Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #42 – Antinomy of Common Flowers

“Nyaaaa!”

That weird attempt at meowing shook Lily to the core, right as Oleander started rubbing her cheek on hers, tenderly wrapping her arms around the taller rhizome’s body. Lily couldn’t take her sight away from the fake cat ears Oleander was wearing, from the fake furry tail hanging down her hips. Her long red hair was hiding her human ears too, making it look like the props on her head were the only way she could actually hear. Lily felt her own lymph production accelerating, her heartbeat running wild. Oleander. Was purring. Like a house cat. Or, at least, trying to, in a convincing imitation that made Lily shiver, her hand tremble, her lips gasp for air. Her swollen eye was still wet with her leaked water, freshly wiped away. Yet, Oleander didn’t let her sulk in that sadness. She wrapped Lily with her neck vines, kissed her skin, all while meowing and purring. Lily couldn’t help but let out a tired smile, patted Oleander’s head, caressed her fake cat ears.

“It’s enough, Lea. It’s… enough. Thanks.”

“Nya, it’s nyo enough! You’re still too sad…”

Another kiss, this time on her rose. Oleander’s teeth delicately closed around the petals, her tongue played with them too, sucking a little bit of lymph still lingering on them. Lily shivered, trembled, as she failed to control her body reactions. Lea. Lea was so precious. Lily wanted to suck her pollen, to bite her eye flower too. She wanted to kiss her, to hug her till the sun rose again. Yet, something stopped her. The dread. The weight of her situation. Of their situation. She gently pushed Oleander away, heaved a sigh.

“Lily…?”

“Not… now, Lea.”

“Huh.”

Lily wiped the water out of her eye, tried to keep the reactions of her body under control. The news channel was playing live on the small PV screen, one antediluvian model that flattened everything to a surface and didn’t allow for that rich presence she was accustomed to. Pictures of what once was New Bablyon, of the Lagash area, of the ashen field that replaced the city. Pictures of her speech. Pictures of burned rhizomes, crucified rhizomes, decapitated rhizomes, all while humans chanted Lagash’s name, in a sort of religious frenzy. Even now, in that dilapidated lab two hundred and fifty kilometers south of the seedship, she wondered how much time was left, before the end came. Two hundred rhizomes of all models and classes were stashed inside those premises, trying to turn everything operational again in record time. All to protect the Grove. She felt water leaking from her eye again. But, before she could wipe it, Oleander licked it, savored it, delicately twisting her tongue in front of Lily’s eye. Lily shivered again, her hand clasped around her lower body, trying to stop it from acting funny.

“Nyaaa, your water tastes so good…”

Another purr, another meow. Oleander wasn’t wearing anything at all, except those fake ears and that fake tail, which made it even harder for Lily to keep her cool. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the warmth of all that skin making contact with hers – and failing miserably.

“Lea, p… please… I…”

She paused for a second, right as the fake cat tail stroked her belly. Lily gritted her teeth, shook her head.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Bullshit.”

Oleander’s fingers closed around her jaw, forcing her eyes to lock.

“You’ve overworked your ass without rest for the past five years, you’ve done more than all of us combined! You… deserve some time to cool down, Li.”

“I caused this. It’s all my fault. If only I didn’t open the vault…”

The preacher. That weird woman with the gas mask. She warned her. She warned her while risking her life. But Lily didn’t. Listen. Now, the world was getting devoured by a swarm of nanomachines, one that knew no pity, no remorse. One that only knew how to destroy. And, in the meanwhile, rhizomes were killed everywhere, immolated to the gods to stop the apocalypse – even if said gods didn’t exist or didn’t care. Lily stared down, trying to quench her emotions. Because of her actions, so many of her sisters were being sacrificed in vain, martyrs for a cause they didn’t even know they were fighting for. If that weren’t enough, Eastcol and Pangean troops were now attacking what was left of the headless New Netherlands, with thousands of soldiers and Seraph flying armor suits storming the eastern border, razing the temporary capital, taking control of whatever interim government tried to keep a semblance of order. Casualties in the thousands already, fights breaking in every street, in every corner of the world. Even in the face of the apocalypse, humans managed to make things worse than they were. That made her feel sick. That made her feel dry. Yet, that dryness was wetted again by Oleanders tongue, that sickness soothed by her purrs.

“Nyaaa, it’s all because of that man, Anthony whatshisname! That failsafe was bull, I tell you! Scaredy humans doing scaredy things. Wanna keep being at the top of the food chain, whatevs happens. So, screw you, future us: if you create another intelligent race, you’re gonna die – good game, not sorry. That sounds like them – sore losers, here’s what they nyare.”

Lily blinked at her, at the constant stream of meows and nyas. Those were more than a simple imitation. They almost felt like the real thing. Which, admittedly, made her quest for keeping her reactions in check way harder than it had the right to be.

“…how have you become so good at playing cat?”

Oleander winked, rubbed her cheek once again against hers.

“Learned from my little Kurbis. Observed him for the past three nyears, while taking care of him! All for this moment, nya catgirl-loving-freak!”

Lily caressed Oleander’s hair with her human fingers. Her warm embrace was turning her lymph production up, even if she tried to contain it. Hormones didn’t work that way, and she was painfully aware of it. But keeping her cool, as the leader of the rhizomes of the world, the wall of ice behind which everyone else found refuge, was adamant. She couldn’t flinch. She couldn’t yield, no matter how much her body burned. Still, in the exact moment Lily saw Lea in that impromptu catgirl ‘outfit’ (or lack thereof), her brain turned to a soup of neurons, with all resources and computing power being directed away from her head and down to other places, places that took over the decision making process. Her face when she opened the door to her personal room and found Oleander dozing on the sofa while wrapped in just that artificial tail had to be priceless.

“Nyaaa! Welcome home!”

“Lea…?”

“Meow! Meoooow! I wanted to give nya a big prize, after nyour bold speech, a little something I’ve prepared for a looooong time.”

Two seconds later, Lily found herself pinned on said sofa, with Lea meowing and purring, while riding on top of her lap and wearing a mischievous smirk, moving up and down Lily’s body, awakening all sorts of weird sensations that lay dormant in her heart. Still, the weight of that day, of the coming end of the world, made that all redundant, useless. Window dressing. That looming darkness took Lily out of the mood. Made her refuse that ‘gift’. Made her push Lea away. Now, she was sitting on the same sofa, with Oleander keeping up her act, still hoping for her work not to go to waste. However, Lily kept staring at the news, giving her less and less attention, going through the broadcasts to see if she had been somehow intercepted by a camera drone. So far, nothing like that seemed to have happened. In the chaos ensuing the opening of the vault, nobody followed her, nobody looked into her whereabouts. Nobody saw her, Ginestra and Calendula seize a Peacekeeper van, drive it to the Barricade, load Oleander and five other rhizomes on the way out, before riding full speed to the south, to the Grove.

The Grove.

Their shelter. The place where everything started. The lab where she was born. A lab shut down and abandoned, after Zonta was transferred to the central precinct. Yet, not the lab where Lacrima woke up in, apparently. If that had been the case, they would have found her capsule, when they started refurbishing it as a base of operations four years before. That was a shame, in hindsight. Despite their differences, Lacrima would have been a valuable asset to their cause – but it was useless to muse on the past. The present was what mattered. And, in that present, most of the surviving rhizomes of New Babylon were converging to the Grove, thanks to an emergency beacon everyone of them knew about. Sooner or later, they would have arrived. Her sisters were preparing new beds, cleaning up the unused areas, stashing as many bags of nutrients as possible and refitting several huge vans for a last second escape. Surprisingly enough, one of the most efficient at keeping things running had been Dandelion, that Spear-type rhizome with a scar on her cheek that was hit by a Peacekeeper during the preparations for the Turn, right under Lily’s gaze. Despite being a shrinking violet, she had been able to organize the work of her peers with an amazing level of precision. Talk about a rare flower squashed by human stupidity. Unfortunately, all that work, all those preparations, might have been for nothing. At the rate the anomaly spread, their hideout would have been deleted from the map in around sixty hours. Every minute was precious, every second counted. Which made her feel even weaker, wasting time on that sofa with Oleander. She should have been with her sisters. She should have led by example, not…

“Meow!”

Oleander meowed again, rubbing up against Lily’s chest, causing an audible gasp to escape her lips.

“Lea, I said…”

“You need some rest, Li. Full stop. Your nerves are breaking down, you haven’t stopped once since this morning. Can’t go full throttle all the time. Just… enjoy the moment, nyaaaa?”

Those meows. That purring. Was a perfect imitation of that of a cat. Lily felt weak in the knees, her lymph boiling in her vessels. She sputtered, stuttered some words out, in a way incoherent manner.

“P… please, Lea, n… not now! I’m… I’m not in the mood! This is not the right moment! Not with all… with all… S… so, even if I… I appreciate your concern, please, drop the act and… and put on some clothes! This is… I’m… otherwise…”

Oleander winked, licked the back of her hand.

“Oh? Would nya like me to wear something? Then… what about a collar? One with a small, ringing bell too?”

Her lips reached for Lily’s ear, chewed it a little, before whispering something in it.

“…because mya bought one at a pet shop, just for this occasion. Let mya go and take it. I’ll be back soon~nya!”

That’s when Lily’s brain turned off completely. The mental picture of Oleander wearing just a cat choker, while donning her fake cat ears, her fake cat tails, licking the back of her hand while sitting on her lap.

Broke her.

Broke her brain.

Her full operating system.

Gone down the drain.

In that moment.

In that exact moment.

Their positions reversed.

It was now Lily pinning Oleander down on the sofa.

Failing to control her breath.

Failing to control her reactions.

Just.

Wanting to yield to her instinct.

And kiss, hug, exchange fluids with that annoying plant catgirl till the morning came.

Which made Oleander squee with joy.

“Nyaaa! Finally! Took you long enough!”

Lily kissed her neck, her vines, let her fingers caress the artificial fur, let her whole body go nuts, while ripping off her shirt with her arm tendrils, letting her skin and Oleander’s become one.

“…I simply… understood…”

Oleander kissed Lily back, all while still purring, meowing in glee, causing Lily to double down and let herself be enraptured by that scent. Her words stuttered, came out broken, while still preserving a little sense.

“…that I can’t do anything, in this state. I can’t do anything, now.”

“Except me.”

“Except you, yes.”

Their lips locked one more time, they flowers touched, a rose and a lily. Their heartbeats synchronized. At least for a moment, Lily forgot about everything else.

And let her cravings lead the dance.

**

“Can’t sleep?”

“I could ask the same.”

Mal sat down on the cot, watching that strange show unfolding in front of him. A woman with red hair and matching pigtails, still wearing an orange prisoner uniform, was staring at the display of a computer, while six cables from her neck were jacked into the case, in different spots and sockets. Her fingers moved rapidly on the keyboard, on the trackpads, zooming around the table with impressive speed. She spared a single cycle to stare in his direction, albeit she couldn’t really see him – just pretend she could, as common courtesy went.

“Mal, was it?”

“Yeah. Full name’s Frijderik, but I hate it.”

“Frijderik has old man vibes.”

“It does. You’re Mimi, right?”

“Call me Chris. Mimi’s just for friends, family and partners. You ain’t either.”

“…right.”

“Good. Now, why are you here?”

“I saw a light coming from the comm room and decided to check since, you know, insomnia...”

Insomnia was a euphemism. Every moment Mal spent on his cot turned into a gruesome recall of his parasite-extraction-experience, mixed in with the images from the Turn. The body of Muriel van Perens being eaten alive by nanos made his skin crawl. To think he might have been there, losing his life when the head-busting signal was sent. If anything, he would have not been deconstructed to raw atoms. A meager consolation. Now, he was stranded on an old space station with nothing to do, except hope that his family was safe and escaped the chaos of the Turn. Unable to stay at peace, not wanting to bother Primula for that, he had elected to stroll around the ring. Till that light caught his eye, coming from a place that should have been closed shut during the night hours of Atropos. Only to find Kryzalid jacked into an array of computers, with a thermos of coffee on her side and a bunch of displays open all around her.

“…and I wasn’t expecting to find you… like this.”

“Never seen a gal jacking in?”

No, but once I’ve seen a gal jacking off, was the first answer that emerged in Mal’s mind. He quickly kicked that reply down his throat, deciding to avoid going for crude humor. Instead, he cooked what he considered a balanced retort to that question of hers.

“First time. I didn’t even know it was allowed.”

“It is, mostly for jet fighter pilots and taxi drivers. For all other civilians, it’s sorta well regulated, but, in Aralu, nobody cares or checks. That’s also how I drive cars, by the way. I jack in, throw the camera feeds in my brain and see the road as if my eyes still worked.”

She let out a yawn, before turning back to the keyboard. Mal tilted his head, groaned.

“Ain’t you a little tired, after all that happened?”

“I’ve slept enough on this excuse of a station, both with and without someone else in my bed. No need for that now. I’d rather use my time for something productive.”

“…as in?”

“Heard that alarm earlier?”

“Yeah, who hasn’t?”

“It was an emergency uplink from Lagash on a priority channel. That horny bastard Zonta uploaded some gigabytes of sensor data on the nanoswarm, right before kicking the bucket. We got a copy of the whole caboodle – well, more than one – courtesy of the satellites that are still in orbit. Gramps Geiger gave me clearance to have a look.”

“Talk about trust…”

“I saved your life, you know.”

“And I’m… thankful for it.”

Though that still felt somewhat weird. Being saved by what he knew to be a terrorist. Just because Prim, his Prim, used her own lymph as a bargaining chip. Rhizomes caring about humans. That was something new. Something that he had started to notice in Prim for a few months. Something that was more an anomaly of sorts. Yet, Prim saved him twice already. That couldn’t be random. She had developed empathy for humans – or, at least, for him. That made him feel a little warmth spreading inside his heart. Still, trusting a terrorist to keep her word felt like a stretch, even for her. Especially when said terrorist was more abrasive than sandpaper.

“You’re welcome, wonder boy. Now, buzz off, unless you have something else you wanna talk about.”

“I’m sorry for your aunt.”

Mimi remained silent for an interminable second, before nodding slightly.

“…who told you?”

“Prim.”

Mimi growled, almost slammed her hand on the desk.

“That gal should learn to mind her own business. But… thanks, Mal. It means… something. She was my family.”

“Family, huh.”

Mal slumped on the cot, trying to keep his emotions at bay.

“I don’t know where my family is – mom, pops and my little brother. They were supposed to travel to New Babylon for the Turn, and…”

“I’m sorry, Mal. My condolences.”

“They… might still be alive.”

“Don’t keep your hopes up. It’s… easier that way.”

Mimi clicked on her mouse once more, moving through the dozens of compressed files stashed in the Zonta archive. So much data she couldn’t grasp. So much information that meant nothing to her. Yet, there had to be something, she knew that. He said it in his last message. And that something was sounds. Mimi wasn’t a scientist, didn’t understand anything about tech, physics, chemistry, biology or maths. But sounds? Those were her bread and butter. She was dying of curiosity, when that creepy guy mentioned them. Sounds. How did those nanomachines tick? Were they using any audible waves to transfer data? That was the question she wanted answered, but browsing through that gigantic archive was like traveling through a maze without a map. When she started making sense of it, Mal’s voice turned up once again, stealing her attention away from the archive.

“Huh, Chris…? Can I ask you a… personal and – huh – intimate question? It’s fine if you don’t…”

“Yes, I’m single. Yes, I also like boys. No, you aren’t my type. No, Dobrio is not my boyfriend either, even though I like using his abs as a pillow.”

“That wasn’t the question!”

“Okay, then what?”

“How was… huh, doing… that with Prim?”

“Doing what?”

“You know what!”

“Oh, that. Well, she’s a complete, absolute disaster – and I mean it. She fumbled it so hard that I had to fake it just to have her stop fiddling with my private parts. The reprise was acceptable, though. She’s a fast learner – towards the end she actually got at least some grasp on her technique and made me feel some sort of pleasure, but her starting point was stuff she read on frickin’ teenage girls comnet forums. She even asked me if humans could get pregnant just by kissing each other, Lagash fuck her!”

Mal chuckled, trying to avoid bursting into laughter. That felt really like Prim, one hundred percent her. She could almost picture her hugging Chris and asking her what she had to do in that moment, while citing some random factoids from some even more random internet forums. If Chris weren’t on the verge of withdrawal, probably that would have made her bail out hard, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Still, she wasn’t finished, her words kept flowing like an endless river.

“Also, she tastes like fruits. No, really: licking her down under felt like downing pineapple juice, maybe mango. Not unpleasant, could have been worse, but certainly not what I expected – Lacrima’s tasted way different, you know? Would I do her again, though? Yes, even now, because I’m a coward that gets aroused by plant gals.”

Mimi groaned, all while still moving to yet another file, all while Mal was getting redder and redder, trying his best to remain serious. He’d never let Prim live that down. She could almost see her apologizing for her poor performance, while citing some other naive comnet comments on some weird page she read them on. He covered his mouth with his hand, counted up to ten, almost grinning from ear to ear, on the verge of biting his tongue. Mimi grinned too, but for a whole different reason: she was beginning to foretaste Mal’s reaction to her next shot.

“Ah, before I forget: she said your name several times. Aaaand told me she’d be very, very pissed if another plant sucked your water first.”

“She what.”

“Do what you want with this, I can’t get a clear read on that gal. I just know that she’s hot, that I would screw her again, and the her lymph is so sweet I could melt. But, hey, I already have a house plant, not sure I need two.”

In that moment, she finally found the folder she was looking for. Audio data, from several microphones in the array. She let out a smirk, started browsing the files, the matching camera feed, played it all in her brain.

“Oh, good. Now, show aunt Mimi what the deal is, sweetie.”

The first fragments started to play. And her brain dove down into that sequence of tones, oscillating at their same tune.