I hadn't wanted to stop myself, but I had to slow down. Sylph was still feeling guilty over infecting me with her brain fungus. Guilty it had even happened, and now she found herself wanting it to happen… Wanting me… yay!… But she was afraid of pushing something on me that I didn't want, that would change me into something other than human. Afraid I would do it out of some desire to please her. I did want to please her. I wanted that so very much in so many meanings of the phrase… but to do so in ways I could be honest with both myself, and with her at the same time.
I needed to reassure her that I was capable of making this decision - a decision to place my trust in her with the workings of my consciousness - of my own free will, and not because it was what she wanted of me.
I kissed Sylph again, gently and with a lot less heat than last time. I wanted to make up slightly for the decidedly devilish teasing I had just inflicted upon her. Only slightly though. Hopefully she'd give me my comeuppance sometime later, and I didn't want the slate completely clean.
She took a few breaths to steady herself. "Yes, you are right. We do have several things to settle… Also…" Sylph paused to playfully shove my shoulder this time. "You are… very good at teasing me, it appears. I would appreciate some warning if you are preparing to remove my ability to think clearly."
I giggled at her. "Yeah, that's fair… but it was fun though" My eyebrows waggling at her enthusiastically as I said the last bit.
She had that wonderful thoughtful look to her for a moment. "Yes it was, but..." Sylph leaned forward and gently took my chin between her fingers, ensuring we were looking directly at each other before she continued. "...do not be under the mistaken impression, Mx Marin, that I shall let you get away with something like that without… repercussions." Her full purple lips, which had been clearly enunciating each and every word, formed into a smirk. The smirk.
My gaze was locked to hers. Sylph's large golden eyes glinted with some depth of confident ferocity I'd never seen there before. My brain let loose a quiet cry of "help," but I knew she was the only one I wanted to help me with this particular problem. I somehow managed to find enough air in my lungs to push out a breathy "yes please."
With an amused huff, Sylph released my chin. As quickly as that glint in her eyes had formed, it was gone. "So, what shall we do about the colony in your brain?"
Now it was my turn to have to settle myself after being devilishly teased. I had thought that maybe things were settling down a bit after I had confessed my feelings to her and found them returned, but alas, I was still in way over my head with this wonderful alien woman seated before me.
"Ah yes, the colony, the colony in my brain, my brain colony. umm… one second while I get myself thinking straight again… well thinking not gay at least as you had me thinking very gay…"
The delight on her face as she took in the rambling mess she'd reduced me to almost sent me back into spiraling gay thoughts, but after some meditative breathing I was able to begin speaking again. "You are worried about pressuring me into accepting the brain colony, after infecting me with it without my consent, and that keeping it would cause me to feel like I am something other than human?"
Her smile had faded, she looked guilty and shameful again. "Yes, that is my concern."
I took a second to organize some thoughts, "You were talking about hierarchy and it's dislike of diversity the first time we talked. One of their favorite tools to use is to label the diversity they don't like as inhuman monstrous abominations. It's been used heavily against people who aren't white to justify genocide, slavery, or imprisonment. It is also uses this against people who aren't heterosexual, cisgender, or neurotypical. I'm none of those last three."
She nodded along with me, "Yes, there were many signs none of those applied to you." This, said by someone else in another setting could have been taken as negative, but from her I knew it wasn't. A statement of fact, with a hint of endearment or appreciation.
"This label of less-than-human comes through many subtle and not so subtle ways. Some aspects of religion would boldly and publicly call someone like me an abomination, but only some of society listens to that directly. Sometimes things like this weave their way into media. Villains and monsters coded as queer or 'mentally deranged.' Characters who are explicitly non-binary, or neurodivegent getting portrayed as inhuman to make that sit better with audiences that aren't those things. So the representation we see of people like ourselves isn’t very human. It kinda results in a bunch of people who’ve long been seen as different, not really having much investment in the idea of their own 'humanity.'" I made sure to put some air quotes around humanity.
"For me personally… I care about my continuing connection to my family. I care about my continuing connection to my friends. I care to not be obviously seen as disgusting by people like me, but most of them see different and weird as good so that's a pretty easy one to maintain. Finally I only barely care about how the rest of humanity sees me, as most of them already see what I am as inhuman." I shrugged. Just for the fun and symmetry of it, I took my turn to reach out and gently hold Sylph's chin as I leaned in towards her. "So no, I don't really care about no longer qualifying as human." I gave her a quick kiss. “Also I think it’s pretty clear I think rather highly of some inhuman beings.”
Sylph smiled at me and pulled my hand from her chin to her cheek, nuzzling into it. “Yes, that you’ve made very clear. Also about your experiences… that must… that must have been hard.” She took my hand from her face to her lap, but didn’t release it. “I had studied the history of the things you mentioned, and oppression in general. I could see the harm that was done, but it was at a distance. Academic, and not personal. Though it was personal for you.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “My people don’t empathize well with humanity. The adaptations I’ve gone through have made that easier for me… but… Thank you for telling me, that makes sense as to why that wouldn’t be a concern of yours.”
I smiled warmly at her for that, squeezing her hand in return. “I do have concerns about the thing in my head, but I need you to know that absolutely none of them have anything to do with a feeling of being pressured or unable to trust you. Could I ask you to trust me with my own understanding of my feelings and the situation? To trust me enough to not have feelings of guilt about things, at least not on my behalf?
"Yes, I think I can do that."
I sighed in relief. “Thank you, and I want you to know that I trust you as well. You’ve given me absolutely no reason to think you value your own wishes over my safety or my consent.” My stomach gurgled at me, and we both giggled at the noise. “I guess I’m still a bit hungry.” I let go of Sylph's hand with a squeeze, and picked up my fork to collect another bite of pasta. Before ferrying it to my mouth I asked, “Sylph, why didn't you just tell the brain fungus to degrade when you first noticed it was causing problems for me?”
Sylph had picked up her glass of wine to take a sip, but paused with my question. “That was part of why I felt guilty. Ethically, I should have, once I noticed the violation and the harm it caused, but you weren’t responsive and I wanted the option of connection so that I could check on you if something else seemed to be going wrong. To correct any fallout from my actions. Behind that concern though, there was some… scientific curiosity that stopped me.” Some of the guilt left her face, replaced by an inquisitive one. “How had the colony taken root within a human?” She let out a small chuckle. “That was my first feeling of interest in you as an individual… followed by so many more of course. Something was particularly unique about you, I wanted to know what that was and I was rewarded by you only becoming even more intriguing.”
I was blushing pretty hard at the way she was looking at me. I loved the way she studied me with those large gleaming eyes. “Sylph, you really know how to make an enby feel special in the most wonderfully odd ways. I also would love to know what it was about me that made that possible, and I would happily submit to your examinations” I winked as my double meanings hopefully found their way to her.
They apparently had as Sylph choked a bit on a sip of wine. She was able to quickly recover into laughing at me. “Unfortunately Marin, my thoughts on how we would go about bringing the colony out of its current dormancy, would mean it would be easiest for you to uncover the secrets of that mystery…” She took another sip of wine and my favorite smirk returned, along with a fun predatory look as her golden eyes locked onto mine. “...but I think there are many other aspects of you I would like to extensively study myself.”
Yay fun! I couldn’t help but to smile and bounce excitedly at the thought. “I look forward to that, and of course getting to learn more about your alien physiology as well!” I took a bite of spaghetti and washed it down with some wine. “What do you mean by it being easiest for me to learn that though?”
"I have been thinking about the best way to reactivate the colony without harming you.” I could tell by her face she was preparing to unleash a wonderful wealth of information upon me. “At birth... At the beginning of each individual consciousness, my people develop our minds in conjunction with the organism. A symbiosis that begins when we do and adapts to us as we do to it. As you've seen, we are a malleable people. Our own shape and form, our neural connections, our biochemistry, our genetics... All are available for adaptation, and all in ways that can be perceived and guided with agency by the individual."
"Human beings can be remarkably mentally, emotionally, or situationally adaptable, but not physiologically adaptable in the ways needed… for what I think you would need to have symbiosis where you had agency within that relationship. We could probably work out ways I could adapt things to your desires…" I think she became a bit flustered at the word ‘desires’. "But you'd be dependent upon me…" She looked into my eyes. "I don't want to make you dependent upon me through my actions. That feels wrong. I want to help you gain agency over your life, never take it away.
“When the colony first took hold within you, it attempted to make all the same connections to your mind that it has within my own. It attempted to connect within you all of the same functionality and ways I perceive reality, at least in all of the ways it could find analogous structures within your own brain to connect to. My brain is adapted to be similar to a human’s, thus it found many. Far more than what your mind could handle. I think that to get around that, the first sense we need to enable within you, is an internal sense. To allow you to be able to know yourself, your biology, your mental map. From that to enable you to be able to alter yourself. To have agency over yourself internally, and agency over how the colony interacts with you. This would set you on a path similar to my own when I first came into being. One of mutual adaptation.”
“Wow, I could listen to you talk for hours.” She really was amazing. “That does sound a lot better than how I was thinking it could go. I think I need to finish eating while I process all that.” We proceeded to continue our lovely meal just enjoying each other's company.
* * *
After finishing the food and a glass of wine each, unfortunately without any shared noodles turned kisses, we moved to cuddling and idley chatting on Sylph’s bed. I remembered a topic I wanted to broach. I twisted around from being the little spoon to face her. "Sylph, do you ever think about looking human and walking around town… Like we could do that sometime if that were something you'd be interested in. You know, putting on your humansona." A cheesy grin spreading upon my face.
She searched my face for a bit before answering. “I do occasionally think about that. Why do you ask?”
I bit my lips, working through the anxiety at the heart of the true question. “I hate having to hide things from the people I love. I feel like I need to hide who you are, to keep you separate and away from my family… My friends Lilly and Cairn are probably going to come visit me sometime soon. I haven’t seen them in so long. I don’t want to feel like you have to be some separate part of my life that can’t mingle with the rest of it.” I feel like I was hurrying through most of that, afraid if I slowed down I wouldn’t be able to finish. It has always been hard telling people things like this. That I was somehow upset or disappointed in what it seemed like they needed.
Sylph gently brushed some hair out of my face that had flopped haphazardly when I had rolled over, letting her hand come to rest on my cheek. “Yes, I can see how that would be stressful for you.”
She looked like she was preparing to say something else, but I interrupted, “I don’t want you to change yourself for me, or hide who you are to make you… presentable…” I let out a sigh. “In my life I did my best for so long to be presentable. To be what it felt like was the right way to be for those around me. I hated it and I could never ask it of anyone.” My eyes were tearing up as I was talking. “I don’t know what the right way to do this is.”
Sylph reached out and pulled me to her, my head resting on her bicep. The tears flowed now. I quietly cried into her chest. “Oh Marin, I would never expect you to keep me hidden from those you care about.” Her hands softly trailed over the exposed skin of my back which sent delightful tingles all through my body, overwriting any need to cry with the need to focus on those moving points of contact between us. “As I said we are a malleable people. The shape of my body is not me, only an expression of my identity. My identity, that too is malleable. A core part of my identity is to adapt.” Sylph pulled back to see my face. “I would be delighted to meet your family. And to meet them in a way that would be comfortable for them. In time, as they are ready, we could let them know the other aspects of my identity.”
I pulled myself back into her, a giant weight lifted off of me that I only slightly was aware of. My trust in her, my safety in her arms filled me with courage to take another step. “I think I am ready to try activating the brain fungus.”
ChiriVulpes· Dec 28, 2021
