The chair was just a little too big, but Haven sat perfectly upright in it, the sarcotesta doing all the work. It was nice to be able to do that — rex in a position that she'd otherwise have to work at holding, that would become tiring, that would give rise to the urge to fidget. She was going to miss that when the sarcotesta came off, she thought. Maybe there was some way to modify her body to be able to do this little trick even without the sarcotesta in pce. She'd have to remember to ask Xanthisma about that. Maybe after the meeting, maybe at her next checkup. There was no rush.

  The affini were all talking back and forth, and Haven was still a little nervous, even with the cyclokatapnothane suppressing her worst impulses. It was hard not to be nervous in a meeting, even an affini meeting — being seated at a table while serious conversation went on around her had a way of dredging up icky memories, or at least the emotions associated with those memories. They weren't impulse thoughts, just pces her mind wandered as she tried not to focus too closely on what was happening around her.

  Because if she did, it'd only be scarier. They were debating whether Tara was going to have to be domesticated or not. Not directly, not in so many words — they were talking about Haven, of course. But if she was domesticated, then Tara would be too. And it felt wrong to be effectively making a decision for them. It wasn't her pce to determine where Tara's life would lead. She wasn't their boss anymore, and that was a good thing.

  She wished she was back in bed, cuddled up with Tara. She wished she were at the office, either doing busywork for them or bent over their desk. She just wanted them to be happy, and if she could manage it she wanted to be the reason they were happy.

  And they would be happy — she knew that. But there was a difference between the one kind of happy and the other. She wanted to be enough for Tara. Was that greedy? Maybe. But she still wanted it.

  She jumped as a vine stroked her back. "Still with us, flower?" Anix said, smiling down at her.

  It took her a moment to gather her thoughts enough to respond. "Sorry, yes."

  "It's quite alright, little one," Orchis said, his iridescent foliage shining a thousand shifting colors in the light pouring into the room from above. "I was just saying how impressed I am with your improvement on the cyclokatapnothane. Anix's reports on your training to cope with the executive function difficulties it causes seem to indicate a positive trend."

  "And it's very likely we can titrate her dosage down over time," Thyrsiflora added. "That, combined with the removal of the sarcotesta, will further improve her ability to care for herself."

  "And of course, she won't be alone. She'll have her adorable little partner Tara to give her a nudge, even if the hab AI and conditioning don't quite do the trick." Anix coiled a vine around Haven and gave her a little squeeze. "And all her little friends at the office game, to boot. She's got strong community support, and I have high confidence she'll be able to live her best life entirely on her own terms."

  Anix, at least, was on her side about this. That was nice.

  "I'm inclined to agree," Thyrsiflora said, "but I still want to keep seeing her regurly for the foreseeable future. She has a lot of trauma left to unpack. Once I can be certain of the effect xenodrugs will have on her, that'll be a much more straightforward process, of course."

  "Wait, so..." It took Haven a moment, but as always, the affini were patient with her. "I'm not getting domesticated, then?"

  "Not unless you want to be." Orchis grinned. His needle-like teeth were just as iridescent as the rest of his foliage. "Is that your way of volunteering, flower?"

  "Uhm. No, thank you?"

  "You'll still be staying with me for some time." Anix's vines coiled a little tighter around her. "But it'll be purely an advanced medical care wardship. No question of domestication unless you experience some kind of dire health issue-"

  "Unlikely in the extreme," Xanthisma chittered.

  "-or you suffer some kind of behavioral colpse, which, now that you're on the cyclokatapnothane, I think is just as unlikely to occur. As far as your management of your executive function issues are concerned, you are improving by the day. We are all very proud of you, little one." She ruffled Haven's hair as punctuation.

  "Thank you," she said, her heart light even as it continued its metronome-like beat. "I guess... I didn't think it would be so easy. I thought... y'know. I thought I'd have to do more."

  "Now whyever would we make you do more? The more we make you do, the less we can do for you." Orchis ughed, his vines reaching across the table and joining Anix's in stroking her. "You're going to do just fine, Haven. With the intrusive thoughts you've been coping with and the chronodispcement on top of it, it's no wonder you're a little slow to really internalize what life in the Compact is like for xenosophonts, but you're getting there, bit by bit."

  "And that really is all we ask of you," Xanthisma added. "To understand that we will always be here for you, and to be happy. Everything else is detail work, and if there is one thing we Affini love, it's digging into the details."

  "All this to say," Orchis continued, "that I wish you the very best in your new life in the Compact. You'll be seeing more of Xanthisma and Thyrsiflora on a regur basis, but as far as these meetings are concerned, it's time for management of your case to shift to a more hands-off mode. Don't worry, though," he added with a wink of one of his several eyes, one of his vines sliding a sheet of paper across the table to her, "I'm sure we'll see one another around, here and there."

  Haven leaned forward, picking up the paper. It was a form, beautiful like all Affini forms were, the ink still wet. She couldn't read a word of it, but she had a feeling what it was. "And that's really it?"

  "That's really it. Unless there are any sudden, st-minute objections, this committee finds Haven Hudds-Friday not incapable of caring for herself in the long-term, with residential medical care to continue by Anix Glycyrrhiza, 10th Bloom, until such time as an outpatient model for Haven's care can be established." With one st pat of her head, his vines withdrew. "Unless and until she decides otherwise, in which case, may the best affini win her heart."

  Haven still wasn't entirely sure she wasn't dreaming this. But as the other affini began to stand, and as Anix's vines began helping her down from her chair, the reality began to sink in. "That's... really it?"

  "That's it," Anix said, kneeling down in front of her and giving her the warmest of smiles. "I imagine I'll need to tell you so a few more times, but that's not that unusual. You'll integrate it into your worldview eventually though, and you'll settle in to a long and happy life surrounded by friends and loved ones without concern for whether your needs will be met. Those friends and loved ones will help, as most of them have long since taken that step. And you will be happy. We refuse to accept the alternative."

  "...yeah." Haven pulled her lips into a smile. It was good practice, but it also just reflected how she was feeling on the inside, and she wanted Anix to know. "Yeah. I think I'm starting to get that." She lifted her head just a little, as if to meet Anix's gaze. "Thank you. For everything."

  "My sweet, wonderful little Haven, every moment has been my absolute pleasure, and that's not about to change anytime soon." Her vine found its way into Haven's hand. "Now. Shall we go find Tara and deliver the news?"

  Haven gave the vine a squeeze. "Yeah. Let's do that."

  "I trust we are all up to date regarding the revetions about Trish's status as a hemerosyncretic ward?" The uneasy chorus of affini noises from around the table was all the answer Scoparia needed, and the only sign Trish needed they were all as bent out of shape about the affair as Tsuga and Polyphyl had been.

  Trish did her best not to slump in her oversized seat. A few days had taken the edge off the emotional fatigue of crying all over Lay, but the weight was still there, magnified by the inescapable dread of the hearing. After everything that had happened — after the revetion that Koer had been using her to bait feralists into domestication, and that every affini she met who learned about the matter was desperate to drug and domesticate her for the sake of salving the hurt — there was no way she was coming out of this meeting with her freedom, such as it was, intact.

  "We have, indeed, been thoroughly briefed on the affair," Ephedra said. Her little white flowers drooped, the nonexistent breeze they normally swayed in uncommonly still. "Both by your memo and through subsequent contact with the Long-Term Nothocultural Regution Division."

  "Record of memo exchange between Trisha Serrano Wardship Committee and Long-Term Nothocultural Regution Division, Solstice Branch, may be found in Appendix Y-1," Vaccaris added. Even he seemed somber, though Trish might simply have been reading that into his otherwise impermeable facade.

  "A terrible thing," Agonis said, shaking her head with a sound of riffling foliage.

  "On that, we are quite in agreement," Scoparia said, nodding and producing a folder seemingly from nowhere. It was than an inch thick, thin by any Affini standard. "I therefore submit an amended record for Trish Serrano for the purposes of this committee's work." She opened the the folder, and extracted from within it a number of even thinner folders, which she distributed one by one to the other affini at the table.

  Trish's heart was in her throat. She had never seen a file that small be produced at a wardship committee hearing and referred to as a record. Everything, her entire future, was riding on what had to be, at most, a handful of pages.

  Despite its small size, the affini all took their time perusing the contents, mumbling softly to themselves. "And you believe this is the correct course of action?" Ephedra said at st, closing the folder in front of her.

  "I do," Scoparia said. "Any previously acquired information has been rendered totally moot by Koer Antirrhi's work with Trish, up to the point at which the hypnotic programming they had inserted into her colpsed under the weight of observation. I have compiled this new record based exclusively on what I have observed since that time."

  Everything, Trish realized, now rode upon the st few days — days she'd spent as a rapidly disintegrating emotional wreck. I'm completely fucked, she thought, her breath escaping her in a long, drawn-out exhation.

  "No medical objections," Soral said. "She's certainly healthy enough to proceed."

  This was it. It had all been leading up to this. Every other wardship had merely been a stay of execution, granted by Koer for as long as she was useful.

  "Psychologically..." Agonis fluffed out her multicolored foliage. "Yes, I suppose you're correct. Lacking any direct observation myself since the incident, working exclusively from this information and my present evaluation of Trish's emotional state, I concur."

  Ephedra nodded, closed the folder, and pulled a rge form from a stack in front of her. "Very well," she said, expressing a bit of ink from the tip of a vine and inscribing something on it with a businesslike flourish.

  Trish braced herself. This was it.

  "The Wardship for Trisha Serrano, human, of Solstice, is hereby concluded," she said, continuing to mark up the form. Vaccaris mirrored every movement of her vines precisely on his own blotter, filling in three identical copies at once.

  There was no going back. Nothing left to do but accept what was coming.

  "The recommendation of Trisha Serrano's guardian, Scoparia Cryptantha, Fourth Bloom, is unanimously accepted by the committee."

  It was always going to end this way. She'd known that.

  "Trisha Serrano is hereby adjudged not intractably feral, and sufficiently competent physically and mentally to remain independent."

  You fought for as long as you could, and- "Wait, what?" Trish muttered, lifting her head.

  "You're free to go, little one," Ephedra said, making a final mark on the paperwork in front of her.

  "A copy of the order is provided for the very adorable human Trisha Serrano," Vaccaris said, sliding one of the three forms in front of him across the table. "It is recommended to allow a moment for the ink to dry before folding or storing the document."

  "I'll take care of it for now, thank you Vaccaris," Scoparia said, her vines deftly lifting the sheet of paper without any difficulty. "I think perhaps it's best I give you a little assistance, yes?" The vines were coiling around Trish before she could say another word, not that any were springing to mind. She was still far too much in shock for anything even approaching nguage at the moment.

  "Best of luck, little flower," Agonis said, fluffing out her feathery foliage, "and remember, we are always here for you, should you have need of us."

  Trish could only nod dumbly as Scoparia scooped her up into her arms and carried her out of the meeting room, out of the lushly forested annex and into the open air of Parthenocissus. It took her several minutes to finally manage speech. "What just happened?" she said, barely above a whisper.

  "Your wardship was terminated," Scoparia said, "and you have been recognized as an independent sophont once more."

  "But...why?"

  "Are you saying you would like to volunteer?" Her voice was cheerful, pyful — she was fully aware Trish did not. Something in her eyes still fshed a hungry shade of green, though.

  "You know what I mean," Trish said, furrowing her eyebrows. "I wasn't expecting you to-"

  "To do precisely what I said I would do? Trish, petal, did I not tell you that my primary metric for assessing your capability for shedding feral ideology was your retionship to Lay Sequi? Did I not say that, if you were able to reconcile with her of your own free will, that it would show that your ideological distaste for florets was something you could naturally overcome?"

  Trish blinked. Scoparia had said that, during the first wardship meeting. How had she forgotten? She never forgot that sort of-

  "Naturally, at the time, I did not know that said ideological distaste was locked in pce by decades of hypnotic buttressing. Without that in the way, you overcame the obstacle easily — easily enough that I feel safe in allowing you to tend to the matter yourself." She paused at the edge of the pza, lowering Trish to the ground, supporting her until she was certain that Trish was ready to stand on her own. "Which is not to say that I will not be resuming my intended role as your social worker. You may expect to see me regurly, so don't sck on that work or we'll be right back where we started, alright?" A single vine gave Trish a gentle boop on the nose.

  "And that's...that's really it?" Trish could stand, but only just. The world seemed to be spinning around her — which, technically, as a cylinder hab, it was, only she was spinning right along with it.

  "That's really it." Scoparia knelt down, her eyes level with Trish's, and reached up to stroke her cheek with a single finger. "Little one, nothing would make me happier than to make you my floret, but this exercise has not been about what makes me happiest. You are a marvelous little creature in your own right. Without interference beyond a little css-Z cocktail to help you sleep through a traumatic time in your life and a few carefully arranged opportunities to meet with an estranged friend, you reached out to her. Quite literally, in fact. The moment I saw you take Lay's hand was the moment I knew you were ready to find your own happiness in the Compact."

  Trish steadied herself, reaching up to grab Scoparia's wrist for bance. "What's the catch? There's got to be a catch."

  "While I understand why you would search for one, given recent revetions, there is no catch, no trick, no subtle machinations." Scoparia smiled gently, ruffling Trish's hair with her other hand. "Trish, my dear, I am old enough to be patient. One day — some decades from now, I should think, at the very least — you will inevitably require an elder care wardship, perhaps even domestication. I will still be here. I can wait that long. You have lived in the Compact for sixty years, but now you will finally be able to properly experience it. That is my gift to you."

  She shivered. There was something in Scoparia's eyes, like the sunline on the ke just behind her, glimmering in a way that her eye couldn't quite look away from. "Your gift?"

  "To you," Scoparia said. "Would you like to take a day to adjust to this before seeking accommodations elsewhere? My hab is always open to you."

  Trish swallowed. Her throat was dry. She needed to hydrate. "Yeah," she said, "I think that's a good idea."