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She'd sort of signed up for the art museum blind date game as a joke. Ha ha ha, Destiny City's an awesome place to be a teenaged lesbian, hardy har har. Keren figured she'd get paired with someone uninteresting, wander around for a few hours making small talk about Vermeer or whatever, and then maybe, maybe get some lattes. Probably never see each other again or whatever.

Whoever had done the matching did... a fair job, she had to concede. Abigail, in theory, looked like a good match - provided that their four year age difference wasn't going to be a huge, awful problem. Keren had always prided herself in being mature for her age, and hey, twenty-two meant in the clear to buy alcohol, and she did rather enjoy wine.

Seven PM on Valentine's Day found Keren loitering in front of her assigned art piece, a huge triptych of black-and-white photo prints. She was pretty sure she'd seen the same thing on tumblr the other day, and planned to say so as soon as her 'date' showed up.

She glanced at the card again, puzzling over the crossed-out line about looking twelve years old. Did that mean her partner was short? Well, she could appreciate well-placed galaxy print as much as the next person. And short wasn't a deal-breaker. At least she hadn't worn heels.

Hearing heels clicking against the floor, Keren glanced away from the picture frames. She'd been looking up every single time someone new walked into the gallery, but this time she was rewarded. Smiling, she raised one of her hands to wave. "Abigail?" she called. The galaxy-print dress was particularly telling, and Keren could respect any girl who could pull off that jacket and those heels.

Or, in short: oh s**t, she's cute!

So, note to self, she thought - don't talk about your crazy ex, don't talk too much about how you're still in high school, don't flaunt how much you know about obscure medical trivia. Think mature! Be mature!

She smoothed out her skirt and was, once again, glad to have worn practically flat boots. While Abigail wasn't as short as Keren had originally worried she might be, there was a time and place for being 6'4" and this wasn't it. "Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Keren." Which was probably obvious, she thought, considering her height, her green, plaid tights, and the artwork she was standing in front of.

"I love your dress," Keren added. "Your whole outfit, really. Super cute."

"B negative, Capricorn, and I'm sorry, private," Keren laughed, playing along. She wasn't much for horoscopes. "I guess they were trying to match people up as well as they could." She was mostly just glad to have not been accidentally paired with a forty-year-old man. Young, cute, and apparently into girls was icing on the cake.

"Eh, don't even worry about it," replied Keren, waving her hand dismissively. It would have been super weird if they'd shown up matchy-matchy for a blind date! "Thanks," she added, leaning in to the tug just a bit. "So what do you want to do? We're already in the photography gallery... I've always wanted to see what the statue garden looks like at night...?"

She would have probably preferred the science museum, to be fair, but the art museum could be just as fun, and Keren hadn't been here since a Crystal Academy school trip a few years previously. Gesturing to the picture in front of them, she said, "I think I saw this on Tumblr once. Anyway, anything you're dying to see?"

"I feel like that means we're supposed to fight to death in some kind of post-modern gladiatorial match at some point," laughed Keren, happy to direct Abigail towards the elevators. "May the odds be ever in your favor." Her fangirl was showing, but it was bound to sooner or later. Better to get that out of the way than risk winding up with someone who didn't share her appreciation for The Hunger Games.

"That sounds really cool," she nodded, stepping into the elevator beside Abigail. "I've always really liked the neoclassical ones, you know, huge marble statues with perfect proportions, like, so austere it's ridiculous? I read somewhere that ancient Greek and Roman statues used to be painted all kinds of ridiculous, gaudy colors. Michelangelo would have a heart attack, I bet."

She shrugged, moving on to Abigail's question. "Uh, I spent a year and a half living with family abroad," explained Keren, which she thought sounded more glamorous than I was milking cows on a communal farm in Northern Israel because my parents thought I needed an attitude adjustment. "I just got back into town in October and it's been kinda slow picking back up with friends and meeting new people. Plus it'd be awkward to try and date a classmate. I go to Horizon Institute, and it's a pretty small place."

The elevator doors dinged open. Keren led the way out into the hall. "So what about you? What brings you to blind date night at D-CAM?"

Keren flushed bright red. First Lesath, and now Abigail had called her cute! Was there something in the water? (Not that Keren lacked for self-confidence, it was just - she'd always had trouble getting other people to see her as as devastatingly attractive as she saw herself.) "Aw, thanks," she said, twisting a loose strand of hair around her fingers self-consciously. "I think I lucked out as far as matches go. Cute and stylish and smart! It's like hitting the jackpot!"

Inwardly, she couldn't help but cringe a little bit - maybe she'd been too forward.

"Yeah, well," she shrugged, "My parents sent me away and my parents brought me back." The joys of being a minor. Which she wasn't anymore, and she was sort of eager to flaunt the fact. "I'm glad to be back, honestly. My cousins' place is pretty rural. Like, if you wanted an omelette, you had to go chase the chickens off their nests to get the eggs for it."

Following Abby out into the garden, Keren bit her lip contemplatively. Honestly, she'd never really gone to an art museum if it wasn't for a school trip or because one of her parents wanted her to accompany them to some function or the other.

"I think statues," she said, "Because you sort of have to look at them from every side to get the full effect. But paintings can be nice, too." Which was an impartial statement on purpose. "What about you?"

Well, at least she'd guessed right on her artistic opinions, and she was glad to have come out to the garden, since it was more festively decorated. "Yeah, looks like someone had a lot of fun with the tinsel and foil hearts," Keren agreed, trailing her fingers over some snow-covered bushes. She was definitely picking up the romantic atmosphere, but tonight was supposed to be casual - right? Maybe she could get Abby to hold hands...

But right. Farm life. Keren frowned. "It wasn't really for me," she said, although she supposes that made it an effective punishment. "Like, I'd be up before the asscrack of dawn with chores, and then I'd have to go to school, and then there'd be like, more chores. It was exhausting. And, I mean, my cousins - they don't just live on a farm. It's a kibbutz, a communal farm? So it's like, the whole town is sharing livestock and stuff. It's like a marxist wet dream."

"So, I mean," she shrugged, realizing she'd gotten pretty negative. "It's great. If you're into eating what you grow and never sleeping more than six hours a night. And I'm just really not about that kind of life." She paused. "So, uh, what happened to your chickens?"

"So, they wound up grilled, probably?" asked Keren dryly, and probably inappropriately. She realized a moment too late that the joke might not have landed the way she wanted to, and frowned. "Sorry, never mind," she said. She'd never had pets - her parents weren't much for them - and maybe she'd wound up lacking in empathy as a result.

Thankfully, they had come to a sculpture, some kind of metal mobile thing made of a bunch of different shapes suspended from each other. Keren gestured to it, changing the subject, "So, how do you feel about - modern abstract whatever this is? Brutalism? Is that an art movement?"

"I'm more of a science person, to be completely honest," Keren confessed.