Chapter 3: Ch. 3 – Dawn

Sorry for late and short update, got laid out with the ‘Rona because the roommate was an idiot and decided to bring it home citing “allergies” when their family bloody well was testing positive.

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Dawn was going to be problematic.

The drive out of the nature reserve was fine. Getting back to gravel was fine. Turning out to asphalt and then the worn highway gray was fine.

It wasn’t even the cracked roads and discolored lane bumps that made little vibrations through her car.

Sunlight.

It was the damn sunlight.

Janet was having to resist the urge to grope her chest and drop a hand from the wheel to conduct some other circular motions. The blue veins under her skin threatened to glow again under the bath of nourishing solar rays, her breath ragged from the euphoria.

There was a cross between being drunk and a desire to mount the nearest thing with a pulse. Fortunately for her, neither was a huge danger at the moment. Morning was early except for graveyard shifts and other early workers. Perks of the state colleges being in the middle of Spring break and most frat parties or vacationers too hungover to be on the roads.

Still, it was an uncomfortably long drive before she finally found her way into a quiet urban development. Parking garage entrance scanned the little tag at the corner of her windshield automatically. She had never been so glad to have an enclosed space as she had when the concrete canopy shielded her from the wonderfully seductive touch of the sun.

Jan’s car was parked almost like a rich prick’s six figure car as she tried to find a good spot close to the stairwell. Crossing over two spaces, she used the time to calm down. Gradually her azure veins became normal, her mind clearer, and she was finally able to at least park more or less in the middle of the space.

Turning the engine off, she sighed heavily. One hand went over her belly, imagining the five seeds waiting for their turn at the world impatiently. The other went to her temple, rubbing away exhaustions. Who knew meeting an alien-looking-tentacle-plant-thing would be so tiring?

And in the rear-view mirror, Janet saw two halos of starlight.

Blinking, even through her eyelids when she closed one and opened the other, a vibrant sapphire.

“Oh, oh no. No, no, no, that’s not going to work out well for us,” she whispered loudly.

Almost in real-time protest to the sentiment, her eyelashes adopted fine tufts of the misty pollen with each flutter. The gentle wash of white cheeks started shifting the arboreal turquoise from before.

“No. No! That’s not going to work. Not at my job,” Janet hissed, forcing her will to the surface. Images waterfalled of a business office, suits and pencil skirts, braided hair and combovers, starched clothing and too much artificial deodorant. Boring, drab, necessary.

She felt herself begin to change back. Ever so slowly.

“I won’t let this go without a caveat. If I was some cosplayer, the makeup and props off all this would be perfect for a dryad or some other plant lady thing,” Jan mumbled, unbuckling and opening her car door. “But no, I’m just miss Tellurn the HR hag.”

Something about those words resonated within her inner monologue’s second audience member. The idea, a being bound to their tree. Sacred oaths, protecting the forest, promises to nurture and grow.

She shook it off. Her seventh-floor apartment was still a flight away and she couldn’t remember if she drew the blinds or not. At least if she collapsed into a heap it’d be in the comfort of her own apartment, the only challenge would be to not break the social contract of loud sexual noises through paper-thin walls to the units on either side of her.

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Janet took the opportunity to strip off her clothes as soon as she stepped inside her apartment.

Boring little studio. Full kitchenette, bathroom with a walk-in sliding glass door shower, the rest a couple hundred square feet of open space for her bed, dresser, computer desk. Never planned on entertaining people inside her domicile, never furnished it, never had anyone close enough to invite back to her place. She usually envisioned being wooed and taken somewhere. Passionately. All the way. Maybe just a luxury car. Anything.

God, she was lonely.

Well, maybe not so much anymore.

Hence, the strip.

Morning greeted her as soon as Janet opened her door. Trying to block it from the windows with a hand just made her aware of her changed existence, veins flaring up as much as the corona of light cresting the horizon.

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And that fucking heat between her legs that felt so, so good.

A trail of clothes led to the big person-sized windows. Pulling strings helped bathe her in darkness. Soon enough, nothing was lighting up the apartment except for her own azure lines coursing up and down her soft skin.

“This… this is going to be a problem, you know?” she gasped aloud to her passenger. Her core hurt from how many Kegels she had just been doing over the past hour or two, keeping in control.

If there was some form of amusement in the gentle prickly feeling down one side of her face, down her sinuses, into the faint itch just above where the roof of the mouth meets the nose  - said sensations were probably it.

“Partners. Remember? I don’t feel as hungry as before though, so I guess that’s good. We have access to food and water though, so tone it down or else we’re going to be discovered,” Janet continued, moving toward the bathroom and a hot shower to get the last few bits of slime off her.

It was a modest setup with a wand. Spartan as the rest of her life save that one little victory. Management technically forbade alterations to the plumbing but by thunder she had lived with fixed mounts for six years getting her master’s degree, she was going to have this.

She expected warm water to be a wonderful reprieve for her past night’s escapade as she stepped in.

It burned.

Her skin was on fire, like putting hand to a stovetop.

The cerulean quickly shifted to a sickly, putrid smelling mustard yellow as she shut off the shower. Nearly throwing the door off its rail, she stumbled over the threshold onto the bath rug with a heavy crash into sink.

Dead rivers. Hard streams. Searing dust and foul ichor. Yet more things her monologue partner had never experienced. Something it should fix. Something it needed to fix. For everyone.

“Wh-, what are, n-no-o-oh-ohhh,” Janet mumbled as she felt her belly shift. Too high for her heartseed, so that meant…

Her legs seized and she spread side. Pleasure blended with the pain as her breathing quickened.

Something wrong was happening despite how good it felt.

Then a seed was reaching out between her nethers with a curious squelch.

Jan’s color started returning as she regained her senses, sliding the building water droplets off her skin. Just long enough to see one of her passenger’s children grow tiny roots.

And start pulling itself toward the shower drain.

It was taking her a moment to comprehend what was happening. Something dead, something foul needing to be remedied. Her own problems seem to have been fixed just by blue pollen and copious amounts of ambrosia-like honey. Surely it didn’t mean to-?

“Oh no. No, no, no, not good, don’t you dare!”

Lurching forward, her palms burned as she missed grabbing the seed and instead swatted puddles. Despite emerging so slowly, the damn thing gained such great agility with this glorious purpose of whatever the hell it planned.

Crawling once more she got a lead on the crawling seed, smashing it before it could slide the rest of the way to the drain.

“Hah! Gotcha!”

Janet’s victory was short-lived as it cracked open. Three more pods rolled out the sides.

And down the drain as she fishlipped a cogent response to the devilry.

Three gurgling plops echoed as she listened, mortified.

“Oh.”

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