarized quickly and elegantly, then recontextualized, expanded on, built upon, and laid as the foundation for a deeper and more comprehensive exploration.
It's also dizzyingly, scaldingly hot.
It would be premature to offer an analysis of the larger work so early, but I can say with total confidence, you do not want to miss this.
(And if you haven't read She Wants You and need to be sold on that, I've got you covered!)
Ellie looked up from the nest of plushies she was currently burrowed in. Moja Pani had returned from her excursion.
“Mo’Pani!! Back!!” Cat carrier? So biggie!!
“Oh aren’t you just adorable, maleńka!” Daisy ruffled Ellie’s hair, causing the girl to giggle happily and wiggle. “I thought I’d get you a surprise, little horse. I know you’re still a little anxious about the implant, even on such a heroic dose of class Js, so I found you some friends for the afternoon.”
“Frien?” Kbitty? Moja Pani brought kbitty? Ellie stared at her owner with wide eyes, desperate to know who, or what, was in the oversized carrier.
Daisy set the carrier down on the sofa and Ellie could hear the deep resonate purring coming from the box. Giggling too. Curious, Ellie tried to stand, wobbling adorably, before sitting down and giggling again.
“Kibby?”
Daisy tickled the girl under the chin, “Yes, Kbitty, maleńka. Two highly trained therapy cats to help you relax.”
The purring sound stopped, and the giggling reached a crescendo. “We’re not trained, Miss Daisy,” a voice said. “We’re just really cute!”
“Now, now girls. Your Meowstress says you are trained, so trained you must be.” Daisy hummed thoughtfully, “Let us see, what was it Salixia said?"
"The quick orange kbitty snuggles the cute and grumpy feral.”
The giggling stopped immediately and was replaced with purring and various kbitty chirps and mewls. Daisy smiled down at her floret as she opened the carrier. “Meet your new friends, maleńka. Lena and Veve Blackthorne, florets pinnate.”
“Mrrrrrurrrrrp?”
“Mrrrrrrrow, purrrrrrurrrrrp!”
A pair of inquisitive faces poked out of the cat carrier. Their owners were definitely more cat than girl. Scampering about on all fours, with faces that were covered in fur and more feline than human. If it wasn't for the cute matching sundresses they were wearing, they would have just looked like large kitty cats.
The ginger kitty girl bunted her pinnate, “Mrrrrrrrrr, purrrrrrurrrrp, mrrrrrrow, mrrrrrrr?”
“Mrrrrrrurrrrrrrp!” The calico cat girl replied. Decision made, the two kbitties booped noses and started purring.
“Kibby!” Ellie made grabby hands at the pair. The two kitties trotted towards the girl, their deep purring making the air shimmer. With gentle strength, Lena and Veve pushed Ellie back into the plushy pile. Ellie giggled, the two kbitty girls were rumbling like a pair of two stroke engines, as they snuggled up on either side of her. The comforting vibrations filled her chest with a heavy warmth, as she surrendered to Lena and Veve’s soft kbitty embrace.
“Kibby! Sof!!!” Ellie stroked the two girls' soft fur, making them chirp and mewl in pleasure as their purring got even stronger. “Prebby kibby! Ela love kibby!!!”
Lena and Veve snuggled even closer, paws and tails wrapped around Ellie as the girl hummed happily in an attempt to purr herself.
“Oh, maleńka! This is beyond adorable!” There was a whirr of a camera shutter, “Girls! I'm sending these to your Meowstress IMMEDIATELY!!!!”
“Kibby! Ela love kibby!” Buried under the weighted blanket that was the two cat girls, Ellie started to relax. She stimmed happily as she stroked Lena and Veve's soft kbitty ears. “Kibby!” She said with a sleepy sigh, her happy hums slowly becoming gentle snores.
Daisy watched the trio with rapturous delight, taking in the absolutely adorable sight of the three happy florets. I'll have to do this again, she thought as she set habbi to live stream the utter cuteness to the rest of the ship.
