Welcome to Gaia! ::

It took a moment for Mimsy's thoughts to progress past the glaring question of 'how?', her mind wholly incapable of grasping the very idea. His desire to dance correlated with her more scientific desires, and she could not fathom how difficult it would be to give that up. Even if it were possible, it could surely not ever be acceptable; imagining such a sacrifice seemed nothing short of painful, and she regretted not telling him this sooner.

Once her musings moved along, the miscounted words did not go unnoticed, but she responded only with a brief glance of confusion, not a correction. It wasn't relevant to prove him wrong through such pedantry, and this was certainly not part of whatever the 'big deal' really was. This was a time to encourage the belief that this was right, not wrong.

"Ah, well," she began, laughing alongside him to a slightly different joke. "Now you comprehend how you have made me feel! The observations regarding me that have come so easily to you, which you have been most adamant about on many occasions, have often contradicted the most complex determinations that have been constructed within my mind. But you believe them nonetheless - and I trust your judgment. I am pleased that you trust mine."

He'd worked much harder to tear down her own walls, and that trust had not been earned without a lengthy amount of coaxing, but it was extended without question now. Even the most stubborn of cemented foundations were deteriorating, the laws and rules that should never have had meaning, and she knew just how it felt to wonder how these things had ever been so important.

"But Robert, you need not make concessions like these." Her hand moved to give his arm a gentle squeeze. "We can achieve anything together. You can have anything that you desire, and my help in obtaining it. There is use in believing impossible things, remember."

The proof of his accurate recollection of the subject of impossible things was sufficient to earn a smile of approval. The concept had always been meaningful to her, and had guided her into theoretical science in the first place, but it meant something different now. Something better.

"And a husband," Mimsy pointedly added, a firm believer of the principle that such a title was at least as important as either of the other two.

Then a small laugh of amusement filled the space between his proclamation and the sound of the egg shell cracking, at which point it stopped abruptly. Another very loud 'how?' eclipsed her thoughts, and she didn't voice this one either - she was far too amazed to say much of anything, really.

Her wide-eyed stare moved away from the eggs to fixate on him, her expression implying that she may have believed him to be some sort of impossibility prodigy. This was not exactly what she had meant by her words of encouragement, but this was no less incredible.

"Oh," she gasped, now clutching his arm. "You...that was...um--how do we proceed? Do we simply observe? No interference unless necessary? Should I be speaking, or will my voice startle them?"

Only halfway through her final question did she think to lower her voice to a whisper.

In several grades throughout elementary and middle school, the teachers supplied a half-dozen eggs or so in spring, presumably as a tie-in for their varied levels of study on biology. Mimsy never got to see where they were kept, and her turn to tend to them never seemed to arrive in the rotation, so the entire hatching process was very new to her eyes.

Of course, she never realized that she'd been intentionally kept as far from the tiny creatures as possible, and had never been instructed on how to care for them in a strategic attempt to deter her from having any interest in doing so. Each teacher distracted her in different ways, but her focus on her work never changed, so they never encountered the result of what would happen if she were allowed to touch the hatchlings.

But if the risk had ever existed, it didn't exist now - she'd just been told that she should touch them, yet she shied away and hid her hands as well as she could.

"Perhaps I could just speak to them," she suggested, recalling how uncomfortable a contrast her fingers had been against the smooth shells protecting them (from her). If they couldn't understand her, the damage she could do here was minimal.

"Hello, and hello, and hello...and a hello to you too, if you are not presently sleeping." Each was addressed one at a time, until she reached the least eager of the bunch. "I apologize for the fact that you will never know your mother or father, and for the fact that you no longer reside in Halloween. Fortunately, you need not be concerned! Unless you are relatively sluglike creatures, I suppose. As that is unlikely, I would like to persuade you all to emerge as quickly as possible. There is someone waiting for you that you should meet. I am confident that you will like him very much."

'It's you', she mouthed to Robert, just to be clear on this.

When the shell began to break away, her confidence surged, feeding into the hope that there was still a chance that she knew what she was doing. There was still potential for her to not be innately harmful to another living creature. The hatching minipets seemed to believe in her too - she nodded along with the assessments made about its potential species, but her focus remained on the most active egg until its inhabitant burst forth.

This was not a chick. There was no fuzzy down feathering, no budding wings. This was scaly, and dangerous, and most definitely did look like a dinosaur.

And all evidence now pointed to the fact that Mimsy's motherly instincts were very appealing to tiny, coldblooded killers.

The shouted announcement of its species had not been very clear in regards to his opinion on the creature, so she anxiously turned to see if any physical reaction might be a better indicator. Just as she feared, Robert's surprise at this turn of events did not look especially positive. She backed away from the eggs, lest she coax some more horrible monster from the next shell, and closed her eyes to avoid witnessing any more of this.

"I'm sorry!" she choked out, hands pressed against her cheeks. "This was an unanticipated level of impossible!"

There was a sharp escalation of anxiety as she felt him pull her close, her first assumption that this was just to prevent her from ruining anything else. Mimsy understood, but still offered an explanation as best she could.

"It is my fault. I am apologizing for calling forth a--this--instead of the bird you hoped for, and it is reminiscent of my inability to..."

But he didn't sound so upset about this anymore. She cautiously opened one eye to look at him, followed shortly thereafter by the second when he showed no signs of being angry with her. His arms around her felt affectionate and inclusive again, and her rigid posture softened as she settled against him. He wanted her to be there. He wasn't bothered by the overwhelming lack of normality surrounding all of the current events, including her part in them.

"Millions," she absently corrected, finding relevance in doing so again, her voice still weak from the strain of her previous panic. "But perhaps they have existed in Halloween for quite some time now. I wonder if it is possible to determine the relative age of each species through some manner of practice akin to carbon dating, or..."

Had he said that someone's going to want to study them? She blinked up at him, mouth agape, completely forgetting the presence of the minipet just as he became more focused on it.

"Of course we will keep the shells, but we will be the ones to study them." These were their specimens! "This is directly relevant to my specialization, and understanding this is critical information, on which I have no current data of my own."

That should have meant that this would be a fantastic opportunity to begin collecting data, and that she should have been recording her observations; but as the talons of the minipet curled around Robert's finger, her thoughts were elsewhere.

"You...ah, you think that it is cute?" It did seem to like him, just as she'd said it would. "And are not disappointed in this result?"

The cracking of the other shells became more audibly apparent, but Mimsy's focus remained on Robert, though her expression was now less tentative and more a very distinct frown.

"No, you are not an idiot," she corrected again, tone more serious this time. "These very closely resemble an organism that was extinct to you for the majority of your life. It is entirely understandable that your reflexive recollection would be of the concept you were more familiar with. There is still reason to be excited, even contextually - this may be an unrecorded species in itself."

Only when she was sure that he found the hatchling appealing did she finally look towards them again, wishing vaguely that she'd had more of an interest in dinosaurs as a child. It would not take much to identify the species that they primarily resembled, at least.

"I don't know," she admitted, failing to grasp that the question of how someone could be disappointed in that 'precious widdle face' might have been rhetorical. "My perception of cute is not especially standard, and...you were referring to birds, and this would be an unpleasant substitute for a bird, I would think."

The minipet seemed to be enjoying his attention, and the second hatchling appeared eager to receive some affection as well. With the third making noticeable progress, she checked for signs of a similar response from the fourth, but found no visible indicators.

It would not be uncommon, if these followed conventions of Earth's biology, for one to be more weak than the rest of its siblings. If that were true in this case, it would not be uncommon for it to perish before adulthood, either. These occasionally arrived in the biology department for the sake of dissection, which somehow seemed like the incorrect solution in this instance. Maybe it was her determination to prove that she could responsibly care for a newborn creature, or the sight of Robert's reaction to the creatures, but allowing it to die seemed so careless.

She stretched towards the motionless egg and gave its shell several insistent taps with the end of her nail, and waited no more than a second before she began petting it with her fingertips as if it were a cat.

"Pardon my interruption, for you are surely occupied with something you find very important if you are so set upon ignoring my husband, but it is time to emerge from your shell." She stopped petting it as she worked through the appropriate options, and began again as she returned to speaking. "If you find the security of the darkness more appealing, please trust that we know how to accommodate this. If it is another need that has caused you concern, I am afraid that neither of us can divine it, so we will require your cooperation. You will need to come out, that is."

There was an undeniable sense of ease in Robert's interactions with the creatures, and Mimsy couldn't determine if this was some 'natural' talent or if it was something he'd learned over time, something that came from being around animals and tiny humans without the express purpose of taking them apart. She smiled as she watched him exhibit his dexterity to assist them, marveling at how skilled he was at this, and found herself grateful for their tails and claws and pointed teeth; the sight would have been more difficult to witness if the creatures were any more humanoid.

She would have expected him to suit the role of their parent this well - and the results of her own efforts were similarly predictable, until she felt the perfectly replicated reply from within the egg.

The tapping was such a relief that she burst into cacophonous giggles, overwhelmed by the reaffirmation that her greatest of hopes was not misplaced. She could do this! She was capable of this!

"It is speaking to me," she announced, disrupted by the remnants of her laughter. "It is alive, Robert. It may not be as readily able to display its strength, if it possesses any, but it is intelligent. It is like me!"

Reasoning that her alternative method of care would therefore be more successful than the method that worked for its siblings, she deftly pulled the egg away from the 'nest' and began to cradle it in her arms, drumming gently on its shell in time with her words as she rocked it back and forth.

"Are you frightened?" The tone of her voice, intended to be a soothing coo, was closer to something akin to a creepy taunt. "You need not be frightened. I required additional care at my birth as well. Without this assistance, I would not have survived - and you will survive too, with our assistance. You will grow, and you will be happy."

She held it in silence for a moment, and added softly, after further consideration: "I will not call you a monster."

The tap that punctuated the sentence was more firm than the rest had been.

The unhatched minipet's obvious lack of response to Robert was genuinely perplexing, and it showed through Mimsy's furrowed brow as she stopped her tapping and let him finish. There was no reply. Was this even the same creature? How could its siblings be so fond of her husband when this one was not?

"Perhaps it is too similar to me. I think that it is hesitant to display its affections for you." She tapped again, smiling when she felt the tap in return, and tilted her head to speak to it again. "It is all right to allow yourself to be cared for, you know. He will not harm you, and you will not harm him, even if you feel certain you will."

There was a very real comfort in the retaliatory tapping, as if it were actually processing her words and speaking back to her. If this were true, it would mean it was just repeating them like a parrot, but it was still an impressive level of cognition.

"Anyway, we are conversing in code," she stated, matter-of-fact, as she looked back up to him. They were not, and she knew as much, but the idea that she had actually broken the language barrier (without the aid of an artifact) was much more exciting. Then she laughed at her own joke, before she'd even told it.

"I am speaking to it through Morris Code."

A peal of additional laughter followed, but she eventually cleared her throat and settled down to focus on the egg again. The task of keeping it warm and awaiting the first crack required slightly more concentration than she'd been allotting for it, so she adjusted as necessary and held it more closely.

"We will play a game," she informed it in a murmur, scratching faintly along the top of the egg. "I will knock until you find the door, but you must come out when we find it. I do not want you to hide forever. All right?"

She began to do just what she'd told it, starting from the top and slowly tapping downward, in hopes it might discover a vulnerable portion of its shell.