It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 05
Chapter 5
Chapter Length: 3,500~ wordsDamn, Girl; You Live Like This?
Author's Note: Hi everyone! Out-of-universe Raqi here! I'm just popping in to update readers at the time of posting on some things going on behind-the-scenes with the story. So, while most HDG stories are developed in a serialised manner, ITT isn't: there are currently 26 completed chapters making up the entirety of book 1, and book 2 is fairly well underway at the moment. The reason for not releasing them all at once is basically just that stories get way less readers if you do it that way, and also a lot of people find that it's less memorable to binge read stuff than to take things more slowly.
The other reason - which is the point of this author's note - is that while the main chapters were finished when chapter 1 released, variable entries and thoughtforms were and still are not. Those are still actively being worked on, and sometimes have to be added to already released chapters; which means people who've already read them run the risk of missing them. As such, to combat this issue, I'm going to be writing a sort of 'patch notes' for the story each week making mention of any changes to previous chapters or new content added to them, so that those who want to do so can go back and look it over.
This week, the new additions include:
- An entry for the Rending Talon's ship AI, Straessa (can be seen in chapter 1)
- An entry for the removal paradox (can be seen in TerraTranslate thoughtform)
- The name of the qou race has been changed to 'qouel' (pronounced 'quell') because the original was a bit too blatant of a corru.observer reference lmao
- The start date for the story has also been changed from 2556 on the Accord calendar to 2560, three years after the last Free Terran rebels have been cleaned up; the purpose of which is to pre-empt some timeline issues that were at risk of cropping up in book 3. Nothing about the events of the story thus far has changed on account of this
- Raqi Marr now actually remembers to jump the ship in chapter 1, as opposed to continuing the story with it sat in space next to the Longbough. (The affini on board were all happy to wait until she remembered!)
Raqi made her way over to the door that she had entered through, pressing a button on the control console to force it to stay open, then passed through and out into the hallway. Punica followed behind her, having to duck down almost to her knees to avoid hitting her head on the top of the door frame. Fortunately the ceiling of the corridor outside was somewhat taller, and so she was just barely able to stand at her full height without needing to crouch. Raqi moved quite quickly through the corridors; more speedwalking than moving regularly. Whether that was how she moved normally, or a result of the anxiety she was presumably still feeling, Punica couldn't tell. Regardless, it was no trouble for the affini to keep up with her. Matching a humanoid even at a running pace would have been a matter of slowing herself down, rather than having to work to catch up. Something that she had noticed, though, was just how quickly Raqi had seemed to break out of her panic attack the moment she had been complimented. The way she had gone from dissociative and what seemed to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown, to a level of enthusiasm greater than any she had seen her display in their interactions prior, was quite hard to miss. It wasn't exactly difficult to imagine why. Punica knew that the standards of care for transgender people in many societies were borderline non-existent: that explained why a society that could create something like the Chimera module still had people like Raqi on pills, rather than regulated by implants or at the very least on injections. They were also relatively heavily discriminated against in many of the same places, and although Raqi had not yet said anything to suggest about the status of transgender people in Landamaeri society, her reaction suggested that was likely the case. It was very probable, Punica concluded, that she likely severely starved for positive affirmation. If that was the case, her reacting to a single 'good girl' in the right tone of voice with the humanoid equivalent of a stray dog being thrown a chunk of meat made perfect sense. It was also probably in part because of the gender affirming aspect; it was equally likely she'd had little of that either. If that was indeed the case, it was almost certain that Raqi would have developed some variety of trauma, or other mental health issues as a result. The amount of cases in which transgender people living in the aforementioned circumstances didn't were almost too few to count. Did the girl have any type of a support network? Punica suddenly wondered about the total absence of other sophonts on the Rending Talon. Not having any in-person company was one thing, but what of digital communications? If the Landamar Mobile Fleet was located beyond the Compact border, it was all but guaranteed that the ship wasn't equipped with any transponder strong enough to send or receive signals from them. That meant it was very likely that Punica was the first person she'd had a conversation with since she'd arrived in Compact space; potentially since she'd left her home. How long had she gone without sapient company? "Raqi," she spoke, breaking the silence that had settled between the two of them. "While we're walking, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"Oh, sure, yeah," Raqi replied openly. She was aware that she was walking rather faster than what was considered a normal walking pace in Landamar, but that wasn't anything out of the normal for her. Ever since childhood, she'd noticed that she had a tendency to always walk a significant distance in front of groups that she was in. She wasn't really sure why, but being far away and in front of groups of people seemed to help calm her down; and keeping some distance from Punica was certainly helping in that respect right now. The last ten minutes had been... something. After she had recovered from her meltdown in her quarters, Raqi had realised that she hadn't taken her meds yet that morning; or done any of her daily routine at all. So, she'd begun by doing her exercises, followed by heading to the shower and cleaning herself up; shaving; brushing her teeth; and then taking her pills. Except, when she'd gone to look for her pills, she'd found out that they weren't anywhere near where they should have been. This was about the opposite of a rare occurrence, so she just figured she'd left them somewhere. However, after checking most of the usual somewheres, she still couldn't find them. It was only then that she realised they might have ended up in the room she'd put Punica in: That room had been created from the fusion of around half a dozen other rooms, one of which she was pretty sure she had walked into with her pill bottles in her hands without noticing. It was pretty amazing the stuff you could do without realising it when you had an attention deficit disorder. So, she decided she had to head down and get them. She was undecided on whether she should just leave after that; she was still feeling at least partially unsteady, and didn't think engaging Punica in another hour-plus-long conversation would really go well for her at that moment. After some thought, she settled on a compromise: She had remembered that she needed to at least offer Punica some food, and so figured she could do that, then leave and spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do. What had actually happened, though, was that once she had finished feeding Punica mineral water in a process that had involved giving away substantially more than she should have about how the Chimera module functioned, she had tried to use it to manufacture a new batch of medication for herself; only to promptly realise the ship's chemistry synthesis unit no longer existed. This had then sent her into a massive panic attack on a scale even worse than the one she had had earlier. Before she had been able to slip fully into a dissociative state and begin catastrophising, however, something unexpected had happened. Punica had started talking to her. And that had been, um, well... In the first few instants after Punica had told her to look at her, she could recall feeling her awareness sort of shrink. That wasn't that unusual. But then, after she'd mentioned the medication to her, when she started talking after that... "I- I don't have any clue what they're composed of," she had said. "You don't need to know." Punica's reply had done something to her. It was like in that exact moment, her brain had just... stopped, more or less completely. The moment it happened was seared into her short term memory, and had been replaying practically on loop since then. She could recall the exact physical feeling in her body when it had happened: the sense of her awareness changing, shrinking at the periphery, as a sort of quiet suddenly seemed to fall over everything else. For the next twenty seconds or so, while she had been speaking, Raqi had not been conscious of anything at all except her words. There hadn't been a single anxious or otherwise panicky thought in her head. It was like her awareness had narrowed to a dot, focused entirely on the affini's face and words. Mostly her words though. Inos, her words. There had been something about her tone of voice that had felt like it had reached out and frozen her in place; as if it had demanded Raqi's absolute, undivided attention, and given her no choice but to provide it. More than just that aspect of it though, listening to it had just felt good. It was like each syllable she had spoken was scratching some invisible, hitherto unknown itch inside of her brain. Raqi sort of knew that sound had the ability to do that: She was relatively familiar with the theory behind how music influenced the brain in her species, and she also had a moderate amount of experience with it personally. She often used music tracks to alter or modify her emotional state, and there had been a few times she could remember when a pretty girl had opened her mouth and she'd just kind of, short circuited for a second. But it had been completely different when Punica did it. There, the short circuiting had lasted until the plant had stopped talking. She had a feeling that had she continued for long enough - maybe a full minute, or ninety seconds - she probably would have have started to snap out of it. It wasn't like her voice had completely stolen away her will or anything; it was more just like it had stunned her. But that had been achieved just through having the affini talk at her- admittedly while she was in a fairly susceptible state of mind, sure. But, even then, it was like... Inos, I am just too fucking susceptible to this kind of thing. When she'd written the part of The Plan.vodf warning about talking to one of the affini in person, it had been purely hypothetical at that time. She hadn't really thought that it was ever going to happen, and so the tone of that portion of the document had been relatively light-hearted. Certainly, it was all good advice; but you don't write to yourself in 20pt fully capitalised red text subheaders if you're taking something seriously. That's for when you're a little bit anxious about something, but still having fun with it. The entire time she had been writing, there had been a lingering thought in the back of her head that nobody could really get talked into willingly submitting themselves to domestication... right? After what had just happened to her, Raqi now completely believed that was possible. Not only possible, but in her case, probable if things kept going the way they were. She would need to try and pull herself together, and make sure the conversation did not go near anything that could possibly lead to- "I understand that you would prefer not to elaborate upon your search for a partner," she heard Punica say, interrupting her chain of thought. "But I am somewhat concerned about the circumstances in which you seem to be living at present." "Huh?" Raqi almost stopped mid-stride. "You mean here, on the Rending Talon?" "Yes. You are alone on this ship, correct?" "Yeah," she answered, somewhat hesitantly. "How long has that been the case for?" "Um. A while? I set off from Landamar... about three months ago? Though I spent like a month and a bit of that in cold sleep, so it's really only been about two." "You spent a month in cold sleep?" Raqi could hear the surprise in Punica's voice. "Uh, yeah. ...Is that weird?" "I-" There was a pause. "I'll want to talk about that later, but it's not important for now. Moving on: How many people have you spoken to since then?" Raqi was starting to feel slightly concerned. "Uhm... Do the affini who I sent out broadcasts to count?" "No, because - at least as far as I know - none of them have responded to you." Raqi was dimly aware that she was making absolutely no attempt to control the flow of the conversation. In fact, ever since the plant had called her a good girl about three minutes ago, she had noticed herself starting to behave downright cooperatively in the interaction. The reason for this was not hard to discern: She wanted her to call her it again. "Well, uhm... In that case, you would be the first one. But like, it's not as bad as it sounds! I was in cryosleep for more than a third of the journey, and I think I probably spent like two-thirds of a day on another month on a high dose of sleeping medication. So I've only actually been awake for about a month of that time, maybe a little bit less. And if you count the seven ship attacks, that's an interaction every three-to-four days on average. Even if they don't talk back, it still feels kinda sociable, you know? Like, it's still an interaction; even if there's no actual verbal communication involved. That's not that bad!" She heard the sound of footsteps that had been following her until now cease abruptly. She turned to see that Punica had stopped in her tracks, and was staring at her with a look of severe concern. "Raqi," she started, in a tone similar to that which a disapproving mother would use when speaking to a child who had just said something more than a little bit out of line, "what circumstances have you lived in which would lead to you describing blowing up a person's ship and broadcasting a threatening message to them as 'still feeling sociable'?" Her stomach dropped. In an instant, the sense of tentative excitement that had settled over her was washed away with the force of a flood; replaced with an all too familiar sinking sensation. She knew that look, and that tone of voice. That was the look of someone who didn't understand. That was the response she got whenever she made the mistake of saying something that didn't make any sense to normal people. Something that sounded perfectly normal to her, but that she didn't realise would be perceived as wrong by everyone else until it was too late. It was, she had learned, virtually impossible to recover from these situations. The moment you said something that broke the unspoken rules that governed all social interactions, there was no way to repair that hole. That was the moment you became an outsider: one of those people. She tried to force her face into a look of levity. "It was just a joke." Punica's face flattened even further. "Raqi. Please do not lie to me. I know you were not joking just then." The words, even though she knew they were coming, snuffed out the last flame of hope she had that it might be possible to avert what was happening. Now, she knew, it was too late. In Punica's eyes, she had now become something other. She had transgressed some sort of untransgressable boundary, and the only way she might escape from that position was to offer herself up in supplication. Should she openly repent of what she had said, or offer some other convincing explanation, Punica might spare her. It would only come at the small price of her identity; of her belief and conviction in her own actions. Sacrifice that, and she could be forgiven. Ice. Ice colder than that of the deepest glacier enveloped her heart. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick, and the entire world became cold and clear.
Punica waited for the other woman to answer her. She was more than concerned now: what she was hearing was downright worrying. This was not normal behaviour; not for any sophont, regardless of their race. This was simply not the kind of thing that one said, even in jest, anywhere within the Affini Compact. It would have been one thing if it was just a joke in poor taste - she would almost certainly have chosen to overlook it, were that the case - but it was abundantly clear that Raqi had not been joking when she had said that. She really did mean that she viewed her acts of piracy, consisting entirely of hostile interactions, as something at least passably within the bounds of 'normal social interaction.' That was not normal. That was alarming, and Punica needed to know why it was the case. Because depending on the answer, her assessment about whether or not Raqi was dangerous may have just been revealed to be incorrect. "What business is it," said a voice almost entirely unlike the one that had been talking up until just a moment ago, "of yours?" Raqi's posture had changed. Gone was the nervous energy and anxious mannerisms that had suffused her every word and movement until just a moment ago; replaced instead with the same featureless, expressionless mask that she had seen several times during their first face-to-face conversation. She stood completely still, her breathing slowing to a measured, steady rhythm, as her hands fell stiffly to her sides. "I have no intention of answering you." Punica felt the vines and foliage around her core tense. She realised in an instant what had happened: something she had done had triggered Raqi. What she was seeing now was some sort of dissociative mode; presumably a defence brought up in response to a perceived threat. That was why it had appeared earlier, when the two had first begun speaking to each other. This time, however, the manifestation seemed much more severe; there was no hint of the slight nervousness, nor the vulnerability, that had been present in its first appearance. Instead, every piece of Raqi's countenance radiated pure, undisguised hostility. "I apologise," Punica said, immediately. She hoped that if she were to act deferentially enough, she might be able to defuse the response and return Raqi to her previous state. "I did not mean it as a criticism. My comment came from a place of concern, on account of-" "Concern?" She practically spat the word. "For what, exactly? The fact that I don't talk to very many people? Or that I don't mind having my social needs fulfilled by playing the role of an antagonist?" Punica was taken aback. The latter remark, in particular, took her completely by surprise. Before she could think of a response, Raqi continued: "Weren't you just saying earlier that it didn't matter how a person changed; only what the change itself was? A social interaction is a social interaction. Whatever terms it's carried out on, it still fulfills the basic herd animal desire to be part of a community. Even if the 'part' you're taking is of the opposition." She raised one hand in an open gesture. "As long as my need for connection is fulfilled, it doesn't really matter how it happens, does it?" "That," Punica said, her voice quiet, "is taking my logic and applying it within a completely different context. The act of socialising has value far outside of its necessity for social species to remain healthy-" "No, it doesn't." Raqi cut her off before she could finish, her tone flat. "It has no value whatsoever. The evolution of social behaviours was a mistake. If species had never evolved to work together in large numbers, the need for cooperative behaviour would never have arisen. In turn, the need for societies and for states to regulate that behaviour would never have arisen. Concepts such as hierarchy, and methods of social organisation which dictate in what ways individuals are or are not allowed to act would never have arisen." She was gritting her teeth now. "The endless misery that comes with trying to conform to the arbitrary, inane social standards set by the majority populations of your species would never have come into existence." Raqi breathed in, and then out again, her entire upper body heaving with the motion. "It would have been better if no sapient species had ever existed. If none of us had ever evolved beyond animals, digging in the mud." There was silence. The vines that trailed from Punica's form lay completely still, the only motion in her body the gentle, slow beating of her core. For a long moment, Raqi continued to stare at her with hate-filled eyes. Slowly, however, as the affini watched, the fire began to weaken. Second by second, the anger seemed to fade away, like the slowly dying light of a candle: until one moment, it was gone. In that instant, the only thing Punica saw staring at her was a sad, frightened young woman. Raqi's lips closed. She broke eye contact with Punica, and her brow began to quiver; her lips and the muscles around her face shaking. She turned her head, and then the rest of her body to face away from her. And then, without another word, she began to walk. Silently, Punica followed after her.
Story Recommendation: Soar Higher, Fall Farther, by SapphicSounds Soar Higher, Fall Farther is the pred-prey story within HDG. As the description suggests, it features a floret - Florence - going up against an affini - Adrasteia - in a series of bouts on a planet in which they alternate between trying to murder each other and breaking down into bouts of highly graphic, very kinky sex; occasionally doing both at once. The story isn't very long or particularly plot heavy, but for those who like that kind of thing, it has got some of the hottest sex scenes I've seen written in a HDG story. It also does an excellent job of capturing the essence of what makes pred-prey hot as a kink; alternating between depicting the intensity involved in wanting to hunt down one's prey, and the fear and arousal when the roles are flipped and one becomes the prey. I ended up taking quite a bit of inspiration from this to write some pred-prey scenes of my own much, much later in this story, and in my head I was basically just writing my own version of this story because the original was so good that I couldn't help but want to produce my own takes on a lot of the ideas and concepts depicted there. Final Review: Indirectly made me aware that every single one of my partners apparently wants to be eaten by a giant bird, which was a rather pleasant discovery to make.