with editing help from teagan_the_doll. originally published june 18, 2025. 1.8k words.
content notes
asexual kink, mind control/mindbreak, age regression, body horror (played comfy), caregiver/little, found family,dubious consent, hdg-inspired
The weavers had made their terms very clear: peaceful coexistence, or else.
The treaty affirmed the right to self-determination, with just a few reasonable requests. There was to be total freedom of communication between the populations. The right to safe travel between them would be guaranteed. And, while the human worlds were free to set their own immigration policies as they wished, the weavers did intend to welcome anyone into the Weaverdom, and made it clear that any attempts to stop such emigration would not be tolerated.
Their broadcasts were all over the net, showing how wonderful it was in their post-scarcity world. There were aliens no human had ever seen before, from faraway steads which apparently touched (or fell within?) the unknowable vastness of weaver space.
A lot of humans really didn't like the weavers. Their appearance was unsettling, and their "little ones" raised some deeply concerning questions. They called it symbiosis, but the word going around in human space was parasitism. People said they were sphexish monsters, acting on nothing but instinct. Their affection and music and theatre and tapestries and clothes and baskets and poetry, their whole utopian society; it was all a sprawling orchid-mantis. A process of mimicry that was the end result of a complex evolutionary arms-race between predator and prey. A weaver couldn't really love (they said) no matter how much it insisted otherwise.
But not everyone thought they were so bad. After all, they left human space alone, and never did anything without consent. They were a little weird , but nobody was forced to go to them. Ask anyone who did defect to the Weaverdom, and they would tell you how great it was, how much they love their new "families", how much they miss you, how much they wish you'd join them. They'd tell you what they've been up to now that they don't have to work their old job, and will never, in fact, have to work again.
Usually not in such lucid terms.
It took a few months for the first person you knew to defect. But, once that happened, it seemed like every week someone was saying goodbye – friends, family, neighbors. There was a creeping number of empty spaces in your offline life, and you found yourself more and more socializing exclusively on the internet.
Defectors and weavers were prolific online, because defectors didn't need to work, and weavers didn't need to sleep. The weavers were very friendly, and charismatic, and had a habit of ending up on your friends list, ending up in your recent messages, ending up the recipient of anxious confessions at 3 am.
When the powers-that-be threatened to cut off your benefits again, your desperation finally won out against your fear of the weavers. You had become unconvinced lately that what the weavers were doing was even wrong. Everyone seemed so happy there, and she had been so kind and supportive and sympathetic, and made you feel things you couldn't even put into words, and you just couldn't take it anymore.
You begged her to rescue you, to help you leave the sector. She came and picked you up. It was the first time you'd ever seen a weaver up close. That was when you realized they weren't scary at all. She was the most beautiful thing you had ever gazed up at.
The few belongings you actually cared about were gathered from your apartment into a pretty basket, and then you turned away from everything you knew. As she carried you to the spaceport in the sunset light, you could hear muttered insults. They wouldn't dare do more than that.
The Weaverdom was everything you dreamed it would be. Everything was free and abundant and utterly beautiful. All your friends were there, waiting for you, and every day you were treated with more love and affection than you'd experienced all year. Everyone was so nice to you, it all kind of made you slip into a docile innocence as you realized nobody would ever hurt you again.
She fed you, and bathed you, and dressed you in soft clothing, and made you feel so cute. She helped you fill out the adoption paperwork, and, with a final signature, you became her daughter (or, at least, that was the closest cultural equivalent).
Of course, there is just one small, eensy teensy little thing left to do.
Life takes on a kind of dreamlike quality. You feel so small, and helpless, and good, all the time. You notice there's this glimmering feeling in your head, a vague fullness, which is, of course, your new sister growing inside of you.
You become more forgetful, distractable, and you get all sorts of strange ideas and feelings, like you can't stop giggling, or you get dizzy, or everything feels like complete euphoria for a moment, or like you're… falling. Sometimes your hands have to wave around, but differently than normal, or you get the feeling like your colored pencils are moving on their own. Sometimes, you hear a babbling in your head; a voice sort of, but not really. Mom explains that she's playing with your brain, just like you play with your stuffed friends. She's learning.
Mom gives you medicine for your headaches, and she shows you diagrams and scans, but in the endless fog of overwhelming comfort, you find them really boring. You ask her to show you the pretty book with the birds instead. The weird feelings calm down as she hugs your body heavy and reads you familiar poems.
She treats you both like little children at first, but after your sister starts to think full thoughts, you begin to feel like you're being outrun. You're always forgetting things, and you have trouble with a lot of basic tasks, but luckily, Mom keeps teaching you things, or, teaching your sister things? It gets confusing sometimes.
Time flows on. Your sister gets bigger, smarter, stronger, cleverer. She can move your body all on her own now, speaking for herself, without needing you to talk for her. Whenever the quick red moon is full, Mom takes the both of you to the Singing, and all your grandmothers gush about how cute and helpless you are, and how quickly she's growing.
She gets the typical weaverly charm early, and is one of the most fascinating creatures you have ever met, somehow even more than Mom. You like to hide away together, in the little world you found within your body, the beside-world. Long whiles spent in dreams of treehouses and woods and lake-shores and standing-stones. She is like an artist with the flickering fire that runs in your shared wrists, that lights up and colors your imagination. She can do things with it you never thought possible.
Everyone – your sister, Mom, your grandmothers, every weaver you ever meet, and your ever-growing circle of seedling friends – everyone loves you so, so, so much, and is always willing to explain things to you, to help you. Even though you're going to keep having memory problems from now on, they tell you it's okay, that you're being taken care of, and you aren't expected to ever grow back up anyways. Nobody expects that of a weaver's child.
Your life feels kind of perfect.
You are safe and taken care of, and never, ever alone. Every morning you wake up in Mom's grasp, and you can't stop yourself from being a little gasping helpless dreaming thing, half awake, subject from without to her relentless touch, and from within to hers, a half-hallucinatory snuggle pile.
Cuddling at night, with the den lights off, you see the Summer Bear through the big skylight, and a couple long-moons later, the Eyes of Fall are twinkling. A couple more, and it's the Great Beetle, and then the Little Flower is back again, in time for spring (Mom points out the western petal-tip – its the star that your species came from).
And with every long-moon that goes by, you come to feel that it's just better to let go of your body, to give yourself over to your big sister most of the time. She's so capable, and smart, and better at moving your body than you, and she has important things to do.
She takes you along to her classes, in the back of her mind. You spend a long time in school together. Like everything in the Weaverdom, your shared body's lifespan has been made abundant, and there is so much for her to learn. She's very studious, and you like to distract her. Sometimes the lessons are fun, like storytelling, or sewing, or botany. But many of them are really, really complicated and kind of boring, and you don't understand them.
But that's fine, because you don't need to pay attention. You aren't expected to. Nobody expects anything from you. You will never be seen as an adult in Weaverdom, so your only concern is being cute and having fun and being a shining treasure adored by your family.
When you get home from school each day, everyone is really nice to you. They tell you they're proud of you for being so patient, and your sister lets you out, to play as much as you want. Sometimes, they give you treats that make you feel like you're melting with joy. One thing you always really like is when Mom's little sibling comes out and plays with you. Xe's shy, and from another kind, so sometimes xe can be hard to understand. But xe's really sweet, and cool, and xe has so many stories, because xe's lived a loooong time.
One day, you and your sister will be like her and mom. Your sister will turn your body into a weaver-body, from the inside. It sounds kind of scary, but it's not so bad, because weavers are pretty, and it won't hurt at all. And it's not really for you to worry about now. It's a nice afternoon to play.
Eventually, Mom has a surprise for the both of you. Apparently alllll the silly humans still living outside decided to come to their senses, and asked the weavers to come take over their sector. It had gotten so empty anyways. Hardly anyone was living there anymore, because the weavers are so nice, and most humans wanted to go live with them, and so their government collapsed.
That stuff isn't very interesting to you. The thing that is, though, is that you're moving to Earth! You're really excited. You've read a lot of books about Earth, and you think you might have even been there once, long ago? You aren't sure, it's hard to remember a time before you were like this. But you're definitely excited to meet her.
And all the weavers seem excited too. After all, nobody really knows who might live beyond the furthest reaches of this newest slice of Weaverdom. There's only one way to find out.
with editing help from teagan_the_doll. inspired by human domestication guide by glitchyrobo, and bloodchild by octavia butler.