Welcome to Gaia! ::

¹
When her mother was dead, it all meant nothing. The box of recovered belongings was supposed to offer some critical insight, but had granted very little in terms of additional understanding. Frankly, its greatest contribution was to an especially distressing breakdown over the perceived inevitability that she could not avoid a similar fate. Mimsy had since replaced (most of) its contents and left it in her basement, saving it only for its data’s sake. It would not be possible to acquire any of this again, should she discover one day that it was of some use.

Now she was alive, and it felt strange to keep it, holding it hostage until she could comprehend its contents. She watched her mother struggle to understand, grasping for many of the same pieces to the puzzle that she had never ultimately managed to put together, and over time she began to feel a sense of obligation. One to prove that she was the benevolent, empathetic human who freed the moth with its wing trapped in a web - not the opportunistic spider who fed upon the weakness it exhibited.

On Mother’s Day, which seemed to suit it best, she returned the box to the right hands. Left atop the fragments of a life they both abandoned was a polaroid camera and a lighter, each bearing a festive little bow. The camera had been of great help in providing visual evidence of a family when she finally attempted to form her own; the fire had cleansed her of what she did not want to incorporate.

She explained neither, but Caroline’s guess upon her discovery of them was a very good one nonetheless.

³
“MIMSY!”

The door opened with such abrupt force that it struck the doorstop hard enough to close itself behind a visibly alarmed Caroline.

“What's the--holy s**t, I don't know how--Mimsy, listen. H. Is he some kind of warlock.”

Three slow blinks later, Mimsy gently placed the half-washed dish into the sink, wiped her gloved hands on her apron, and tried to appear presentable.

“Good afternoon. Please come inside. I am afraid that my husband is not presently home. Are you well today? May I offer you a drink, or prepare some food for you to eat?” Each line was recited as expertly as it could be, a definitive list of the correct behaviors when first greeting a guest. It was critical to remember them, and even more so to use them in practice, lest she be perceived as an impolite wife.

Only after she had gone through the Steps For Inviting A Guest Into Your Home - steps that Caroline rudely skipped all together - was Mimsy capable of responding.

(Caroline was somewhat stunned at the absolutely off-the-charts levels of internalized misogyny that she had just witnessed, but that was a project for another day.)

“I presume that you have finally spoken to Dr. H.” Mimsy offered a slow, prideful smile. “I presume that he is precisely as incredible as I have expressed.”

“He’s--that's--no, no. No, the point’s that--okay, does he have some kind of powers? Sold his soul? Is it an…one of those artifact things? Legacies? I don't believe in religious s**t but--hell, I'd believe he's Lucifer himself if that's what you tell me.”

Mimsy's expression began with a faint look of disgust, and only soured as Caroline continued to rattle off her increasingly insulting theories.

“You provide him no credit for all of the unfathomable feats that he has accomplished,” she stated, sharp and impatient. Caroline responded with a look that sat somewhere between ‘no s**t’ and ‘don't know what you expected’. “He has diligently and rightfully earned all of the knowledge and skill that he possesses, and is capable of scientific achievements far beyond that of civilian scientists. Far beyond humanity--”

“Aha,” Caroline interrupted. “Not human!”

“Neither are you, by what you will find to be a number of inarguably verifiable facts and technicalities,” she icily argued. The redhead quieted then, appearing significantly more defeated than Mimsy was used to. She examined her carefully, collecting the strewn puzzle pieces of data left in the woman's panicked wake until she could arrive at what seemed to be a reasonable conclusion.

“You have miscalculated and made a grossly incorrect assumption about him,” she ventured. “You have believed that you were far more capable than he is - that he was just like any other man, the vitreous creatures that you perceive them to be. You supposed that you would triumph against him with laughable ease because you believed him to be similar enough to Victor, did you not?”

She tilted her head and stared impassively down at her.

“That was not a wise decision.” The smile had grown beyond proud, branching into harshly smug by now. “I did inform you that he was superior beyond compare. You have underestimated my ability to be objective in this matter, and you have underestimated him.”

A cool glass of water was set down in front of the still silent Caroline; Mimsy had clear directives that would not be deterred by her, and a portion of her instructions dictated that this was what a good hostess and housewife would do.

“I told you that I chose correctly.” Her tone was uncannily soft in a way that made her mother uncomfortable. “There is no one more superior than my father.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause your new daddy's a ******** wizard,” Caroline mumbled into her drink, swallowing the bitterness of her own wounded pride.