February, 2557

The offices of the Terran Protectorate Regional Sub-Office of Transitional Xenolegal Management were not, to look at them, that much different than what Transitional Decarceralization had to work with — tall, curved ceilings, lots of natural light, perfectly polished wood, greenery everywhere. They were, however, significantly larger, since Transitional Xenolegal Management was supervising such a broad swathe of the bureaucracy's efforts on Earth, including Transitional Decarceralization. For a moment, I considering calling in on Asarum Hexalis, the clerk at TXM responsible for cross-checking OTD's efforts against other branches. I'd seen their name on a number of memos, and met them briefly last year. I decided against it, simply because I already had far too many plates spinning in my head for polite conversation with a colleague.

And that was before I realized that everyone whose desk I walked past knew exactly why I was there. Whether via office gossip, my weak biorhythms, some combination of the two, or something else entirely, every Affini in that room knew precisely what I was. They weren't quite staring, but I was very much aware of their attention, of how they all shifted to get a better look at me.

Well, it wasn't like I could turn back now. I kept my chin up, composed myself, and gave them my best Murderwalk. I hadn't had a reason to use it in years (and I could never call it that to them, of course. Maybe it needed a new name. Frostwalk? I'd have to think on it.) I projected what any Terran would recognize as pure Don't Fuck With Me energy, and if I had a biorhythm worthy of the name I think I'd have scared the whole floor rootless. No one bothered me as I made my way through the sea of desks, my eyes focused clearly on my destination: the office at the end of the chamber. Ardisia's office.

The old saying goes that an attorney who represents herself has a fool for a client. Alas, this wasn't something I could turn to anyone else for. It had to be me. I'd given the matter a tremendous amount of thought and planning, and I'd constructed what I felt was a very strong argument — but I was the only one who could make it. I was the only one who could provide the immediacy and the context, who could open myself up and let my truth be spoken, core to core. Sure, strictly speaking, I didn't have a core, but nevertheless, only pure honesty would get me through this.

Pure honesty, and an Affini-sized load of confidence.

"Ah, Tam, there you are," Ardisia said as I stepped into their office. "Go ahead and close the door, and have a seat. How are you feeling, how are your legs?"

Rapidly atrophying, I thought. My vines did all of the work of keeping me upright at this point — they were stronger than my muscles had ever been. I did take the offered seat, though. "I'm fine, Ardisia. You don't have to worry about me. How are you? I know I've dropped about the thorniest possible issue right in your vines."

They stared at me, very intentionally. "I'm still not used to hearing that sort of resonance come out of a Terran's larynx," they said, shaking their head.

"Well, only some of it comes from my larynx. A lot of that is happening down here, too." I put a hand to my chest and unwove the tight net of vines to reveal some of Camassia's work. The organelles just below the surface, little nodules along specialized vines, glowed a gentle blue. Beneath them, beneath them, still hidden, lay the meat, patched over and run through with dozens upon dozens of vines that supported the few Terran organs I still needed.

"...exactly how much of you is still your original body?"

"Right to the chase," I said, smiling. "By mass, I'd say about 40 percent, but a lot of that is dead weight. By function, there's my brain of course — most of my head is still there, minus some skull that had to go to to make room for it to grow, and for the phytocortex. Down here..." I tapped my chest again. "The heart's been modified to make it work better in this gravity, but it's still mostly a heart. The lungs still do a bit of gas exchange, but only one way, since all the CO2 in my system gets taken up by my phytochemistry. They're mostly serving as a resonating chamber for my biorhythmic prosthetics, now. My digestive tract is pretty much gone, but I have a few of the organs associated with it — Camassia still finds them useful for now — so the liver, kidneys, and so on."

They nodded, looking me up and down — again, obviously, and purposely. Either they were still treating me like a Terran, or they was simply in the habit of using Terran gestures from interacting with Terrans. Their biorhythms were tightly controlled, like a drumbeat, so no answer there. A cool customer, I thought. Just like before.

"I know from speaking with Camassia that this was all voluntary. You said as much yourself. Yet, this is sufficiently extreme that I feel the need to confirm it with you once more: you chose this, and you are happy like this?"

They were afraid that Camassia had pushed me into it to satisfy her lust for biohacking. To be fair, said lust was overpowering, and probably the only reason I'd been able to convince her to do what I asked for. "Happier than I've ever been," I said, pushing as hard as I could to let my vines and foliage say what might be dismissed from my voice's harmonics alone. "But there's always room for improvement."

"And that's what concerns me," Ardisia said. "Please don't misunderstand, I am very relieved that you are happy and able to feel at home in your body. I don't think what Camassia did was wrong, per se — though I think it would have been better handled in a domestication context, of course."

"Alas, out of the question," I said firmly. Bait the trap, my lawyer's brain whispered, and let them walk right into it.

"Well, we'll come to that," they said, evading the trap for now. "I'm more concerned with the consequences of the particular direction you've taken. I saw you be mistaken for an Affini at the symposium. You must understand the problem this causes."

"I wouldn't say mistaken," I replied, my voice as calm as I could make it, its undertones providing a cautious but harmonious counterpoint to Ardisia's own.

Again, they stared at me for a long moment. When they spoke, their voice was softer than I'd ever heard it. "Tam, you can't-"

"-be an Affini?" A calculated risk, interrupting them here, but this was lawyer-sense again. There was an opening, a chance to press my narrative rather than hers. "Obviously, not in a legal sense. I'm not a fool, Ardisia, even if I'm representing myself here. I know what a can of worms that'd be opening, especially in the context of the ongoing domestication of Terra." Their drumbeat biorhythm faltered, and I recognized a tremolo of confusion. "Can of worms means a complicated, messy situation caused by a single, simple action."

"Ah," they said, nodding. "Why worms, though? What's wrong with worms?"

I riffled my vines in a shrug. "I honestly have no idea. On Mars, worms are practically worth their weight in gold. It's an old idiom, maybe it loses something in translation. My point is, I understand. Even if there's fewer and fewer actively feralist Terrans out there, there's still more than enough who are afraid enough of domestication that they'd probably try to do this to themselves to avoid it." If I still used my lungs to breathe, I would have taken a deep breath to steady myself for what came next. This was the most dangerous and hardest part of the entire affair, the point where everything might go horribly wrong, but this was the way it had to be. "That's why I have no intention of pushing to be legally recognized as an Affini. I have the recognition of the people who matter in my life, my friends and my coworkers. They treat me as an equal, more or less. I know they certainly enjoy the pictures of Judy I share in our My Floret Is Too Cute chat."

"That's another issue," Ardia said. "But before we move on, I want to be sure: despite this," they said, gesturing at my body with a vine, "you don't intend on pursuing legal recognition?"

"The work of the Compact is too important to gamble with like that," I said. "I know I've only been a part of it for a few years, but that's enough for me to know, and to internalize, that what we're doing is the single most important thing to ever occur in the universe, and the best thing that's ever happened to the universe. Please don't misunderstand me: I am an Affini. It took me a long time to really accept it, but I know it deep in the meat that passes for my core. I was born for this, even if it was in the wrong body. All my life, I've grasped for it, done the best with what I had at hand to replicate the work you were doing elsewhere. It wasn't enough, but it was what I could do. And now you're here, and I can be a part of it, and I want to be a part of it, as much as I can be." I closed my eyes and let my vines hang limp: a little bit of acting, a little bit of honesty, and a little bit of channeling my frustration at giving up on an argument. "And that's why I know I can't frost it all up by insisting on this, even if I want it. I'm not in this for affirmation — I know I'm an Affini, and while it'd be nice to have the Compact officially agree, it's not what's important here, it's not why I'm doing this. I know there's no paperwork for it, and that such paperwork even existing would probably create more problems than it would solve, but if I could waive my right to be legally considered an Affini, I'd do it here and now. Will my word suffice on that score?"

"...I think it will," Ardisia said. "Again, very eloquent."

"Before you showed up, I made my living by being eloquent. Old roots run deep."

"I suppose. Well, even without that potential disaster looming, there is still the issue of you looking like an Affini," they went on, their drumbeat loosening up just a little bit — I could feel the vibrato of relief coming through. Good. The real fight hasn't started yet. "It's something we'll have to deal with, especially since I imagine you don't intend to stop here with your...modifications?"

"Oh, no," I said, brightening just a little. They were going along with it so far, but I wasn't out of the woods just yet. "We're not nearly done yet. Camassia's still got ideas she wants to play with."

"And I imagine you also wish to continue working with Transitional Decarceralization?"

"Of course. It's important work, keeping track of all the Terrans who were formerly incarcerated and making sure they're doing well — and, on a purely selfish level, I really love doing it." This was not a lie. Never mind that all my Affini friends worked at Transitional Decarceralization, and never mind that my experience in the old system was frequently useful, I just genuinely enjoyed the work. It was all the best parts of being a defense attorney without any of the worry that your client would get locked up even if you did everything right.

"Then you see the problem — you're already being mis-" They paused. "-seen as an Affini occasionally. If you pursue further changes that's only going to become more common."

Dirt, I hope so, I thought, keeping a close lid on my emotions — I might have had the world's best poker-face biorhythm, but this was too important to be casual about it. They'd only avoiding saying 'mistaken' out of politeness, I thought, but still, it was progress. The goalposts had been successfully moved, even if only fractionally. "That is probably true, yes. I know that's potentially problematic, but I can't help but want to be seen as what I know I am. I also believe that we can come up with an equitable solution to the problem. I know it'll take time, and if we're lucky a tremendous amount of paperwork, but I think that in the end we can work something out."

"Yes, well...in the meantime, we should proceed carefully. And I think it best you hold off on any further procedures with Camassia until we have a better idea of how we're going to tackle this. Is your body sufficiently acceptable to you at this point that you can tolerate some delay and reevaluation?"

"I would say that's...not unreasonable," I admitted. "But it does pose some problems for the ultimate goal of the project. Would oversight be acceptable? I don't want Camassia to have to stop her work entirely."

"It's negotiable, I think — we can discuss that in detail, if you like."

I nodded. "I wouldn't object, but it's not just me that putting a hold on things has implications for." Here we go again, I thought. Second bite at the apple.

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Ardisia said. "There's someone else who wants to pursue a like regimen of augmentation?"

"Not like this, no," I said, waving the concern off. "Not as far as I know, anyway, and certainly not in concert with Camassia. No, my objection here comes not on my behalf, but on behalf of my pet, Judy."

"...ah. I see." Ardisia leaned back in their chair and let out a sigh. "I did say we'd have to discuss that, so very well, let's do so. Quite simply, Tam, it's one thing when a pair of xenos play at an owner-floret relationship, but what you're doing is quite beyond that, given the current state of your body."

"Oh, you haven't seen anything yet," I said, doing my best to project a sense of reassurance through what little biorhythm I had. It felt as thought my vines were braiding themselves. "My objection is that the project's aims have never been entirely about correcting my body's deficiencies vis-a-vis my inner self. That is a very welcome side-effect, of course, and one I very selfishly enjoy, but it's not the primary goal. That is, and always has been, to allow me to develop a pseudo-core and to generate a sufficiently powerful biorhythm that a sample of said pseudo-core can be used as the basis for a haustoric implant for Judy."

"... no. Absolutely not." Ardisia flowed to their feet, towering over me, their biorhythm slipping out of its drumbeat to become a confused, discordant mess of thoughts and emotions. "You can't seriously think we'd allow a Terran to keep a floret. We don't permit species who have been a part of the Compact for millennia to keep florets, we're certainly not extending that privilege to a species that is still in the early stages of domestication!"

"I may not be sufficiently Affini for you," I said, as calmly as I could through a rush of anger, my vines almost rigid, "but I'm certainly not a Terran."

"Your neurology is Terran."

"It has Terran roots,," I went on, "but I've been on a high-dose regimen of noogenic xenodrugs for nearly three years, Ardisia, and I've been interfacing with my vines through my phytocortex long enough that it's functionally a third lobe of my brain. I have an entire extra motor cortex in my distributed neurology, to say nothing of sensory, kinesthetic, and even linguistic processing. As time goes on, the meat in my head is going to be less and less important to my cognition — at least, that's what Camassia says, and I believe her."

"That doesn't automatically prepare you for the duties, the skills, the mindset needed for keeping a floret!" Ardisia countered, increasingly agitated. "It would be a grave dereliction of our duty to allow that!"

"And it would be a grave dereliction of mine to accept anything for Judy but what she wants most — and she wants to be a floret, just like any other." Step right up, I thought. The door is wide open.

"There is a relatively straightforward solution to this," Ardisia said stiffly, "and it's the one I'm in mind of recommending. If both of you were domesticated, then you could maintain your relationship with Judy in the context of you both having the care and supervision you require."

Bingo. "I find that solution unacceptable on its face," I retorted. "She wants to be my floret, with my implant. Domestication is not what is best for me — I am thriving, managing my affairs, participating in the bureaucracy, and caring for a floret, and none of this has ever caused me the slightest strain or difficulty, even during recovery from surgeries. Judy being domesticated by someone else robs her of the one thing she wants most. Separating me and Judy isn't what's best for either of us, and you know that. None of these are acceptable solutions by the Compact's own ethical standards."

"Tam, please be reasonable. Only Affini keep florets, and regardless of how either of us feel on the issue, legally you are not and cannot be an Affini."

"I'm being eminently reasonable." I steepled my fingers and interwove them, the little vines at my fingertips doing likewise. Everbloom, I love that feeling, I thought. "Sit. If nothing else, let me lay out my suggestion for a solution to this. Believe me, I've given this a lot of thought, and I have no desire to make a mess of things. Go on, sit," I repeated, nodding to their chair. "It's not complicated, but do me the courtesy of at least listening with an open mind."

"Whether or not my mind is open is the least of your concerns right now, I should think," Ardisia said — but they sat nevertheless.

"Try to keep one anyhow. This will be a high-level overview, so let me start from the beginning here: first, let's agree for the sake of this argument that I am an Affini. Not legally, of course, but in every way that I can be given the circumstances. I struggled for years to try to live up to a standard I knew was unrealistic, even impossible for the world I lived in. Then, you arrived, and changed the world, and changed me. The moment I met Karyon and discovered what I had been missing all my life, it became inevitable that I would do everything to cross that gap. Do you follow so far?"

"Inasmuch as I can follow a feeling, yes," Ardisia said, nodding. "Once again, I want to make it clear that, regardless of the bureaucratic snarl you represent, I am very happy for you finding yourself."

"Appreciated. Legally, I'm still a xenosophont," I continued, preempting what I knew would be their next sentence. "That's part two of this argument. Under the Human Domestication Treaty, which absent any official recognition that I've transcended the species barrier still covers me, I have a guarantee of welfare. I'm sure I don't need to cite article, section, or paragraph?" Ardia shook their head, and I continued. "Now, that's how I was able to convince Camassia to keep going once we hit a certain point in this process — it's very necessary for my emotional and mental well-being, even if it represents a taxing physical process. I did something very similar when I emigrated from Mars to be able to endure the gravity here. This part of the argument also applies to Judy and her guarantee to welfare. She is not best served by being denied my haustoric implant. She puts on a brave face about it, but it hurts her that thus far I've been unable to provide her with one, and that I can't keep her on xenodrugs the way other florets are. Camassia keeps us in any exogenous xenodrugs we need, but I can't control her intake or fine-tune her blood chemistry, and without an implant I can't properly address underlying neurological issues like intrusive thoughts, for example. The best I can do is a blunt approach through medication."

"Do you even know how to do that?" Ardisia asked, almost certainly knowing full well that I did not."It's not as easy as it looks, you know."

"I'm well aware. That's part three: I hereby acknowledge that I am probably the sproutiest sprout to ever sprout when it comes to the domestication of Terrans. I'm in my 40s, for the Everbloom's sake, while you're probably somewhere north of a thousand, right?"

They thought for a moment. "One thousand one hundred and eighteen. I think."

"That's quite the experience gap, and I don't blame you for doubting my ability," I said. "But the fact remains that, without any training or guidance whatsoever, I domesticated Judy well before the Compact turned up. Did I do it perfectly? Absolutely not — but I did a pretty frosted good job, I think, especially considering that I wasn't afforded the opportunity to study from the best. Here's a stipulation I would not only happily agree to, but actually actively want: Let me take the same courses every other sprout who wants a pet Terran takes. If you think I don't have the skills, teach me."

"...I don't suppose I have any objection, in principle, to you learning how to better care for Judy," Ardisia admitted. "But it's rather more work than you may think, I assure you."

"I thrive on heavy workloads," I said, winking. "Ask Vanda."

"And even if you do prove satisfactory at xeno care skills, it's a far cry from being licensed to graft and apply xenodrugs."

"But it's a step in the right direction, and considering you hand lightweight xenodrugs out like candy, it's not that big a step to allowing xenosophonts to apply stronger stuff so long as they prove they know what they're doing. I do want that approval, for Judy's sake, but I understand that you-" I used the plural Affini you, to make it clear I wasn't laying responsibility for the issue solely at Ardisia's roots. "-want to make sure that Judy is safe and taken care of. Of course you do, and so do I. That's where part four comes in: I am entirely willing to be observed, closely and intimately, if it will put others at ease. I welcome it, in fact, because every wellness check is going to be another tally mark in the Tam Knows What She's Doing column — and any advice I can get on the subject from my elders, I'll enthusiastically apply to doing even better."

"You propose observation as a solution rather than your domestication? I don't think that's going to get much traction, Tam."

"I don't expect it to be an instant panacea. I want it so that more Affini can see that I'm doing my duty with regard to my floret — more importantly, to see that I'm able to. That, more than anything, is going to make my argument for me."

"So, to sum up — because of your dysmorphia, and because it would be unethical to separate you and Judy, you feel that you should be allowed to study appropriate xeno care and pursue an owner-floret relationship without formal recognition of your nature?"

"Well, I'd sum it up a little differently, but close enough. I do have one piece of concrete evidence that I think will cast this in a slightly different light, though. May I take that you don't feel that my domestication of Judy counts as a 'real' domestication? That, apart from my inability to provide a haustoric implant for her, the process was somehow different, lesser, non-qualifying?"

"That would be an adequate elision, yes." Their voice was kind, but I felt the sting they were trying to soften nevertheless. Not even that could sap my spirits now, though. I was just about to reveal my pièce de résistance.

"Well." I smiled, loosened the vines around my midsection, and reached inside my body. When my hand reemerged, it held a sealed binder nearly an inch thick, which I offered to Ardisia. I'm sure they read the excitement and delight in my biorhthym, which was thrumming louder than it ever had, both out of hope for what would come next as well as the sheer joy of having been able to carry the instrument of what would, with any luck, be the keystone of my argument inside me the entire time we'd been talking. Everbloom, the sheer euphoria of it.

"What is this?" they said, opening the binder and riffling through the pages. "A contract?"

"A domestication contract," I said, smiling. "Or near enough. A copy of the controlling original, of course, notarized and dated. You're free to keep that for your records. I'm sure you're going to be referring to it often as we work our way through this."

"This is very sweet," Ardisia said as they perused it, "and very detailed. Even if it's nonstandard, it's certainly doing many of the same things the boilerplate version of our domestication contracts do. It's very clearly targeted and weighted toward Judy's benefit and welfare — I particularly like this stipulation, Section 4 of Article 8, 'What Judy Wants, Judy Gets.'"

"So long as it's not bad for her," I said, nodding. "I live by that document, and most especially by that Section. It's one of the most important parts of the contract."

"And that is extremely corewarming, but I fail to see the point, Tam. It doesn't add any legal weight to the relationship to emulate our domestication contracts."

"Check the date," I said, my grin growing wider.

"January 11th, 25...46?" Their vines went all slippery, along with their biorhythm. "That's eleven years ago."

"Well before you even knew we existed," I said. "Judy and I signed that contract purely for ourselves — we married for the easy access to legal protections, but this contract was always at the heart of the relationship. Now, we could have petitioned the Accord for recognition. Maybe we would have been denied, maybe it would have been granted, but it's impossible to know, since the Accord no longer exists. That leaves it in a sort of grey area, admittedly, but fortunately, the Compact's bureaucracy recognizes a like form of contract-"

"Tam-"

"-so, with that in mind, I believe you'll find an appropriately filled out Form R2311-CRL-5C at the back of the packet," I went on. "Petition to recognize a prior-to-domestication contract not in violation of the Human Domestication Treaty. Which, by the way, our contract isn't. I've checked."

"That's because your species doesn't- your species of origin doesn't do that," Ardisia protested. "You only engaged in ownership-oriented relationships on a cultural level via capitalism, not mutual agreement, and even if you did, the standards of care under the Accord wouldn't satisfy the treaty. It wasn't necessary to include that provision, because there wouldn't have been any such contract."

I simply shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, Ardisia, aside from that my domestication contract with Judy does satisfy basic requirements for sophont care as outlined in the HDT — barely, but it does. And, since I've waived any attempt to be recognized as an Affini, barring any other filings I am still legally a Terran and therefore covered by the HDT, so the prior-to-domestication contract petition still applies to me. Now, that being said, I am willing to redraft our contract or add a supplementary section bringing it fully into accordance with standards and practices of domestication as outlined in the treaty," I added. "I have no objection to that whatsoever — I didn't know the appropriate language at the time of the initial contract's drafting, but I think it's clear what the intent of the contract was."

"And the intent of the Human Domestication Treaty is just as clear," Ardisia pointed out.

"Which creates rather a unique problem, doesn't it? But listen: in Accord law, and in the tradition of common law that was incorporated into it, we had a concept called sui generis. That's Latin, a dead language. Lawyers liked to sound fancy. It means 'a thing in its own class,' a one-of-a-kind issue which requires a one-of-a-kind solution. A sui generis case is one that doesn't apply, for the purposes of precedent, outside of its immediate context, because its context is unique."

"You purport to be such a one-of-a-kind case, I take it?" Ardisia said. Their biorhythm rumbled with interest, but all they gave me outwardly was a raised eyebrow.

"For the purposes of my relationship to Judy only," I clarified. "I meant what I said — I'm not pushing on the species recognition issue. I only want to ensure that my long-standing ownership of Judy, as recognized by what is functionally a domestication contract, remains intact and is recognized under the new legal regime, and grants her everything she's entitled to as a result of that, including a haustoric implant."

"I appreciate that you care for Judy and want to stay with her, Tam," Ardisia said, "and we would certainly never separate you. You know that. I don't think anyone would object to you maintaining your relationship as it exists now; from what I've gathered, you clearly love Judy and care for her as much as any Affini does for a pet. That is not in question."

"...thank you for that," I said, my vines twisting involuntarily in a way that felt like a blush. "But, ironically, for our relationship to remain fundamentally the same as it always has been, in the context of life in the Compact and with respect to who and what I am, in reality if not legally, we have to make some changes. Judy is my pet, thoroughly domesticated, and very happy, but she is not being availed of the full range of options available to sophont pets. If I am able to generate a sufficient biorhythm and produce a sufficient core sample to enable the function of a haustoric implant — which, I should point out, Camassia isn't certain she can even do — then we can solve that problem without disturbing anything about the extant relationship or running afoul of the problems inherent in me being legally recognized as an Affini. I'm not asking for special treatment. I just want Judy to be happy."

"We all want that," Ardisia agreed. "We just disagree on how to get there."

"Well, she's my floret, and I think you know what that means."

"Enlighten me," Ardisia said, fixing me with a stare.

I met that stare with one of my own. "I would find a way to pull down the stars from the sky and dust her cheeks with them if it would put a smile on her face. Nothing is too good for her, and I don't care what it costs me — if she wants it, and it doesn't hurt her, she gets it. That's always been my rule, even before we put it down in the contract, and I know other Affini are the same way about their florets."

"She isn't your floret, though," Ardia pointed out.

"Only because Camassia is still trying to figure out the physiology of it. In practice, and in my core and her heart, Judy has been my floret for eleven years, and she will be for the rest of our lives. Nothing can take that away from us; all you have the power to do is to deny her something she deserves."

Ardia stared at me for a long moment. I stared right back. Finally, they let out very well articulated sigh. "You really don't do anything by halves, do you Tam?"

"Never have, never will," I replied smoothly.

"I can see why I've always heard consistently good things about your work at Transitional Decarceralization. Very well. Here's what's going to happen: for now, I'm passing this issue on to the Department of Sophont Protection at the protectorate level, so expect to hear from them shortly. My advice to you is to be ready for it, because they don't take what they do lightly."

"Nor do I, but the advice is appreciated," I said, nodding. If there was any way in which my care for Judy was deficient, I thought, it would only be because I was having to fight root and vine for the right to do it properly.

"I'll also be bringing this to the attention of my superiors, because we both know this decision is going to have to take place well above my meager stature. It may not be able to take place in the Protectorate at all — this is the sort of thing that may effect the Compact on a far wider scale."

"I expected that, and I'm willing to take the time to ensure this is done right — though, I would like to urge that it gets handled in a timely manner. You may have eternity to work this out, but Judy and I don't."

"Assuming what you want is even possible, but I sympathize. Finally, to return to the subject of oversight — I want to be involved in the process of your development from here on out. I want to know what Camassia is doing to you before she does it, and if I think it goes too far too fast, I will intervene with all the legal authority at my disposal. That's both for the good of the Compact and for you. If you rush ahead you won't be doing your argument any favors."

"...I suppose I can agree to that." It wasn't ideal, but I could read Ardisia well enough that I knew they wouldn't back down on that.

"Good. Well...that's a path forward, at least," they said, and their biorhythm relaxed fractionally as their vines loosened. "I can have that in writing by the end of the day."

"Alright. Thank you, Ardisia. I know this probably isn't what you came to Terra for."

"I came to Terra to help sophonts in need," they replied. "This is, shall we say, an unusual problem to have to solve, but it's still a part of the common task."

"Well, hopefully we can get this sorted, put this behind us, and get back to the more prosaic issues," I said, standing up. "Unless there's anything else?"

"No, I think we've about covered everything," Ardisia said. "Which is quite enough, to be perfectly honest, to cause an absolutely legendary tangle in a lot of people's vines. Give Vanda my regards, will you?"

"Absolutely. And... thank you, again," I said quietly, emphasizing the words with my biorhythms as much as I could. "For being willing to listen. This could have been a lot more acrimonious. I was worried that it would be."

She was silent for a moment, looking up at me. "You are doing what you believe to be the best thing for Judy, and to the best of your ability. If you'd bloomed Affini to begin with, no one would be surprised at a bureaucratic kerfuffle on your floret's behalf."

"You realize you just called Judy my floret," I said, grinning.

"Well, is she, or isn't she?"