Welcome to Gaia! ::

At the impressionable age of fourteen, Mimsy had been amassing a small collection of 'neat stuff' with a certain fondness, growing more eager to return with each passing moment, thinking that an illogical physics-defying butterfly might be something that she would like. It was still not in the critical period of time that could technically count as 'before breakfast', but maybe if they waited to talk about it--

At twenty-eight, Mimsy was sitting on the ground with no recollection of how she got there, dizzy and disoriented, trying to remember where home was. Remembering how home felt didn't help. Acknowledging this problem caused her to feel even more unsteady and unfocused, as if she had touched an exposed nerve.

Maybe she had.

Head propped haphazardly up by one hand on her cheek, glasses askew, she corrected her name on Twitter and waited. She watched and waited, tapping the bird over and over, but the result that she sought (just 'sought', avoiding 'wanted') never came. It seemed like it wouldn't.

Hours later, she stepped silently into the dolphin room in the bunker, empty-handed of everything but fourteen reacquired years and herself. As a whole, she didn't seem to have changed much. It was the details, shifted and suited to a life that she had already lived: longer hair, slender in a different way, more height, more age. All of the bravery that America had inspired was used up in just getting here, and she appeared to have reverted to an inability to look her in the eye again.

"I am going to miss you. Terribly," she murmured, only on the second try, after nothing came out where words should have been.

A short laugh of relief was startled out of her, more closely resembling a snort or half of a cough than a laugh. At this point in her life, enthusiastic hugs were not something that Mimsy found uncomfortable or unfamiliar; there was none of the rigid uncertainty of her younger self when she hugged her back, arms tightly encircling her in a way that more accurately exhibited her gratitude for America's presence.

"I did. I would not have left you alone." The assurance was true even if she hadn't come back to the bunker as intended, but this was much more pleasant than if their paths finally intersected after days, weeks, months of simply watching her and wishing for something better.

She listened to her assessment and repeated it three times in her head before she felt capable of responding. Frankly, she still wasn't sure she really understood.

"You are substantially cooler than I am." She smiled the easy sort of smile that came in place of a laugh. "And I have no desire to dump you. I want to always be you friend. Forever. I want to be, even if many things surrounding our friendship will be different."

This was when she noticeably became more tentative again.

"When. Even when many things surrounding our friendship will be different. I liked...I don't ever want to lose the place that we have had in one another's lives. It is an important place. You are important."