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Cellulose & Steel	By : Not-Taylor Category: Misc Books > FemmeSlash Views: 1028 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own HDG or its characters and I don't make money from this work.

Chapter List
- 15
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- 17
Liv wakes up still wrapped around Ginger. She doesn’t remember having fallen asleep, and given their positioning they must have both randomly passed out. She still feels so nice. Everything about her… Liv exhales contentedly, letting the air make noise on the way out of her throat. Something around her stirs. It feels like those rope tassel things from fancy movie beds that don’t actually exist in the real world. Why are they moving? It’s probably nothing
She gives Ginger a little squeeze… wherever her hands are right now. Oh, that’s where, of course. Ginger blinks awake and greets her pilot with a giant smile. “Good morning you sluggish bag of bolts.” Song had missed that.
“Only just seeing it’s morning? I bet you’ve been dreaming of ways to get lost.”
“Mmm. I predict if you stay put you’ll be right where you need to be. Just, you’ll have to stay here for a long while.” She giggles and Song can’t help grinning back with all her heart.
“I love you, Liv. Sorry I never said it sooner.”
“I uh.” “Why can’t I say it back?” Olivia frantically wonders.
“Yeah.” She settles for squeezing Ginger as tightly as her extremely sore limbs will let her.
Suddenly they find themselves back where they were before, and almost as blind to the outside world. The mass of silky ropes on which they’ve been lying start to writhe, as though some fell octopus has been disturbed. They’re too busy to care.
“Good morning you too. I’m glad your reunion was such a success.” The voice is familiar. It belongs to one of those icky xeno tree things. Affini. Olivia doesn’t want to be near them so she punches in the direction of the voice to make it go away and leave her in peace with Ginger.
The ropes on the bed move some more, eventually tangling the two so they can’t move properly any more. Ginger whines as she helplessly bucks against the air in Olivia’s direction. Olivia doesn’t mind so much. The rope is comfortable enough she doesn’t feel a need to get away from it. But soon it’s wrapped around her, touching her how Ginger just was. She feels aware enough to know that something’s not quite right, but it’s fine. She lets the ropes probe her exterior, and Ginger’s as well.
Soon they’re against each other again, ropes passing around and through and between them. The ropes are green, like a sunflower stalk. They’re actually making it better, so Olivia doesn’t think about them again. She feels the silence of eternity gradually fade as time comes back into being. And she thinks… “How long have we been doing this?” Ginger isn’t quite there yet, but she doesn’t seem to want to come. She’s happy where she is. All right, five more minutes.
Many more minutes than five pass before Olivia notices that she really needs to pee. That’s not good at all. Where’s the bathroom? She looks around. Ginger is in front of her, very confused by the release of her complement. The bed is below them, as clean as could be expected, considering. The roof is above them, an orange leaning off-white.
The ropes… They’re everywhere. What are they? When did they show up? Olivia jerks up and looks around from her elbows, blinking a little. They’re vines. That’s bad, but there’s something way more important. Where is she? And where’s the bathroom? Somewhere obvious. She bolts off the bed and in that direction.
When she returns, Ginger is still lounging aimlessly moaning and sighing at a low intensity. The ropes are still there, seemingly coming from the mattress. That’s weird. Olivia walks over and takes the covers off. It’s an affini? What? How?
The affini rolls over toward her and says “Good afternoon to you too, Olivia. How have you been enjoying this wonderful second day of the week?”
Artemis. That’s what it calls itself. And it- Olivia can’t vomit. She really wants to. That thing touched her so many wrong and evil ways. Disgusting. She needs a bath… A bath not in Affini chemicals. This is very bad and very terrible. She’s starting to freak out. The needle. She’d been filled with xenodrugs!
“Are you hungry, Olivia? My floret was just explaining to me that she can’t derive energy from what you’ve been doing all day. I would be delighted if you stayed for a meal with us, if only as thanks for bringing so much joy to my petal’s life last night.”
“You…”
“I admit it wasn’t possible for me not to participate, once I saw how comfortable you’d become around me. And is it my fault, when you were making such a mess in my vines? You’ve a very cute couple.”
The xenodrugs are stopping Olivia from reacting to that. She wants to scream, or kill herself, or kill the xeno, or kill Ginger (not so much that one). It’s… WRONG. It’s DIRTY. It’s TREASONOUS. She has to get out, but her body won’t let her leave. It’s demanding a chance to say “goodbye” to Ginger, and she knows perfectly well it isn’t actually going to let her leave once she’s back where she’s been for the last… sixteen hours, more or less.
Olivia remembers she isn’t wearing anything and has just been standing shamelessly in front of the thing that had warped her bunkmate’s mind beyond the ability to really be anything to her. And the xeno didn’t care. Does it even notice? It has to, when they provide their captives with clothes. Are those only until they can be properly “””domesticated?”””
She shudders. It’s too real. She wants to wake back up in Ginger’s arms on the Song before any of this ever happened. She wishes the war had never happened and she could go back, anywhere, just not HERE. Her breathing starts to hitch against the xenodrugs as her emotions get stronger. There’s no way out, not even death. They’ll bring her back as a corpse to satisfy their yuricon fantasies.
That means… Artemis knows. Olivia looks down. She knows. She doesn’t care? Oh. All right.
The affini seems clueless about any of those thoughts. She’s still lying on her bed, petting her pet. Olivia takes a step forward, since she’d recoiled in disgust moments ago.
“I’d like breakfast, please. I didn’t know it had been so long.”
“Breakfast? I thought terrans didn’t eat breakfast after the midpoint of their solar day.” She sounds confused.
“I don’t care.”
“Oh. OK.” The affini cheerily lifts itself off the bed by some spare vines and pats Olivia’s head in a friendly way as she passes toward the kitchen. The attitude strikes Olivia as a little odd, given the memories that are starting to surface from the morning.
Ginger yawns and sits up, also still naked. She smiles across the bed and leans forward.
“Hi!”
She leans out over the floor and barely snags her target before collapsing. Using her new point of stability, she adds her other arm and looks the breathing pillar in its eyes. She smiles and kisses Olivia on the lips. It’s a distraction, and Olivia has to work to put her passenger back onto the bed without dropping her or breaking contact. With cargo delivered, she draws back and smiles at the woman on the bed before her.
“Is this what you do all day?”
“Some days. Most days we just sit around. It’s boring a lot, but it’ll be so much better now that you’re here! We’ll have sex every day, in a real bed, with real sheets! We’ll eat real food together and watch movies! Like a real couple!”
“Ginger…”
“I know! This is the best day of my life!”
Olivia’s heart melts again. So adorable. So happy. She’s never seen her like this. She wants to smack her down into the bed and repeat last night until they turn to dust from dehydration.
“So that means…”
“What?’
“Are we a couple now?”
A look of terror crosses Ginger’s face. “Aren’t we? I thought…”
“I’m asking you since you’re the one who brought it up.”
“Then we are. I think. I hope.”
“You’re so weird. Can’t you ever just say what you mean? If we were still flying you’d be sending me into the Yakutia elevator right about now.” Saying that is partly force of habit, but she almost means some of it.
“You need to get better at following directions!” Ginger frowns with all her might. She’s so cute, Olivia thinks. Stars…
Artemis comes back into the room bringing plates of bacon, pancakes, and deviled eggs. What? “Brunch is served. I know you wanted breakfast even though it was lunch time, so I combined them. I know brunch already was invented centuries ago.” The tall affini chuckles.
“Where are my clothes,” Olivia asks, trying to cover herself before they eat.
“Under the bed. I’m not fully sure how you got them all the way there. I’ll bring them, don’t get up, darling.”
The humans dress very hastily, making sure not to waste the warmth of their food. As Olivia has grown to expect, everything tastes fantastic. The eggs actually don’t clash too badly with the rest of the meal. Artemis made orange juice to go with it, and that was beyond anything Olivia had drank before. It’s as if all the Terran fruit companies had been diluting their juice with water. But… that’s how degenerate communist weed products are supposed to be. She’s too busy eating to worry about economics right now. For some reason she’s starving, even after her giant steak from before. Right, that was yesterday.
Artemis makes small talk throughout the meal. It’s nothing interesting, but she goes on tangents about how well she and Ginger are getting along and how proud she is of her new floret. She actually looks happy, as difficult as Olivia finds that to believe. Aside from the weirdness and literal brain manipulation… Artemis almost seems like a good person. She’s certainly a tolerable host.
“Artemis, can I ask you something?”
“Certainly! But, if you don’t mind, in the future I’d like for you to call me ‘Mistress.’ It doesn’t have to be before you’re ready, of course.”
“But…” Olivia scowls. This again. “I was wondering why you wanted Ginger.”
“She’s the one who responded to me, remember? I suppose I didn’t have to adopt her afterwards, but I don’t think many of us don’t, after we get to know an adorable floret in waiting over the course of weeks. Your Ginger grew on me, probably in the same way she grew on you. And I’ve known her much longer than most taps are known… But that might not be more illuminating.”
“I understand. She has that effect. “But why work with her for so long, when she was clearly stalling?”
“Because she told me that at that moment a majority of the crew would choose death over domestication, and that if I defied her she would warn everyone and ensure that I suffered all consequences possible.”
“She blackmailed you?”
“It’s not blackmail! I just didn’t want her to hurt you, and I still thought I could get through to you. I wanted to believe you could see… but you couldn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder, but I didn’t want to lose you either. It was scary.”
“I see,” Olivia remarks darkly. Of course it was that. Ginger hadn’t been honest, good intentions or not. With a full stomach and xenodrugs slowly purging, she starts thinking more clearly again.
“So in essence you’re responsible for all the suffering of your crewmates over the period of your delinquency, though even if you hadn’t been doing that for love it would be easily forgiven.”
“Forgiven?” Olivia doesn’t know what the xeno is talking about.
“Nobody’s going to punish you, darling. We know you’re not going to try any such thing again, so what’s there to punish? Loyalty? Determination? Now that you’re safely back in Affini society you won’t have to worry about such barbaric concepts.”
“But what if I want to be free?”
“Then you’ll have to learn that even here not all wants can be satisfied.”
“I see.”
“You’re finished, aren’t you? Then I believe it’s time to have you registered.”
“Registered for what?”
“As my floret, of course!”
“No. I will not. I refuse. I’m a Free Terran and I will not tolerate such xeno tyranny!”
“Olivia…” Ginger looks disappointed. Olivia guesses she’s not going to help and she’s not going to be getting onto the shuttle out, either.
“I hate that I’m the one to tell you this, Olivia, but you’re a war criminal. A fugitive from the law. Even if you’re not a danger to others you’ve hurt yourself by resisting for so long. You need somebody’s help to return you to polite society and help you reacclimate to interpersonal life.”
“I knew it. You’ll never take me. Just because you want another slave doesn’t mean you can have me to be that for you.”
Artemis and Ginger both flinch. Ginger looks sad but Artemis looks a little annoyed too. “Did you really expect you could come here claiming to be my floret without consequence? I already have two witnesses willing to testify that you’re in fact my floret. Now, unless you have a very good and real reason that shouldn’t be the truth, and why you should be apart from your pseudomate and cause her to suffer from your separation, we will be going together to register you as my floret. You don’t have to be conscious for the trip over.”
“I need time. I’ll prove you have no claim on me.”
“But Liv…”
“And stop calling me that, o’Smerie, I don’t care about what we were just doing.”
Olivia is close to tears of despair. She needs a plan. Verda? That could work. But is it worth it? Things are so nice here, with Ginger and Artemis.This morning was a lot more fun that she would have thought possible with a plant… No. Unacceptable. She can’t live like that, not with whoever that was pumping her brain full of sludge every hour. But Verda wants to do the same thing. But where else can she go? Since she was broadcast everywhere and since she’d decided that was a good time to make an impression, probably nowhere. Are there any affini traitors? There should be… right? They’re people, not a hivemind… right?
“May I see your tablet to call somebody?”
Artemis looks uneasy. She knows what’s coming. Her vines shuffle restlessly, like a tiger stalking through the jungle but less intimidating. Olivia picks up the tablet and starts to type. Of course it’s in Affini, so she has no idea what she’s doing. She guesses at what must be the operator button. They have operators? That’s probably the right button. Should she really go back to her ‘mistress?’
- 15
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- 17
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Cellulose & Steel