It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 27
Chapter 27
Chapter Length: 4,000~ wordsPost-Separation Snuggling
"Punica...!" There should have been hesitation, Raqi felt; some degree of nervousness at the thought of how she ought to react to the sight of the rebloomed affini. There was so much complication in her emotions regarding the situation: On one hand, it had been her who had caused Punica to rebloom. She was the reason Punica Granatum was now Punica Granatum, Second Bloom, and when she thought of that fact, she felt as if the right thing to do would have been to get down on her knees and apologise, then wait for her judgement to come. But what actually happened was that, within a moment of exclaiming the affini's name, Raqi found herself running towards her. She didn't know what she intended by the motion, she barely even understood how to hug other people- Fortunately for her, she wasn't burdened with having to understand it. Vines wrapped around her and took hold of her arms and legs, and she was lifted off of the ground and pressed up against the warm, wonderfully rustling foliage which she craved so deeply. The moment she felt the touch of leaves against her skin, tears began to well up in her eyes, and the facade of composure she had been trying to drum up fell apart. She began to sniffle almost immediately, pressing her head as close into the leaves as far as she could, while the vines' grip continued to tighten soothingly around her. "I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I killed you. I'm s-sor-" "Hush, little one." A vine brushed down Raqi's cheek, and shivers of tactile sensation sent her thought process spiralling away into oblivion. "You have suffered enough this past week. For now, it is time to rest." "Wh-" Raqi was confused. "But, I-" "No." There was a firmness in the affini's voice that stopped the words before they could even form in Raqi's throat. "You are not at fault here, flower. And you will relax." The girl's eyes widened, and then- and... then... everything suddenly seemed to slow down so much. The inside of her head suddenly felt fuzzy and warm, rather than cold and in pain the way it had just a moment ago. She knew this feeling; it was the way she felt whenever she hurt awfully and it was one of the rare occasions there was actually someone to comfort her, rather than her being forced to endure it all alone. It was like a combination of a buzzing and a tingling that seemed to sweep her attention up and away from all of the pain, drawing her focus towards the source of the sensation and inexorably relaxing her. She tried to resist it at first, feeling as if she shouldn't be the one being comforted right now- but there was absolutely no give at all. She was so weak, and Punica- Punica was unbelievably strong. When last she had seen her plant, there had been so much hesitation- so much doubt and vascillation- but right now at least, there was none of that. Her affini wanted her to relax, and she would relax. "Good girl." The words sent the same shiver through Raqi that they always did, but this time they had another effect. The shiver seemed to work its way down into her core, and Raqi felt her mind uncurling even as her body did the exact opposite. She was too weak, too shaken to keep her guard up in the moment, and as a result, Punica's rhythm was making its way inside of her. It frightened her, and she felt her mind reaching out for a familiar cold-
When no further instructions were forthcoming from her conductor, Raqi's sharp attentiveness slowly settled down into a pleasured listlessness. It had been such a very long time since she had been able to feel this good, and she was intent on enjoying it as much as she could. Doing so was made much easier by just how mesmerising Punica was to watch; she found herself getting lost over and over again in her plant's eyes and the small smiles that flickered on and off of her face for reasons Raqi couldn't speculate about.
Nothing was perfect, though, and as much as Raqi wished that she could remain similarly thoughtless forever, her limited attention span dictated otherwise. For all that she adored staring into her plant's eyes, they were not quite stimulating enough to keep her enthralled indefinitely without any other kind of engagement, and eventually, her mind began wandering in order to keep itself occupied. The first thoughts that came to her mind were ones of gratitude; how lucky she was that this was actually happening to her, how happy and relieved she felt that she was able to feel this way, and still a little surprised - though she was still much too pacified for it to be any more than that - that Punica was keeping to her word of not infringing upon her mind.
She had wanted this so, so much, but just hadn't felt safe enough to ask for it. Perhaps the bliss she felt right now might have been strong enough to make some people question why they had even hesitated, but Raqi knew herself well enough that even being placed in such a state could not strip her of the awareness of the many complications inherent even now in her situation. She recalled the words she had spoken while stood next to Punica's still-inert core some days ago, how confession after confession had come tumbling out of her mouth one after another without any ability to stop it. She had known even at the time how dangerous it was to say any of those things, on the unlikely off-chance that Punica could somehow hear her even while reblooming, but she hadn't been able to stop herself. It had been, on some level, as if she had wanted the affini to hear all of those things.
No- there was no ambiguity about it; she had wanted Punica to hear them. She was just too afraid to say them to the plant's face for fear that doing so would get her domesticated, and had taken the opportunity presented by her reblooming to finally get everything off her chest. As she lay there drifting, part of her still hoped that she had been right about her worries, and that Punica would turn out to have heard every word that she'd said. It was so hard continuing not to trust- maybe even too hard. At some point, she knew that she was going to run out of strength to hold up the barriers between them, and she was starting to suspect that it would be sooner rather than later.
As Punica gazed down at the small creature held gently in her arms, her core was filled to the brim with a feeling of serenity. Raqi looked for everything in the universe like the picture of tranquility; she was gazing up at Punica with a look of the utmost peace and adoration, her body language one of total relaxation and trust. Gone was the fear and the anxiety that Punica had felt stirring within her the moment they had made eye contact, and in its place now lay a docile and passive little animal.
Oh, Everbloom... She is so beautiful like this. She was unable to stop herself from reaching down with a hand to caress Raqi's hair. The small exhalations of pleasure that the xenosophont let out in time with the movement of her thumb through its feathers threatened to melt Punica's core, and she had to wrench her hand away after only half a minute of petting lest she become overwhelmed. Roots... I feel as if I can understand how other affini become so addicted to doting upon their pets, now that I have seen this. How could anyone ever restrain themselves from coddling them, when they are just so precious like this?
Yet even as she thought the words, Punica was in fact holding back. For as much joy as the sight of Raqi like this brought her, she was keenly aware after her recent realisations that this sight was as precious as it was in large part because of its rarity. Were she to give in to the urge to smother the xenosophont in the same bliss that she was feeling right now all of the time, it could not possibly retain the magic which it currently held. This, and a dozen other reasons, all served to provide her with restraint enough not to give in to the urge to break her word and push further into Raqi's mind.
She thought, then, of the conversation which she had overheard Raqi having while she was still reblooming. She had considered bringing it up with the xeno, but eventually decided against it. She was not certain in the first place whether Raqi had intended for her to hear those words, and part of her strongly suspected that the girl had not thought Punica would be able to. Were she to reveal all that she had heard to her, that too would likely force their relationship; and that was still not something she wanted to do. I will speak to her of it eventually, if she does not come to me first; but for now, let her rest. We have spoken enough of complex topics and the future, and it is clear that she needs this.
The core-wrenching indecision that had gripped her for the last day-and-a-half of her reblooming now felt like nothing more than a distant memory. When she thought of the stress she had been under mere minutes ago, Punica realised that she had needed this as well.
Minutes passed, and eventually, Raqi's persistent need for stimulation grew to the point that more cogent thoughts were able to form in her mind. She still felt delightfully sluggish, but it was more the kind of slowness that one felt when trying to get out of bed than the full-on mindlessness it had been at the point of her induction. Mm... mh. She cast her attention around the inside of her own mind, finding that the feeling of her own presence reverberating around her skull could somehow cause slight pleasurable ripples. This is... weeeeird. Why can I... still think like this? Her mindvoice turned amused. Is having no attention span... really enough to overcome an affini's biorhythm? She felt the corners of her lips turning upwards. The thought was so stupid that she felt as if it couldn't be right; but that was very often an indicator that it was indeed true. That's... so dumb. Our brains... really are so stupid. She imagined for a moment how a particularly haughty affini might react to a xenosophont breaking out of trance simply by virtue of getting bored mid-induction, and the thought was so funny that it almost broke her out of her own trance. Fucking hell- mmmweh. At just that moment, a finger ran through her feathers just the once, and she very nearly plummeted all the way back down to where she had started. It took her another half-minute to recover again. Inos, *fuck* that feels good... hhrrn. It occurred to her that there was something strangely familiar about her current state. It made sense that it would be; she had been hypnotised countless times before, but that wasn't what she was noticing right now. Instead, her mind was focused on an unusual sensation that seemed to be present at the very edge of her mind. That... feels kind of odd. That's not just a trance feeling, is it...? She focused harder on the feeling. No, that's... Wait, hold on a second. It feels kind of like ████████'s presence used to feel? That made no sense, though: ████████ was gone, and Raqi hadn't felt her presence in headspace in years. She scrutinized the presence, turning it around in her awareness as if it were a physical object with a texture and a feel to it. To her surprise, it was indeed not the presence that belonged to ████████. Mindspace presences were inherently indescribable in terms of how they felt, but they still possessed distinctive characteristics that could be used to tell them apart. These, too, could not really be put into words; but Raqi knew for a fact that the one she was currently feeling was not one she had ever felt before. It was... sort of green? ████████'s had been an orange-red, and she didn't know what colours hers was; but she knew for certain that no one in their system had ever been green. There was only really one other possibility for who it could belong to, and when Raqi realised it, her eyes very nearly shot wide open. P-Punica? Is- Is that Punica? *Atataymi pitak*, how-? Breaking out of trance through attention deficit was one thing, but feeling Punica's presence inside of her head as if the affini were her headmate was something else all together. That, she was certain, should not have been possible. Uh. Am I tripping? Have I developed a Punica fictive? What the fuck? This- this is fucking weird. It took her a moment to figure out what to do with the sensation. Shit, I mean: I guess there's one way to find out what's up with it? She focused, bringing her attention together and mentally 'reaching out' towards the presence. He-llo? Is this, uhm, Punica? She imagined her own mind brushing up against the foreign presence, pulling it towards her and inviting its attention towards hers- The vines holding her jolted. They did not drop her, but they came very close for a moment, and when they settled back down again, Raqi felt much less give in their surfaces than there had been before; as if they had grown more like the rigid corded-steel cables she knew them to be than the soft, spongy appendages they disguised themselves as. Raqi looked up to see Punica's eyes had gone wide, and the plant was now staring past her with a look of complete bafflement on her face. This caused Raqi's eyes to widen in turn, and she immediately snapped out of trance, letting out an instinctive: "Oh shit." Punica immediately turned her gaze back upon Raqi. "R-Raqi?" Almost instantly, her previous composure returned; her vines softening once more, and her voice taking on a calming tone. "Is everything alright?" "Y-yeah, just fine, uh- You twitched just a second ago. Did-" It felt almost ludicrous to voice her question, and for a moment, she almost gaslit herself into thinking she might have been imagining it; but the timing was just too convenient to be a coincidence. "Did you, uh, feel something just a second ago?" The plant's eyes slowly widened again. "I- I did." Then, they narrowed into a look of intense contemplation. "Raqi, was that you? Did you send that sensation to me somehow?" "Uh." Raqi began blinking rapidly. "I- I have no idea what that felt like on your end, but, uh- I did in fact try to do a thing. I... didn't even remotely expect that it would work, but it, uhhh- apparently did?" "I have never felt anything like that before in my life." Gone once again was the affini's composure, and she was back to sounding openly bewildered. "What did you do?" "Um." The xenosophont suddenly felt very small with the plant staring at her like that. "S-so, when I was in trance, I noticed a... feeling, sorta? A- a sort of presence, in my head; right around where my headmates used to be. I, um- I thought I was just imagining it at first, because I didn't know what the void else it could be- but I tried reaching out for it because I thought 'hey, why not?' and, uh- I-" She smiled awkwardly. "I think, maybe, that was you?" Punica blinked. "Oh."
Book 2
withering away :: The Prism System :: Intoxicants ::
Book 1
TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: The Affini Compact :: Landamar Mobile Fleet :: Hormone Replacement Therapy :: The Chimera Module :: Affini :: Intersidera :: Posters :: Magnesium :: Wonderland :: The Hundredth Time: Part I :: Communication :: aftermath :: Physical Confrontation :: Garments :: Interspecies Comparisons :: Touch :: Equality :: Hypnokink :: Speaking :: ahftrojn,lpijmnhfkg :: Pretheya :: Magic :: scared :: Materas Marr ::