*****

“Mmmmmm”
Xara was rubbing her cheek on one of the plants she liked.
Anna.
She’s really pretty, and no where near as confident as she likes to pretend when we are alone.
It’s kinda very intimidating how capable Affini are.
I can’t raise any struggle without easily being subdued
and they are way smarter and experienced.
Chuffing as she chewed a leaf with her lips.

I bet I couldn’t beat them at chess, not that I’m much good at chess. i’ve played it like 40 times in my life

and i don’t have a good win rate against mediocre players

Gosh, the Affini really have me beat.
I don’t know what to do.

Ana and Avala were laying together.
Vines enmelded in the middle, where they both stroked and petted Xara lying on a blanket of their bodies, she was just having some quiet time to think about things.

Avala was having fun, vine wrestling with Ana, the flower.
She is faster and more agile.
Though quite a bit weaker.
Making up for it with cunning tricks.

Right now they were having a debate in vine touch language.
One that Avala is winning because she won’t let Ana belittle herself.
A lot of feelings were confessed.
Why neither of them made any moves.
Second guessing, imposter syndrome, during the day after we would talk I’d reminisce on the feelings you gave me.
I was afraid of screwing it up.
I didn’t want to lose a friend, someone who brought me joy.

Do you want me as more than a friend?
“Yes”
“Mmm?” the little one queried
Getting Affini handled, being used as an outlet for Avala to express her overflowing joy, getting a twenty second long mind melter head massage

‘gosh’ xara thought, ‘i don’t think i could get up if i wanted to, i don’t think i could even want to want to, , , and even if i could i wouldn’t want to
With a grasp of the situation xara flipped over to look at Avala.
“Hello my angel, our little cherub.”
xara did a rolling around stim in their vines.
Getting lots of tickling vines draping above her body.

‘No!’ Xara exclaimed internally! ‘Will I take this lying down?!’
Putting on a face of deep concentration for what’s ahead.
Putting her hands in position on the three dimensional netting of vines Xara was laying on.
With a count down of 5 because from 3 would be too short for this.
‘Five, four, three, two, one.’

- - -
a small grunt expressed her great effort
but she could not lift up her torso from laying down
she has noodle arms.

not only that, xara half flops and lifts her right arm to stand it upright, elbow resting on the ground because her shoulder didn’t want to lift
staring at her hand, trying to wiggle her fingers, but they go all funny and weird
turning back to the right, flopping her arm down to the bed, she tries to pick up that vine, but her fingers are being all fuzzy in fluorescent green teselating patterns.
her hands are really fumbly

“She’s tickling me with her impared fine motor skills! it’s so cuuutee!!”
‘Cute? im not cute! im cool!!’

‘im gonna squeeze her’
and with all her might, xara squoze

to no avail
“awww, she’s squishing me, do you think she wants deep pressure sensation?”
“She liked it an hour or two ago”
“has it really only been that long?”
“really”

and just like that little Xara was in a very tight embrace, wrapped up on all sides in a cocoon.
“hhhhnnnnngggngngg”
xara started quietly moaning from the sensation

“Awww, she’s trying to purr :3”
“We could help with that..”

squished, compressed, held and holded by her two favourite people
blank and perfect
just need one thing

Little xara was open her mouth to try and nom on the vines wrapped around her shoulders
the precious petal must be feeling oral and sensory seeking.
Avala lift her vines along with Ana’s placing them tip forwards inside their darling’s mouth.
Her soft little tongue rubbing and exploring, such a gentle soul, she’s chewing so carefully, as carefully as kitten would chew if we were as delicate as terrans
Ana and Avala wove their vines into a pseudo organ for their pet to play with.

it felt so right conjoined with Avala and xara
feeling Avala against the entire surface of each vine touching eachother as much as possible. Feeling the blurred distinction between where one body began and where another ended. Having a shared sense of proprioception, foreheads kissing, growing many arms to hold all the things they love.
A shared xara, feeling the same stimulation as she sucked on their vines. Dragging her tongue along the spiralling ridges of their most sensitive vines layered on the surface

The two couldn’t tell if little xara was eager to please, or if she just wanted to orally stim.
“Uhhaa, darling. I think we should go home. Lets just carry her between us. We can lay a blanket on top of her for security and privacy.”
“yeah, I doubt our pet has spoons for people”

And so their little cocoon is lifted up between them.
In an interlocked embrace.
Cooing to their foret as she had her quiet time.

With a blanket sheltering her from the world, the little precious couldn’t tell they were even moving. So smoothe a ride she didn’t feel their steps.

Ana and Avala were stopped on their way walking home.
Friends and aquiantences were celebratory of their newfound relationship, and were wondering which gorgeous petal was hidden beneath their sheet.
Congratulations were given, lots of awwws and gushing was done over their absent minded xara, she didn’t even notice when her name was mentioned, quite a few times.
Or when her two guardians slipped their faces into her habitat and asked her a question.

No language processing, acute object impermanence.
Instead they came to her, igniting a big smile in the girl. All that their darling was capable of, so oral, with kisses and tongue strokes
Cheek strokes impaired her even more
Their precious floret.
Opening the door to Ava’s hab

Avala programmed the hab to do not disturb and setting the mood for evening low lights.

Ana let out an enormous sigh, unwinding her weave along her vine dragging journey to bed, lasting barely long enough to slump into bed before fully being a bush. Apparently done with the effort of maintaining a sophont’s form.
“I’m so glad that I don’t need to be anything anymore”

Ana had fluffed out into  a wavey vines bush, strewn with yellow and blue flowers.
“You look beautiful.”
Ana’s rosey pink undersides blushing. her branch tips winding and unwinding.
Still connected at each other’s sides, but there being a vibrant green bush dotted with flowers hanging interwoven with Avala’s bipedal form.
She sinks to her knees, falling apart into fibers, like a sand castle standing strong in it’s shape, only to dissolve in water, melting into a pile.
Relaxing into the bed, setting xara carefully down in the mass of Ana’s vines.
Setting herself within the mass of Ana
‘Everbloom, I have never felt this close with another Affini before’

Laying there, looking up at Avala.
It was clear who the pillow princesses are.
little xaxa rubbing her face in Ana’s vines and leaves, stimming by caressing her face against her Miss.
The room was open, made with a soft dirt floor.
Trees and branches, climbing vines trellised as room dividers, a raised self draining pool.
One wall is a glassy window into a world that doesn’t exist.
Floor to ceiling high sculptures made of glowing plasma rising and falling like lumenescant gel in a lava lamp.
Colours were shifting.
Like plumes of bright smoke floating in water, growing and shrinking, transforming, evaporating.

Those colours shifted in front of xaxa’s eyes as the screensaver to her mind, a blank receptacle for experience and sensation.
With so little function that stimming on her Misses bodies is about the extent her limited mind can bring into reality.
Her Misses are here with little concept of things being not here.

Safe, Cherished, Adored, Pampered, Cared For, Loved, Cuddled, Squeezed, Stroked.
No wonder her mind of little capacity was overwhelmed.
It just takes three concurrent sensations to stretch the limits of xara’s awareness.
Falling over the edge into raw sensory experience.
Her mind a plaything of much more powerful and wiser beings.

The mass of vines surrounding little xara formed a perfect little xara shaped cavity

the little one held their Misses in hugs, squeezing them between her thighs and arms
Holding that which held her.

*****

Speckled light was peaking through the tree branches above
The whole ceiling is lined wih branches, the space outdoors pretending to be indoors.
Weird.
xara rolled out of bed, well, she would have if it wasn’t so high up.
she had to do a lot of rolling, especially since she was really tightly tucked in.

this bed is very high up, xara would need to scramble to get back up
and the bed was so wide, you could sail across the seas with bedsheets so big, and soft.
they were quite stimmy to rub her palms against again and again, keeping the little one occupied.
Then she goes to wander up to the display wall.
Poking the wall to see it ripple in concentric sine waves

*bloop* the wall undulated under her finger.
The hab told Ana that little xara is awake
Her bedroom door opening to a scene of xara pressing her whole body against the simulated wall.
She wasn’t making hand prints, she was making xara prints.
Smiling at her antics, she swept down to xaxa’s level.
“Hello little one.”
“Hello Miss.”

Face to face with Ana at eye level.
“I was just wondering how you are feeling.”
‘don’t look in her eyes, don’t look in her eyes’
xara swept the gazed of her eyes between Ana’s cheeks, her nose, lingering at her neck and trailing down her jawline, her lips.
Gently curling
Those lips
With a magnetism of their own.
Closing her eyes from the pinning gaze of her Miss.
xara's eyelashes filtered out the light of the world in stretched streams of colour, streaking out into the darkness of what our eyes can not see.

Arms reached around xara’s back, that same song singing in her head, a soloist playing her measures with a theme of kindness and hope.
gently sweeping the girl from her feet. Lips meeting in the space inbetween. parted.

xara opened her eyes, looking at the nervous Affini waiting for a reaction.
she pulls herself closer with the fabric of Ana’s ‘clothes’
drawing her face back to Ana’s level.
Kissing her again, but lingering, not needing to separate their bodies.

Sharing breath. Ana slow drawing a touch away into xaxa's visions focus.
“little one, I think it’s time we had a litlle talk.”
she nods.
Carrying her treasure to sit on the couch, somehow xara ends up with a medium bowl of sliced fruit in her hands.

“Would you like to talk first?”
sitting comfy in Miss Ana’s lap *shake shake shake shake*

“Mmm, okay then little one.”
A vine extends itself from Ana’s side as an extra limb, because she has none to spare when wrapping up xara in a hug in her lap.
“Here you go.”
A slice of a stone fruit was cradled by three or four vines.
When xara was staring at her food quietly she felt something brush against the side of her cheek, drawing downward as a feather’s touch her face.
xara immediately tried to push her face towards that feather.
but was held in place.

Again the food lifted up in front of her face
again the feather tickled her
and again she leaned towards the fluffy feather.

The ritual was started once more, but the fluffy thing didn’t break contact, staying still beside her cheek after fluffing down.
Some vines gently parted xara’s lips, opening her mouth, wide enough.
And inside went a lovely piece of fruit.
xara tried to chew, but her mouth didn’t shut

she tried again, and it still did not shut
she couldn’t be bothered figuring out if she could even close her mouth
too much effort

after a few seconds of stillness, the feather strokes up her cheek.
and the vines retract.
xara looks up into her eyes for permission, which is given with a gracious nod.
Happily chewing down on her fruit.

by the third piece of fruit xara and Ana had caught each other’s rhythm. and were able to read some improvised gestures about whether she was ready or not for another bite.
Before long all her food was gone.

Once the food was gone Avala came into the room!
xaxa broke into a grin as she approached her small seed.
And they had a quiet cuddle for a good long while.
Content.