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"Look! I can fly!"

Though far from flying, Svensyl was flapping his wings at a pace so rapid that it would probably have been painful were he still in a living body. The motions were awkward and lopsided, and he looked more like a bat trapped in an electrified net than a majestic creature of legend.

"I will take a large leap and can vanxiantly soar above the..." His face contorted as a rumble emerged from the depths of the golem. "...oh, oh, oh, take pause! Just a hiccup. Well! A common mistake, companions!"

The inability to stretch his wings in the Tulgey Wood of Wonderland had been tolerable for Svensyl, despite how restless it made him feel. It was the loss of Wonderland that was not, and existing in this reality instead of one that he and his Hunter both favored had been harder on him than it had been on Mimsy in some aspects - namely the fact that she gained a place to call 'home' soon after, while he was left feeling uncomfortably displaced.

Residual remnants of Wonderland that remained firmly lodged in Mimsy's mind, when combined with the positive progression of his bond with her, did work well to create the warm sensation that tended to naturally follow inclusion. That was where it stopped, however; in the grand scheme of her family, all meticulously planned and recorded to the tiniest detail, the closest niche that he could inhabit was that of a pet. Just like a Foxfire that lived in a purse, worn as an accessory.

This amount of sulking was incredibly uncharacteristic of him, and when it began to slip into its worst stages, Mimsy was auspiciously observant enough to make note and take action by allowing him to temporarily inhabit a golem body.

Svensyl, who was not at all observant, had been incessantly speaking the entire way home from the labs. The blathering wholly consumed his focus, and it was not until he (failed to take his seven feet of height into account and) hit his head on a branch near the edge of the Morris' yard that he snapped out of it long enough to note the presence of someone that he had never seen through Mimsy's eyes.

"Woah! Woah! Wisth tym gildris visn fore ss?!" His scaly palms were pressed so firmly on either side of his face that his appearance was not unlike that of an iridescent fish.

"Goodness, Svensyl! Have you misplaced your manners? You should first introduce yourself to--"

To her credit, Mimsy did make an impressive attempt at finishing the sentence. Ultimately, she willingly succumbed to the fate of her mouth, which had been encouragingly smushed against Robert's mouth by the guiding hands of a Jabberwock against the back of her head.

While wearing a wide grin that screamed 'look what I did!', Svensyl sidled closer to the other weapon's golem, still holding one finger firmly in place between Mimsy's braids. His free hand was then extended towards her, palm up, wordlessly requesting a hand in return.

After all of that talking, an initially silent introduction seemed fantastically misplaced.

Dropping a weapon golem was probably not the most ideal thing to do, but for some strange reason, Mimsy couldn't bring herself to care enough to reprimand Robert for it. In fact, she found herself thinking that it was probably something to be rewarded, shortly before she stopped thinking about that at all.

"Of tea," Svensyl enthusiastically added in a pleasant purr, kindly interrupting to finish the sentence that Jazzy had already finished just fine on her own. "And you are a lemon tart, fresh from the tree!"

He folded his wings against his back and bent as if he intended to kiss her hand in greeting, but paused just short of her face instead. His lips parted just enough to allow a forked tongue to pass through them, which darted towards her to briefly lick her cheek.

"Aha!" With a wide grin and a snicker-smack of his lips, he nodded in approval.

"Just as I suspected - sweet and sour and a rather large hint of just as I suspected." The grin was temporarily redirected towards his Hunter, his tail swishing back and forth like a particularly pleased cat as he waved to get her attention. "Doctor Mimsy of Wonderland, I have performed a science!"

Mimsy shook her head very, very slowly, a growing look of concern creeping into her expression. Surely he did not think that this was how science worked. She turned her eyes back towards Robert and quietly cleared her throat, shifting to lean against him.

"Do...you think that it is safe to allow them into the house?" The hushed tone of her voice was softened even more as she spoke into his coat, making it a feat for anyone but the two of them to hear her. "I may have misjudged my trust in them. What if they should happen to go temporarily unattended?"

Her thin fingers slid between his, curling to hold his hand more tightly as she raised her brows.

Before Mimsy could even open her mouth in Svensyl's (tentative) defense, the two golems were already across the yard and through the door. Her hand clutched Robert's as her eyes darted up to him, filled with a concern that she didn't know how to address.

"All right," she began, sighing through her teeth. "This will be okay. We are here together to approach any potential problems that may arise, as always. They cannot possibly be a more superior team than we are."

It sounded a lot like she was also trying to convince herself of everything that she was saying (excepting the mention of superiority, which was much more firmly stated), and it seemed to have worked - she gave him another short kiss before she broke away to pull him inside the house behind her.

The weapons were no longer in the living room. She tried to ignore how immediately discouraging that was.

"I did not suspect this," Svensyl excitedly whispered into Jazzy's ear. He was enjoying the dance that the two of them had caught themselves up in, wherein he attempted to gain the ability to lead her somewhere. It was easier said than done, especially when dealing with two sets of wings and a tail and seven feet of height in a house that was only built to accommodate the latter.

"Do you see it? Does he let you see it?" Without elaborating, he tried to urge her into the room filled with plants. "The King and Alice-Queen of Hearts have--"

He released her without warning and surged towards a corner of the sunroom. There was a substantial bit of rustling before he turned back to her, hiding something in his cupped hands. His eyes glittered with enthusiasm, and an effervescent laugh consumed his first attempts to speak. It wasn't until he finally gave up and opened his hands to offer the surprise to her that the word finally came out, emerging alongside the gift.

"--roses."

Dramatics aside, Mimsy truly sympathized. She was still working towards a greater acceptance of Svensyl's presence in her mind, and what it meant for him to have access to her knowledge, which was unquestionably her greatest possession. Truly, she had a lot of difficulty coping with the idea of anyone or anything else touching what belonged to them.

But she was not doing a very good job of showing that.

"Well...no. Not all of them." With her gaze downcast, it was difficult to discern the distinction between her speaking shyly or slyly, and the actions that followed continued to walk such a close line between the two that they did nothing to help. She reached to take his other hand, then brought both simultaneously to rest around her waist, keeping her own hands insistently over his.

Everything in their home was of importance to her in one way or another, even if it was by virtue of it being important to him, but something else of importance took selfish precedence in this instant: reminding him of the most meaningful thing that he could call 'his'.

She knew that wasn't the point of what he had said, largely because she could not fathom him considering her to be a 'thing', nor was it something that should truly take precedence when their most precious objects were at risk. But she felt compelled to retain his attention regardless, even in circumstances that could potentially be a tiny bit dire.

"With this in mind..." Her fingertips passed over his fingers, pressing them against the fabric of her dress. "...what course of action do you propose we take?"

Seeing the rose tucked into Jazzy's hair delighted Svensyl, which primed him to have a very strong desire to follow her lead. Before opting to agree, however, he peeked around the door frame to see if he could catch a glimpse of either of the two Morrises. He assumed that Mimsy would have devised a plan by now, and that they would be well into the construction of an elaborate scheme.

What he actually saw was fairly contradictory to that assumption. He burst into a fit of giggles so tremendous that both hands could hardly stifle it, and closed and locked the door before he turned back towards his compatriot.

"I have learned a thing - our victory will be as smooth as tepid treacle!" He made a show of a flourish of a bow, knocking over several empty pots in the process, and gave his toothiest of smiles. "Ours now! By penalty! Ah, the death variety! What name do we give it, huh? What is the name, my Queen? What is it?"

Excitement made him into the hypothetical result of a genetic cross between a broken record and a chihuahua, but he was thoughtful enough to use some of the energy to move a shelf in front of the door, shortly before he picked her up, spun her around once, then clasped his hands under his chin to await her answer.

The motion of Robert's hands beneath hers went unnoticed until Mimsy felt him grasping at her with a sudden spark of fervor. The grin that emerged from her lips was definitively sly this time, smug and victorious.

Then the smile was lost in how veritably startled she was by his response, and she gasped just in time for him to pick her up.

This was the house that he had built to give her a home. These were the things that were critical pieces of their life together, things that fit together to reinforce the comfort that home carried with it. These were the walls that separated what mattered and what didn't, protected their world from intrusions that didn't belong.

It was all solidly meaningful in both rationally logical and emotionally legitimate ways, which was exactly why she had expected him to agree just long enough for her to be receptive to an actual course of action. She had intentionally crossed a boundary to encourage a choice that even she knew was excessively self-centered, overshooting her goal simply to direct his attention to one specific point as quickly and securely as possible, and he had actually followed her.

Mimsy didn't know what to say. More accurately, she didn't know how to say - verbalizing the knotted jumble of thoughts and words and realizations in her mind was not going to be a simple task, even if he had not been touching her. The addition of his hands always tended to raise the level of difficulty when attempting to produce linear thoughts.

"I love you," she stammered, failing to identify any other possibilities for valid remarks.

Had Svensyl been listening, there would have been much rejoicing, accompanied by a barrage of suggestions that he knew were uncomfortable, just as he did every time she yielded to the concept of her own feelings. But he was captivated elsewhere, and she would be left to celebrate on her own.

"Acceptable!" Giggling raucously, he clapped his hands together for Jazzy's approval. "A smidgment better than 'not acceptable'! O frabjous day!"

Upon the request to give her a minute, all of the noise coming from his direction stopped entirely. He appeared to have completely paused himself in anticipation, and did not begin again until she announced her decision.

"What about it, my Red-and-White Queen of Roseland?" He tilted his head and blinked, taking on an almost owlish appearance as his pupils darkened. "Is it not acceptable? Should we have a forest pssst the answer is yes we should? What do you decree-est?"

Despite the fact that her reply had not been nearly as lengthy or eloquent as she would have liked, Mimsy knew that she had found the right answer by the state of his smile. She smiled back, small and nowhere as impressive as his grin, and released all of the anxious tension through a soft laugh. Taking the leap into this, that had begun as an 'experiment', meant shedding portions of her that she would never recover. It had been so easy to lose for the sake of the gain when she could swear that it was for science, after sacrificing so much for the scientific cause already. It was the reminders that this had irreparably changed Robert that made it easy to admit that she had lost a part of herself for the express purpose of allowing someone else to fill that void. Someone who could make better use of it than she ever had.

"I am unapologetic. They would never understand your potential as I do." Her eyes were overtaken by a distant, glossy appearance, lids sluggish as she blinked up at him. "They would never need you like I do. For what I do. As much as I do."

It was accurate, at least by technicalities - their specific relationship was not the most probable of dynamics in some areas, especially those tied to the very literal pursuit of his heart. In their current situation, however, the implications were a bit different.

(But that made it no less true.)

Not even a second had the chance to pass after Jazzy's decree before Svensyl let out a screeching cry of victory, then began to collect everything that he imagined might make a forest.

"My most gratuous gratitude, my Queen! It will be a very not disappointing and also more-than-acceptable forest!" He rummaged through the room and returned a minute later to dump a pile of (vaguely) straight sticklike objects at her feet, looking at her with the same sort of expectant expression of a dog who had just successfully played a round of fetch. Now that his work was done, he still had her question to address; he clucked his tongue and folded his arms as he tried to retrieve an answer from the farthest corners of his mind.

"Frabjous day..." The energy seemed to settle, and his smile softened with a less abrasive warmth. "No, not a holiday! Frabjous day is scarcely not-never the same for everyone, and it can change, oh can it change!"

To demonstrate how fantastic this change was, he wiggled his fingers. It absolutely looked magical.

"Frabjous day is the best, most wonderful day that has ever been a day! It is the day of only the most fantexillant feelings in here." His claws splayed in five different directions as he reached towards her to press his palm against her chest, careful not to stray from the plane just beneath her collarbones. But he paid little attention otherwise to the importance of personal space by leaning in close, until their noses nearly touched. When he spoke again, he was at least considerate enough to lower his voice to a whisper. "It is a day whenst its name is said reflexially, a day of feelings so grandilous that it is easy to know that it is the best day of your ever. A day where all days future tense have been changed for the better. And today is that day! Did you know?! I have met my Red-and-White Queen of Roseland, and share an acceptable land with her!"

He stood up straight, and glanced back towards the door before continuing.

"The day of the wedding bond to your King of Hearts. That is my Alice-Queen's frabjous day. She thought it would be the day she found the this little tiny thing she lost," He smushed his thumb and forefinger together in front of one squinted eye. "The 'Snig S'pose On'! But she was wrong! Ha ha, wrong!"

The sense of calm grew more sedating as he settled her against him, and her eyelids had just begun to flutter closed when she felt a gentle tug on her hair. Mimsy's body rapidly tensed, freezing in place as if she were responding to some imminent danger.

"Wh--" Her voice fractured and left only a hoarse exhale of air where a sentence should have been. As she made several more futile attempts to speak, she curled inward and clutched her hands over her chest. It hurt there in ways that she had forgotten it could hurt, and she tried to twist herself enough to look at him for some guidance or understanding.

"Robert," she whispered, tone distorted with panic. "What are you...why are...I am not supposed to!"

While he waited for further direction, Svensyl watched as she searched through all of the sticks and stems and various plant remains. His eyes followed all of her motions with great interest, and he did his very best to try to determine the pattern of selection.

He couldn't. He especially couldn't when she gave her opinion about frabjous day. After that bit of commentary, he could only laugh.

"As good! Yes, as good! Maybe more!" He wiped away nonexistent tears as he continued to cackle at the comparison. "But they are separate. Similar yet separate yet similar! One can be the other, but can also not be the other! If your frabjous day has gone missing, though, it should be found! I will help. Can I help? I should."

For the latter portion of his statements, he busied himself by freeing a plant from its pot, scooping up only the soil to put into the pot again, and 'planting' the stick in it.

"A forest seed," he explained, which was not really much of an explanation at all.

Had it been most anything else, Mimsy would have complied without argument or resistance, curious to discover the point of the game. She didn't want to know this time; not unless he could stop and discuss this before unwinding her hair from the obsessively kept braids that his fingers were working through. There was a reason for her hair to be the way it was, with exceptions for bathing only, and non-compliance was absolutely terrifying when she felt so sure that she knew what would result from it.

"No, this will ruin it, this will...yours, but...everything you have done, we have done to fix--! I am really not supposed to! We can break rules together, ones we see fit, ones...but not...he said."

The pace of her mind far exceeded the her capability to form audible words, and she choked and spluttered through it with great difficulty, squirming uselessly against him.

"This is not what you want, is it, I...you surely do not. I will hurt you. I will hurt you. I will--he said--" The sharp inhale and trembling exhale that was elicited by his teeth on her skin was enough to temporarily dislodge her from the escalating track of concerns that she was on. Though she no longer sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating, her eyes remained wild and distraught.

One of her hands had disentangled from the painfully curled fingers of the other and disappeared from sight. The faint pinprick of a very sharp edge between two of his ribs was a pretty clear indicator of where it had gone.

"I am--I'm not supposed to make a mess," she murmured, tilting her head to press the side of her face against his. "Every time I make a mess, I...no, I'm not supposed to hurt you. Not supposed to, but I will, if--if that is what you want me to do. Was this your intention? Was this what you wanted? Tell me what you want now. Show me what you want now. Explain the rules, if you want to--to change them, and you may have it. Show me how to properly belong to you."

For demands that were paired with a vague threat of injury upon a failure to comply, they sounded strangely sincere. Her voice was undeniably desperate, drenched in an accelerant of adrenaline and set aflame by her anxiety. There were two separate schools of importance in her mind that had suddenly found themselves at war with each other, and she was right in the middle of it, paralyzed by the necessity of this choice, waiting for someone to guide her.