Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was nice to think there was something more at play in how they connected. For her, it was comforting. For him, it was fascinating. Considering that now meant that he had come across two different beings that had connections to his comet, were there more?

... That was probably unrealistic. He'd ignore that thought and focus instead on the fact she didn't know where she got them from at all.

Added some intrigue to them, honestly. Had she struck a connection with connections to Daphne? Had she just met someone who dealt in rare books? Both were worth considering, especially since it was unlikely he'd ever get a full answer to that. "Yeah, catgirl! Just without the ears."

Sounded right, anyway. Now he knew who to ask-- their conversation bounced again, which he was fine with. His fingers started tapping against his thigh.

Definitely conservatory.

"I mean, Encke's Comet was a mess when I started going there. Took a lot to get it where it is now, eh?" And it would probably take a lot to get a lab looking good again. Probably had to worry about what lab standards were, for one. Encke had no idea what those were, but he did know they were important in the scripts he'd seen with labs involved. Something about clean room gear?

"We know some science people, right?" Encke pursed his lips. "Maybe they can help."

Nevertheless, he waa ready to follow.

Every little butterfly he saw was a delight. It was a confirmation that her wonder was coming back. It was a confirmation that seeing the first one hadn't been a fluke caused by magic trying to point out something to her. And maybe, just maybe, she was on the way to chaos boys not being able to reach into her chest and take her soul.

Her soul, that had apparently been bound to his throughout the millennia.

Encke had already felt protective, but to say it had kicked up a notch would be correct. Easy enough to bury that under exploring what was there, though. She was right, labs did tend to stand out, and this one did too. It was pretty dusty and definitely ancient, but it gave the vibes that something was being studied here. Considering the conservatory nearby, it was pretty reasonable to assume it had something to do with that.

Encke ran his hand along the counters, not minding that they gathered dust along the way. There was a moment where he considered preserving that somehow, considering this was the dust of a place a millennium old, but he easily changed his mind about that as he took out a few wipes from his subspace pocket.

The bookshelves had his curiosity, too, but he was momentarily very focused on cleaning up this singular counter.

"I mean, that is a good question. How long has it been since Father Hollenbeck joined us? Eight months now?" Of all the people in the house, Teegan was the friendliest with Livie. Ignacio had spoken with him, sure! But he could tell he was a bit more private than it might have seemed.

Which was fine. Encke liked Teegan well enough.

"They gotta be getting used to it by now, right? And you'd be bringing them to a place not related to his purification, which might help things."

Maybe they wouldn't be as good as splitting places in their mind like Encke was because they hadn't been going to space for years, but still. He had been to Cybele. This was not Cybele.

"Although," he suddenly paused mid-swipe, "think I saw three people that looked like them while I was trying to find that damn jackalope--"

Okay, so they had been there. Encke had heard their names during the arm wrestling, now when he took a moment to think about it. He's supposed it was a whole thing though, because the fact that Teegan was still living in their house was very surprising in a lot of ways. They had nothing against it, he could stay there as long as he needed to, but the basement dwellings had never been meant for the long term.

But if he was comfortable, at least. Seemed to be adjusting well, considering he was now a whole priest again. Viatrix was particularly proud of that one.

Encke watched over his nose as Nectaris wandered away from the tables and toward the bookcase. He supposed that was the more interesting thing in this place beyond the fact it was a lab. He probably didn't need to clean it.

He finished what he was doing with the table, balled up the wipe and put it back in his subspace pocket, and followed her over to the bookcase.

He snorted and she somehow found a book of diagrams that the researchers at this conservatory were clearly making. There was certainly a lot of things on that butterfly. Did butterflies really have that many organs? And that many hearts? Bit of an illusion how small they were honestly...

"More than meets the eyes in those tiny bodies..." Though maybe that matched Nectaris particularly well? She was more than she seemed, and she was definitely tiny in comparison to him. "Maybe there's a reason why the code gave you this place."

He picked one off the shelves that looked a bit more like a journal. Would this tell him more about the people who had lived there? Or research here, at least? Both would be interesting.

Nectaris was quickly getting bored of the book she had, which made sense! Dry notes on what made a butterfly of butterfly weren't exactly her kind of thing. Maybe if it was a deeper dive into something she was actually interested in, or at least a deeper dive without the literal anatomical deep dives.

The book he had chosen was an improvement over that, but only so much. For one, it still wasn't giving the impression of an epic poem or some kind of fancy mystery novel that he could shove in Basiluzzo's direction. For another, it was still pretty, well, as Nectaris may say, sciency

"They are something," Encke could certainly agree with that one, with a laugh. Okay, so she wasn't going for his attempt at a metaphor.

Fair enough.

"It's okay! These are still ancient books of ancient knowledge of whatever creatures used to live here. If it's possible to extract that, you might be able to figure out what belongs here other than those pink little butterflies." What she was very happy to see, by the way! So seem to be a research facility, all that really told him was that there were more.

And if there were more, there was more potential for more things for her to discover, and the more she discovered, the hopefully the more the Wonder loved her.

With her love of chaos boys, he felt like she needed it.

"Do you want to go back to neatening up?"