Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #69 – Reciprocity

“Damn it, I give up…”

Dandelion almost kicked the bunk leg, avoiding the impact at the last instant, braking the momentum of her foot mere millimeters before it smashed against the metal. She let out a low growl, bent forward, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Her thighs were sprayed with something that looked like green slime, dripping down to her calves, soaking the bed sheets. Her breath was ragged, her teeth gritted in anger. Still, something tickled her, tickled her back, her armpits, causing her to groan even louder.

“Stop it, Callie.”

“…why?”

“Just. Stop.”

The tendrils of Calendula caressed her skin again, all while their owner was laying on the cot, in a state of evident exhaustion, breathing even faster than Dandelion, moaning softly in between. Her thighs, her legs were sprayed with the same green fluid too, just of a slightly brighter hue. Her fingers were still slowly moving through her lower body, basking in that languid feeling of fulfillment. One that Dandelion couldn’t accept.

“I just can’t understand it.”

“…what…?”

Dandelion felt a tickling sensation again, rolled her eyes. Calendula wasn’t giving up. So, she answered in kind, letting her tendrils loose, tickling the other rhizome in turn. Eliciting chuckles and even more moans, much to her chagrin. Dandelion looked at the ceiling, let out a long sigh.

“…she said we’d be able to control our lymph levels better, if we exchanged fluids, right? I mean, Captain Commander Lily. She said it, right?”

“…huh-uh.”

“Then, how does that work? This can’t be all there is!”

Her frustration piled up, compounded by Calendula’s constant ‘one more time’ pleas. She had already wasted two hours of her life going through the motions with little to no results. If Dandelion heard ‘one more time’ one more time, she would have probably strangled her partner till she passed out. Calendula’s tendrils peeked between Dandelion’s legs, swimming through the lymph that was sticking to her skin. Dandelion closed her thighs, almost crushing the tendrils in the process, trapping them motionless.

“…Dee, th… that hurt!”

“I don’t care.”

If anything, Dandelion forced her muscles to apply even more pressure, causing Calendula to squeal in pain. Then, she proceeded to ignore her, to focus on her tirade instead.

“It doesn’t make sense at all! True, the more our bodies tangle, the more our intimate parts connect, the faster our lymph production increases… but then we are forced to release it all together, almost automatically! Either we build it up too fast and we trigger a lymph release, or we don’t build it up at all! What is the rule? What is the secret? I don’t… I can’t get it! I’ve wasted more lymph than I produced! I’m drier than when we started!”

“…but it felt good, didn’t it?”

Calendula’s voice. Too close for comfort. Her arms closed around Dandelion’s neck, her hands caressing her belly, squeezing her breasts. Dandelion felt it again, her lymph production going up, filling her reserves, just by means of that contact. Calendula’s teeth closed around her neck roots, chewing them slowly, licking them, sending shivers all through Dandelion’s body. Till Calendula started brushing herself against Dandelion’s bark, the one partly covering her spine. That caused an even greater jolt. Her bark. The most sensitive part of her skin. One that sparked reactions she didn’t want to accept. So, Dandelion gritted her teeth again, resisted the urge to smash her elbow on Calendula’s face.

“Yes, Callie. Yes. It felt good, okay? It felt so good that we did it for two hours, okay? But… but to what gain? You could feel this good alone too, right? There has to be a reason why the Captain told us her secret! And… and Lily would never lie to us! Captain Commander Lily is perfect! She is… she always looked out for us…”

“M… maybe it’s a question of training?”

“Training?”

“W… well, Oleander and she have been exchanging fluids for years! This is… huh, our first time together, so…”

Dandelion sighed, dipped her fingers between her thighs, raked some of the green fluid that coated them, brought it close to her eyes.

“…I still can’t see the logic. All the lymph I build up gets wasted down here. So, how? How do we balance it? If we have too little water to turn into lymph, this is a recipe for phytomorphosis. But even if we exceed our capacity and fill our organs completely while avoiding turning into plants, how can we keep it inside us? Was… Lily testing us?”

Calendula didn’t answer. She simply sunk her teeth deeper in Dandelion’s skin, savoring the moment, the afterglow of her several releases. She didn’t care about the lymph. She didn’t care about fighting or getting better. All she cared for was that Dee had asked her out, like a prince in the romance novels she avidly devoured, and that she stole her first kiss. A prince. A princess. Their tower. The dragon outside. The dark forest with the monsters. That room in the Eastcol barracks felt cozy enough, despite being so close to the border. Fifty kilometers away, the swarm was still eating everything on its way. Explosions and flashes of light dotted the horizon, lit the walls from the only window. Her prince was sullen, but that didn’t make that moment less magic. Her voice turned dreamy, as she started playing with Dandelion’s hair, while kissing her ear.

“So, my prince… when are we getting married?”

“Callie, stop.”

“I’m serious! You had my first time, it’s how it works!”

“In your imaginary world.”

“In the novels too!”

“Callie, there’s a reason why they are novels!”

“B… but we have a kid already!”

“That kid is a rhizome built by crossing our DNA strands in a laboratory. We didn’t… conceive her, okay? It doesn’t mean anything! And she isn’t even born yet!”

“We are her parents! W… we need to give her a happy family! So that she can find her true love too, when she grows up! Her prince or her princess! Whatever makes her happy!”

“Lagash take me, of all the fixations you could get… romance. Couldn’t you, like, hyperfocus on bunnies instead?”

“…I don’t like bunnies.”

Dandelion roared, bent forward even more. All she wanted was getting stronger, so that Lily wouldn’t consider her dead weight. Still, Lily said loud and clear that she couldn’t join her in her assault to Lagash because she was too dry and incapable of managing her lymph reserves. So, the logical solution had been to grab the first rhizome she knew had the same issue – in that case, Calendula – bring her to her room, undress her, and start following her chief’s advice to boost her natural production. Which worked wondrously, except for the part where she couldn’t keep the damn lymph inside her body. On her side, Calendula didn’t seem to care too much about the reasons why Dandelion asked her out. All she knew was that she was living her romantic dream, the princess in the castle waiting for her first true love – and that made her feel even better, in that tangled hug she was giving to her prince.

Calendula dipped her fingers between Dandelion’s legs, let them soak in her lymph, before bringing them back to her lips, licking them, tasting that weird flavor. Dee was sweet. So very sweet. Sugary, even. Bitter outside, sweet inside. That was something that made Calendula feel hazy, dreamy and even more willing to go forth yet another hour or so. She coiled her hands around her partner’s belly, brushed her cheek on her shoulder, hoping for Dandelion to give her another encore. In the corner of her mind, Calendula wondered how did her own lymph taste. The thought felt icky and disgusting, but Dee’s sweetness made her ask herself questions. What did she think of her lymph? Was it as sweet, as sugary? Or did it have a different flavor altogether? Humans said that rhizome lymph felt great (with the exception of plant piss), so, maybe, that wasn’t a long shot.

Suddenly, Calendula’s mouth fell agape. A lightning struck. A lightbulb blasting open in her brain. Maybe that was the solution to her prince’s problems. A solution so stupidly straightforward that she felt like a moron not to have thought about it before.

“Dee…?”

“…yes?”

“Wh… what if… what if we drunk each other’s lymph? I… I mean, during a release!”

“What.”

Calendula closed her arms even tighter around Dandelion’s body, squeezing her chest.

“Th… think about it! When we trigger an emergency release, we don’t expel all the lymph in our body, just… just, well, a huge chunk of it! So, in general, we can keep… huh, building up our reserves little by little. But… but the lymph we eject is lost, right?”

“Yes, and?”

“If… if we drunk each other’s lymph until we topped up our reserves we could… we could control it better! At… at least one of us could!”

Dandelion looked back down at the mess staining the bed sheets. All that lymph was wasted, right. But what if… what if Calendula were right? What if there were a way to reduce that waste and still filling up each other’s reserves? She closed her eyes, mumbling unintelligible words. That idea was sensible. Stupid, but sensible. Maybe, that was the missing link. A sudden surge of lymph ravaged her body, the excitement of getting closer to the solution. She turned towards Calendula, pushed her down on the cot, towered over her. Drink her lymph when she releases it. That sounded disgusting, unhygienic even. Yet, it was still lymph. Lymph she could get in her body, if she played her cards right. She pushed her hands on Calendula’s thighs, started spreading her legs open, while her tendrils joined with that of her partner, coiling around one another. Calendula felt a rush of lymph flowing to her face, let Dandelion in, welcomed her. And Dandelion’s mouth, her tongue, got closer and closer, stopping a couple centimeters before the goal, thinking again. What she was going to do felt completely stupid, but it was the logical conclusion of her reasoning. Calendula was completely ensnared by that sight, closed her eyes to savor the moment more, let her partner lead the dance, in a state of bliss and expectations.

“M… my prince… p… please… pleeeease…”

So, she broke her mental stalemate, ready to close the distance, ready to taste Calendula, ready to…

The door slammed open.

A silhouette entered the room, slammed her foot on the floor.

“You two!”

Calendula jolted, shut her legs close all of a sudden, almost crushing Dandelion’s head between them. Dandelion screamed, flailed her arms, tried to pull her head out, but Calendula’s grip was too strong, almost cutting out her breath. With one last ditch effort and a loud yell, Dandelion managed to force her flesh prison open, to get out of that mess, trying to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Her neck recoiled in pain as she slowly massaged it. Calendula was staring with eyes wide open, her mouth agape, almost terrified. Dandelion turned around too, growling like a wounded best.

The unmistakable figure of Deputy Captain Commander Oleander was standing at the door, tactical uniform and what not, tapping her foot on the tiles repeatedly.

“Have a shower and suit up! Ten minutes to rendezvous!”

Calendula remained silent, incapable of saying anything. Dandelion, though, had none of it. She spat on the cot, stared at Oleander in turn, focusing on that gruesome lily that replaced her right eye.

“Sir, with all due respect: what in Lagash?! The troopers under Captain Commander Lily have already gone – what, twenty minutes ago? They left us behind! What’s the need for…”

“To hell with them!”

Olander slammed her boot against the ground once again, the metallic noise echoed in the small room.

“Yes, they’ve gone and left us all behind, right… but we can still do something.”

Dandelion scanned her superior officer’s only functioning eye, an eye burning with determination.

“Such as what, sir?”

“Making sure theirs isn’t a suicide mission.”

Calendula sprung up from the cot, interrupted the two, almost shouting.

“…b… but what of our kids?! Who will guard them?! Who will protect them?!”

“Ginestra and her group. They’ve been tracked further south and have arrived one hour ago. They need time to recover, but that means they’ll also be able to take care of our children while we are away.”

Silence fell again. Dandelion muttered something under her breath, cracked her neck to relieve some stress. The sound of her bones readjusting was pretty relaxing, all things considered. Nevertheless, she couldn’t make head or tails of what Oleander thought – but disobeying to a superior officer, one that had actually been chosen by Captain Lily herself as her second in command and life partner, felt wrong. Thus, she ate her pride, nodded, and performed a military salute.

“Alright, sir. Give use fifteen or twenty minutes, please. We were in the middle of something and we need… some time to tidy up.”

At which point, Oleander made two and two together, piling up all the details that her single-issue mind missed the moment she stepped into the room.

“Oh, I see. My apologies for barging in unannounced.”

“…it’s nothing. We were just…”

“Yeah, I know what you were doing. Building up your lymph reserves together.”

Oleander closed her eye, crossed her arms deep in thought. She had to have a word with Lily, once she came back – if she came back. Saying stuff like that in front of junior rhizomes, gals that never had the remotest idea of either selling their lymph on the BM or sharing it with one of their kind, would of course trigger half-baked attempts at capitalizing on it like that one. Dandelion and Calendula were the oddest couple that could possibly come out of such an arrangement. On one side, a romance-obsessed Shield rhizome that lived in a fairytale. On the other side, a battle-scarred Spear rhizome that had Lily as her own personal goddess, one that would scorch the ground and kill humans in swathes if her leader told so. Both with problems of running out of lymph, especially the latter. One looking for the love of her life. The other looking for a way to get stronger. How the two of them ended up locking lips and bodies together in a bed was fairly surprising: among the pairings Lily and Oleander betted on in their idle nights together, Deelendula wasn’t even in the top fifty – Caldelion not even in the top one thousand. Both of those rhizomes were at the bottom rung in terms of taking the initiative. If anything, Oleander would have expected Ginestra to score with either of them (or both of them at once), while solidly dominating the power dynamics of the couple (or triplet). Dandelion willingly going the extra mile to bed another rhizome for the sake of building up her lymph reserves, just because Lily let that random hint escape her lips after saving them from the Eastcol attack, was something that felt impossible to predict in hindsight. Yet, contrary to all of their expectations, that was exactly what happened. The two rhizomes in front of her were laying on each other, of course completely naked, with some of their roots firmly stuck into sacks of nutrients and water tanks placed around the cot. A smart solution, one that minimized the risk of their bodies undergoing partial phytomorphosis in order to produce more lymph by eating their human flesh. By not letting them running out of nutrients, the only other risk factor left was holding for too long with overfilled lymph glands – which was definitely not something that was going to happen, as she suspected both of those rhizomes had an abysmal track record in delaying releases. That tracked out with what she was witnessing: Dandelion and Calendula had unquestionably given their best under the sheets – and over it, if that mess unfolding under her eyes was to be believed – but the results were lacking, mediocre at best. Olander dipped her fingers into the layer of lymph that soaked the bed, looked at it with curiosity mixed with something akin to existential terror. There was so much more of it as she initially believed, to the point of making her gasp in disbelief.

“…Lagash almighty, how many times did you...”

Calendula raised her voice, ready to answer that question.

“Fi…”

Only until Dandelion’s hand sealed her mouth, stopping her mid sentence, hijacking the reply.

“…we’d rather not say, sir.”

Oleander heaved a sigh, shook her head, swallowed her curiosity. Certain things were better not known.

“Whatever. See you in ten minutes in the common room, alright?”

Dandelion performed yet another salute, all while still keeping Calendula in her grasp.

“Yes sir!”

Oleander nodded, turned around, reached the door. Then, short of crossing it, glanced at the two tangled rhizomes on the cot with a dead serious piercing gaze.

“You know, as a couple it’s easier to build up lymph if you drink it from each other, instead of letting it go ejected and lost. Like, lips or roots deep into the other’s… lower lips, if you know what I mean. You’ll waste so little, if you do that and you might even get a little extra kick out of it.”

After saying that, she promptly stepped out, keeping up a playful smirk.

“Be sure to try out, as soon as we’re back…”

She brought her finger in front of her nose, in a gesture akin to asking ‘keep your mouth shut’

“…but don’t tell Lily I gave away the answer. She wanted you two to find this out on your own.”

Dandelion gulped down a lump of saliva, nodded in response, while still failing at hiding her puzzled tone.

“…then, why are you telling us this, sir?”

Oleander licked the tip of her finger, freeing it from the residual lymph she caught from the sheets. Sugary. Too sugary. She spat it out on the floor, grinned at the two immediately after.

“Because seeing all of this lymph wasted makes me unreasonably mad. See, it’s okay to let a release loose. Even Lily and I do that, when we just need to wind down, right? Once, twice, who cares! But you two… are doing this to build up your reserves and you are absolutely failing at it, after – was it five releases? Each?”

Calendula didn’t answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that query. She simply stared without saying a word, trying not to make the situation worse than it already was. Still, her superior officer kept on talking, every word feeling like the strike of a baseball bat.

“If you collected it, canned it and sold it on the BM, you could have got a full condo worth of it. So much money lost – money we could have used for our kids. Our future.”

A gasp. Calendula jolted on the cot, shook her head, gazed at Oleander.

“S… selling our lymph on the BM? But isn’t it…”

“Wake up, girl: eas don’t grow on trees and revolutions need funds. Lab stuff is expensive. Artificial cribs are expensive. Heck, even loudspeakers cost one kidney and a half. We just got the best out of our situation and got rid of the excess lymph while turning out a profit.”

“Wait, so it was you who…”

“Who canned your damn piss from the rhizome toilets in the precinct and sold it on the BM? Yes. Well, not I specifically, but we had a hand on it. Junkies would buy it anyway, so it was a win-win, right?”

Dandelion connected the dots one second later. By being in charge of the investigation team, they could conveniently steer away the attention on the smuggled lymph, while granting some big catch once in a while. She had always asked herself how there could be so much of their lymph out on the BM, even considering stuff like renegade rhizomes being in cahoots with smugglers. Now, though, everything made sense. Oleander kept talking, though. She wasn’t finished yet.

“That said, lymph is still hard to come by. We need it to survive, we can’t squeeze ourselves dry every single day just to get a couple cans out…”

Her finger pointed again at the green-ish mess staining the bed.

“…but looks like you two didn’t get the memo and sprayed it everywhere with no concerns. Lagash take you, I don’t want to walk into such a disaster zone ever again.”

Her expression turned into a hellish grin, one that made Dandelion recoil and shiver.

“So, either you learn how not to waste it or I will waste you. Got it?”

“Y… yes, sir!”

“Good that we are on the same page. Now, shower, dress up and prepare your weapons.”

She cracked her knuckles, let out a wide smile.

“It’s time we show that massive idiot that she ain’t the only one that can shoulder the weight of our survival. Nanos or not, spaceships or not, we are rhizomes. We were born to fight!”

Dandelion raised her voice, interrupting that boasting cry.

“Sir, but… what if they try to stop us? I… I mean the Eastcol troops!”

“They won’t. I already talked with the higher ups. But, even if they didn’t approve…”

Oleander crunched her fist, gritted her teeth.

“…since when we let some humans decide our fate for us?”

Dandelion felt her heart skip a beat. Oleander was right. That was their goal. That was their reason for going all the way to stage a coup. Freedom. Pacific coexistence. Not being subordinates, tools of another species. Taking that chance now meant showing exactly that.

And, deep inside her soul, finally understood what Lily, her goddess, found in Oleander.

Which made her respect for her grow even higher.