Plant-meet-Plant World [HDG]

This is written in the world of Human Domestication Guide (HDG), and assumes a baseline of preexisting knowledge of the universe it is set in. The Floovles and Vesdols are species created by me. The Affini and Rinans were created by others. The wiki can be found here: https://humandomestication.guide/

CW for looming death [nobody dies], a splash of existentialism, and Big Sad Hours at first [don’t worry it becomes a happy story quickly]

“Is this it? Th-this is it, isn’t it…” Airiam muttered squeamishly. Her sides hurt less than she was expecting despite all the sap she was seeping from her planty body. She was a fragile little plant person roughly 16 centimeters tall - a floovle as her species called themselves. “I s-suppose this will be a nice place for my Mort-Regenera… I just d-don’t know if I’m ready, yet…”

Tears dripped down the sides of her head as Airiam lay dying under a massive coniferous tree. Beside her, Airiam’s pet vesdol - a silver and teal bobcat-like creature - silently nuzzled his face into that of his companion. Though he had fended off the bird who had attacked Airiam, he could do nothing but keep her company as she slowly bled out in the forest.

“Good boy, Maff. Good boy…” Airiam struggled to raise an arm to pet Maff’s nose with her vines - instead of hands and feet, each of a floovle’s limbs tapered-off where four prehensile vines acted as digits. “Come visit me here sometime, yeah? And be a good boy for your n-new companion, ok? I hope I turn out really pretty… J-just you watch me, I’ll grow the nicest flower, just for you, ok?”

Maff simply whined a little. Though he was just a simple kitty, he still knew his Owner was about to die, and would soon begin her Mort-Regenera - aka her ‘rebirth from the forever sleep’. When floovles reached their Mort-Regenera, new, non-sentient saplings would grow from their corpses. This was why their word for graveyard was the same as their word for botanical garden. A long floovle lifetime lasted roughly 400 years, but Airiam seemed to have met her end at the age of 27 - not even a decade into adulthood.

All Airiam could do was stare up at the beams of sunlight piercing through the foliage above. It was a truly beautiful day. At least she would die when the sun was out and the wind was blowing gently. “Was I a good Owner, Maff? Did y-you enjoy our time together?” Airiam took Maff’s sad mewling as a ‘yes’. “Good. At least I was able t-to do that. I just… I wish we could have had just a little bit l-longer… together…”

The tiny little humanoid plant person was beginning to feel cold despite the warm breeze. Her eyes were slowly shutting and her vision was going blurry. She saw movement from the corner of her eye as the faint sound of rustling leaves snuck through her dulling senses. Maff had turned his head, then quickly got to his feet.

The last thing Airiam saw before her eyes closed was a truly massive figure looming above her.

Then, Airiam opened her eyes. The forest was gone, the air was still, and there were barely any sounds to be heard.

She shuffled a bit and realised something soft and fluffy was pressed up against her - something that quickly got up as soon as it noticed movement.

“M-Maff? Maff!” Airiam breathed weakly as her kitty energetically stepped over and around her, evidently overjoyed she was still alive. Maff was about 22 centimeters in length - far larger than his Owner, so Airiam’s vision was full of sweeping, fluffy fur.

“Alright, that’s enough, little critter. Please move aside, I must attend to my patient.” An unfamiliar voice cooed adoringly from somewhere nearby - somebody who was surprisingly-fluent in one of the floovle languages. Some vines gently swept Maff aside - yet still kept him right next to the injured plant girl - revealing a huge, floral, gently-smiling face looking down on her. “It’s alright, dear, you’re safe now. We found you just in time, and we promise to take good care of you.”

“Are you… Affini?” Airiam squinted, finding it hard for her eyes to focus properly. The simple farm girl had never actually met an Affini yet, though she had definitely known of them. Her basic education included tidbits of knowledge about the Affini, and her whole planet had been flooded with new information during the few weeks that had passed following first contact. Despite being relatively early in their space age, the floovles had been receiving and interpreting alien signals for centuries before ever actually meeting one for the first time. Most were Terran in origin, but Affini and Rinan transmissions were also not uncommon. Why the Affini chose to make first contact when they did almost a month ago, Airiam didn’t know. However, she had heard that apparently the Affini had also been studying them from afar for quite some time. It was an interesting experience to live through a first contact scenario where both parties already knew a fair deal about each other.

“Shhh, rest your voice, you’ve been through a lot. And yes, I am an Affini. Hee hee, you and your little friend are just so adorable together! We don’t usually let others lay on the operating table with our patients, but we just had to make an exception for this lil guy!” The Affini pressed her hands together in a joyful pose. “Besides, we are well aware of the relationship between floovles and vesdols, and we would never dare separate you from each other.”

“Thank… you…” Airiam weakly moved her face muscles into a smile before drifting off to sleep once more.

When the little floovle next awoke, she found herself in a comfy little bed, all snug and cozy under the covers. Next to her bed was a second, circular bed, where Maff was curled up and snoozing peacefully. Above her was a gorgeous canopy of non-sentient plants gently rustling in simulated wind. Beyond the leaves and branches were the many stars out in space, separated from the hab unit by a clear glass dome she could barely tell was even there. Strewn throughout the walls were various vines and shrubs and trees, creating a gorgeous, homey environment. “So this is what an Affini ship is like…” Airiam mused to herself. “I kind of like it.”

At that, the bright silver and azure ball of fur leapt up in the corner of her eye and hopped onto her bed with her. “Hee hee, aw Maff, don’t worry, I’m alri- ah, ow…” Airiam groaned in mild discomfort. Her pain was minimal, but her body did feel stitched up and tight. Her mind felt a tad sluggish, but she imagined that was just whatever painkillers the Affini had her on.

“Please don’t exert yourself, little floovle.” Another voice, distinct from the one she had heard before, spoke as an enormous figure entered the dimly-lit room. “You’ve been through a lot, and your body is still healing.”

“O-oh, um, alright…” Airiam shyly slinked back a bit further under her covers.

“Oh you poor thing, it’s alright, you’re safe here. I won’t hurt you, I promise.” The figure gently stimulated some bioluminescent bulbs growing on the walls, which gently grew brighter and filled the room with a cool blue light. This let Airiam see that the figure was a tangle of vines, bark, and other plant matter held in a humanoid form - or rather, floovloid form from her perspective. The affini’s body was a wash of rich greens, splattered with the occasional assortment of flowers and red leaves. “My name is Folia Acernus, Second Bloom. You may refer to me with any pronouns, though I am partial to she/her.”

“H-hi, I’m Airiam. Also she/her. Nice to m-meet you…” Her voice quivered, betraying her attempted confidence. She felt Maff nuzzling her side before he snuggled up beside her, which made her feel a little calmer. Actually, though she was shy and hesitant, she did realise now that she was particularly calm anyway.

“It most certainly is nice to meet you! You’re a cutie, aren’t you?” Airiam felt her cheeks flush with warmth at that comment. “Now, there are a few things you should know, but I promise everything will be alright.” As more bulbs sprung to life illuminating everything, Airiam could see now that the Affini was wearing a loose, comfy looking dress made of layered red, yellow, and green leaves, creating an uneven and imprecise stripe pattern. She then realised that her floovle-sized bed was perched on a massive bedside table next to a similarly massive Affini bed. Folia sat on the side of her own bed and faced Airiam with lush green eyes and a caring smile on her face.

“Did… Am I…” Airiam struggled to even finish her question, avoiding the Affini’s gaze. “...dead?”

“Fret not darling, you are very much alive! And you will stay that way for a long, comfy, happy life ahead - that much I can guarantee!” There was a genuine, caring sincerity in her voice that Airiam found quite reassuring. “And that brings me to the point at hand: you have been implanted with a haustoric implant grown from myself. That was a necessary step in ensuring your safety, as it helped heal your otherwise-fatal wounds - and I’m overjoyed to say that there were no major complications!”

“Oh. I think I’ve heard of that. The Affini are all we’ve b-been talking about for nearly the past month. Does this mean I’m… yours now? Your pet?”

Folia’s slight grin curled up into a huge, face-spanning smile. Soft ruffling sounds escaped from within her as her many leaves and vines shifted around in excitement. “Yes darling, you are now what we call a floret! You and I are bound in this lifetime, and I swear I will protect you and make you as happy as can possibly be.”

“Th-that sounds nice!” Airiam shifted a bit under her blankets, then tried to sit up. “Ow…”

“Easy, little floovle…” Folia hovered a large hand beside her, letting some of her smallest little vines coil out from within to gently reposition her floret on her back. Once Airiam had settled back into a safe position, the Affini’s vines lingered to comfortingly stroke her soft body. “You’ve just undergone surgery, you must rest.”

Airiam’s tense nerves instantly relaxed at Folia’s touch. She could feel her new Owner’s compassion as clearly as if it were a tangible object she could hold on to.

“It’s nice to know I’ll be looked after. No more nights spent in fear of becoming a greenjay’s dinner… No more panic when a harvest is lost to the valley locusts… No more lonely nights wishing there were more people my age living out in rural country…”

“Oh you poor thing…” Folia whimpered, leaning in closer to the tiny floret. “It’s ok… None of that will ever hurt you again… I’ll take care of you, always~”

“Th-thank you, um… What should I call you?”

“You can call me anything you’d like, darling, but if you really want to be directed, Folia will work just wonderfully~” The Affini’s eyes faded in and out of blue and green hues, signalling how she was joyful yet peacefully content. "And it's quite alright darling, you never have to thank me, it's my duty."

"B-but I want to! So really… th-thank you… Folia." Airiam felt a wave of drowsiness wash over her from seemingly out of nowhere.

"You're very welcome, my sweet little floret~" Folia whispered. “Just rest now. There will be plenty of time for you to get adjusted later, I promise.”

At that, Airiam once more dozed off.

Once she was confident her floret was deep in sleep with her companion kitty snugly beside her, Folia slowly dimmed the lights and silently left the bedroom. After making herself a nice apple tea - a Terran beverage she had grown quite fond of - the large, 3.3 meter-tall Affini sat at her appropriately-large couch with tantalisingly-oversized stacks of paperwork before her. Though the Affini Compact had mostly transitioned to digital paperwork, there were still occasions where some Affini treated themselves to an old-fashioned mountain of paper - 100% recycled, of course. She decided the occasion of taking on her first floret was worthy of treating herself to such a luxury, and the bureaucrats aboard the Abiegnis agreed wholeheartedly.

“Mmm, come to mama~” Folia rumbled quietly as she got to work filling out the borderline-absurd amount of forms, documents, and legal busywork. The sound of actual sheets of paper sliding against each other, the sensation of the coarse material on her soft vines, and the smell of freshly-cut paper stimulated her senses. “Hee hee, such a guilty pleasure to do all of this on real paper~” She hummed gleefully.

Much to Folia’s delight, since Airiam was not just a floovle cotyledon, but the first floovle cotyledon, she had roughly triple the paperwork to complete than she would have otherwise had. The Compact hadn’t planned to take on the first floovle cotyledons for at least another month, but sometimes needs must. When Folia discovered Airiam at death’s doorstep on Ventugard - the floovle homeworld - she had rushed her aboard the Abiegnis for emergency medical care. The doctors determined Airiam’s best chance at survival would be to integrate an implant into her body to take care of the healing process, even taking into account the fact that no floovle had undergone a haustoric implant procedure before.

As it turns out, that was the correct call. Not only did the operation save Airiam’s life, but she was expected to make a full recovery. Not only that, but her body had almost no issue integrating some of Folia’s biological material into it. So far, the only unexpected side-effect observed was some floral growth around the implant.

Folia thanked her lucky stars that the life of Ventugard was so similar to the life of Earth. Since Ventugard and Earth were roughly the same mass, were a similar distance from their star and had a similar orbital period, had the same class of star, were both geologically and magnetically active, had comparable chemical compositions, and had nearly identical atmospheres, life on both worlds experienced convergent evolution. To put it another way, since their environments were so similar, the life that sprung forth on both worlds evolved to be similar to each other with no interaction between them. As such, since the Affini Compact had experience dealing with Earth life, they were thus far able to use their existing knowledge to make the floovle cotyledon program run much smoother than most which had come before. What’s more, Folia had been grown from an Earth plant known as a maple tree, so her own biology added to the implant’s compatibility with that of her floovle floret.

Returning her full attention to her paperwork, Folia realised she had been speeding through the documents at a rapid pace. “Slow down, Folia. Enjoy it… Savour it…” She told herself, suddenly worried she would be finished before she knew it. Once she reached the appropriate forms, she filled out her new floret’s full name. “Airiam Acernus, First Floret! Hee hee hee!” Folia adored how that name rolled off her approximation of a tongue. “I’ll take such good care of you, my precious Airiam…”

At that, she continued to giddily complete her paperwork and enjoy the tea she was absorbing through one of her loose vines. There was so much to do! So many places to go with her floret, so many things to do with her floret, so many sights to show her floret! Folia couldn’t wait to share as much as she could with her darling little floret.