Welcome to Gaia! ::

Upon reading the note, Mimsy began to wonder about some note-relevant things. It wasn't uncommon for her to be curious, but it did seem a little strange that she questioned where he got a crayon from instead of questioning what he intended to do in a room with useless portals. She brushed it off as an indication that she needed coffee, which she immediately went to fetch, lest its absence cause any more uncharacteristic things without warning.

When she returned, she spent thirty minutes wondering another thing: whether he meant leggings or actual tights. It was a common mistake, but if he'd gone out of the way to be so specific--

She stopped wondering and finished her coffee, since her mind was clearly still not going in the right direction yet, and put on a pair of leggings. It was not as if she'd had any real choice in the first place, considering her lack of tights.

It was shortly before 10:00 a.m. when she arrived at the designated location, note in hand, looking especially intrigued.

With a slow blink in response to the slow smile, Mimsy tried to discern the meaning of Robert's expression. It was a smile, which generally meant something in the positive range, but it was kind of different compared to his other smiles. Then he spoke, which made her no less confused. Gross? It was not the first time she had ever heard that adjective paired with her appearance, but she would not have expected to hear it right now. She narrowed her eyes, looking from him to the engineer, and silently began to attempt to piece this all together.

Very little of that was accomplished by the time he corrected himself with the actual ending of his sentence. She glanced down at her attire and picked at the hem of her sleeve.

"Uh." The comment was unanticipated, and she felt somewhat taken aback as she gave him an anxious little smile to buy herself some time to think. Instead of an answer, she found that she couldn't help laughing at the contrast of that pout with those words.

"Thank you. I do truly enjoy when someone compliments my appearance with a frown," she teased, folding her arms. "It is nice to see you. May I ask why we are here? Oh. And...will these suffice?"

The last question was paired with a gesture towards her leggings, in case he needed the specification.

'Go home early'. They were leaving? Mimsy's fingers began to shake as she considered that implication. The possibilities in the outside world seemed endless, now that their access was so limited.

"You have portal access?" she managed, mentally unfurling a list of all of the supplies she'd been hoping to obtain, all of the locations she planned on visiting, all of the scientific progress and information she was behind on absorbing.

All of those incredibly crucial things within their grasp, and he asked her on a date.

Why? Didn't he have things he needed? Important things to attend to? Maybe not. Maybe he made a separate trip, and this was just an additional venture into the world beyond the island. That aside, it was difficult to fathom how he would want her company on anything traditionally date-related.

At the very least, she wanted to plead for some new shoes. That was never something that she thought she would ever prioritize, but these had limits of practicality. They also put a serious handicap on her ability to look respectable or intimidating in any capacity. She looked down at her feet, at the striped yellow rainboots, and sighed.

"Sure." There was no reason for accepting that felt legitimate, and few that she wanted to believe, so she just nodded. "Yes. Is that question always so formal? Where are we going?"

Not that it mattered now that she'd agreed, she realized.

Instead of considering supplies or items of use, these were the things that Robert considered. There was nowhere he needed to go, nowhere at all in the expanse of his imagination...except on a date. With her. Right now.

Mimsy couldn't help laughing at the absurdity of the idea. The thought that anyone would want that was ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous when the state of the island was factored in, and all of the other possibilities were weighed against it. This was inevitably all a joke, a false introduction to a mission or some sort of fetch quest. Right?

It would have made sense, had he not looked so genuine. In fact, he looked a lot like he wanted nothing but to go on a date with her, judging by his blush and his smile.

The weight of that concept was significant, and she was so lost in her attempts to process that idea that she didn't protest when he picked her up and carried her through the portal. She was still silent for the first few moments, and had still not quite come to terms with what that meant when she spoke.

"Where are we?" she softly repeated, sans one word. The answer to the question that she'd asked before they left the island was no more clear now that they were here, wherever that was. It was a town, possibly not in the continental United States, but that did very little to pinpoint their location.

As if the day had not already been filled with compelling examples of the polar differences of their respective thoughts, Robert answered her after sufficient evidence had already supplied itself. Mimsy laughed again, cheek pressed against his shoulder. This still felt strange, and would continue to feel strange, she remembered; it was a world of nonsense when they were together, and she'd almost forgotten to play in it. Things that were logical to her rarely made sense here.

"No, I have not. Rather, not long enough to visit. It was only with the intention of catching a connecting flight in London, which hardly counts." She avoided questioning how he possibly didn't know if he had been here before, the reminder of things-lacking-sense still at the front of her mind, and focused on his plan instead. "How much thought did you put into this? Or do date plans come easily to you?"

Maybe it was as simple as forming a hypothesis. There was really no way of telling - aside from asking, of course. This didn't have to be needlessly difficult all the time.

"I am interested to discover what the last planned item will be, but I suppose I can try to enjoy everything else before it. I will even make an attempt to avoid guessing all day. It is the least I can do, when you have somehow given me a country."

She nudged him and looked up with a smile, strategically considering what she would prioritize on a trip off-island. There were no less than a hundred things she felt like she needed right now, but few really seemed acceptable to request on a date.

Wait. Why did that matter?

"Though some more functional boots would sweeten that bargain for me." She held one foot out and wiggled it, as a reminder. "Please."

Instead of commenting on how she was well aware of the scarcity of his in-depth thoughts, or questioning if he really needed a hat, Mimsy just stared at him, took a deep breath, and smiled again. There were less negative topics to talk about, and remarking about either of those things would have been missing the point.

Which, as far as she was concerned, was the amount of effort he put into doing this for her. It would have been simpler to take the compliment, to fawn over him and thank him for what he'd done, but thinking about saying as much made her chest hurt, and she didn't want to try.

She shrugged his arm off of her shoulders and loosely curled her arms around it, urging him along as she walked towards her best directional estimate of 'two streets down'. In the meantime, they could talk about something that had nothing to do with how she felt about any of this. And that felt better.

"Girls? Plural? Was that sort of thing a frequent occurrence?" Moving through an unfamiliar city meant that she couldn't stop the inevitable distraction that came along with observing her surroundings and neatly cataloging them in her mind, and she seemed distant and silent after she asked - until she realized the impression that might give.

Her eyes quickly found him again, and she tried to simultaneously focus and look pleasant, which was more difficult than she was prepared for.

"I will not be angry, if it was. My experiences in this subject have been nonexistent, disregarding our current excursion, so my curiosity is stronger than it typically would be." She tried to avoid connecting this to the peak of odd curiosity she felt before leaving her room, and began to fidget when she failed.

"But please don't take me to a club," she firmly requested, staring down the street again. It was probably not the surprise he had planned, but it was worth asking. Or demanding.

It was not exactly what she'd asked, but it answered Mimsy's question well enough anyway, so she didn't press for any more information. The evidence of his experience in this particular field had been fairly clear, but it was always nice to know she'd been correct.

She liked that feeling, and was smiling with smug pride when he chose to touch her cheek. That smile widened when she turned to look at him, after his words sunk in, bright with an excited sense of connection. A lot of time, and a lot of trouble, but he found what he'd been looking for.

She knew that feeling. What fantastic support for her methods! It mirrored what she had done so perfectly, and now that the conversation was back into the territory of comfortable subjects, she was much more present.

"It is more efficient, of course, if you have a general idea of what you are looking for, but your procedure was precisely as it should have been. The 'only way you knew how' was identical to the method I used, though yours was a more hands-on approach, while I favored observation, but..." She abruptly stopped walking, and stood on her toes to give him a lengthy kiss. It might have seemed misplaced, until she talked again.

"Each of our experiments arrived at the same conclusion: this. Isn't that incredible?" Somehow, believing that Robert thought like a scientist was more believable than the possibility that this was actually normal, and not the unconventional science project she claimed it was.

"I have no idea, however, why you would ever want to take me to a club." She nodded down the street she'd stopped at, which was presumably the location of the shops he mentioned. "But you can take me to retrieve new shoes, as you said."

The rubbery squeak that marked every step she took was obviously beginning to wear on her.