Welcome to Gaia! ::

Almost normal.

Would he like to see those bags leave her face entirely? Sure. Would he take her feeling good enough to invite him places that weren't just the Bell Abode? Absolutely. Pendour was always stretching herself thin for everyone else, and it was nice to just take a walk along the reservoir and see her playing with the lantern, its seeds rattling.

"For sure," Abzu wouldn't disagree with that. "Giving pollinators something to feed on so they work to spread the seeds is a cyclical thing, really, and providing seeds just helps with that."

And it would certainly help on Earth, especially if more people did it. Only so much could be done about corporations, but--

He ignored those thoughts in favour of considering her wonder. "Oh, right, you have butterflies! I bet they'd love some fresh flower growth." Abzu glanced at one of his own lanterns thoughtfully, swinging it to hear the way the seeds moved. Perhaps he was naturally rhythmic, but something of it was soothing. "Don't think these would do terribly well at my wonder. The environment of the deep sea is something entirely other, I admit."

It was alien in its own way without even being on an alien planet. Adding in the Neptune thing made it fascinating.

"Can never hurt to have more flowers I think."

Well, it could if he wanted to be pedantic. Roots could get bound, some of the plants might take too many resources from others, plants often needed different conditions and there may not be enough space-- all he knew was what he heard the property gardeners talk about in that perspective. It was a lot to think about and he'd let them handle the complications; he was too prone to migraines for that. All he really knew was that it looked beautiful in the end.

It was part of why his garden was so well tended to.

The other major part was the gardener he paid well of course--

She wasn't wrong. He hadn't showed her Abzu yet. "They do! I'm sure!" He laughed. "Can still barely see anything down there though. That deep in the sea is so dark."

He needed to see if Realta would still be up for some deep sea bubble wiring, honestly... "It's like walking through a deep blue shadow with pops of light from luminescent creatures and bright heat from distant vents. That seems to be what is providing the comfortable warmth, at least. The past Abzus hooked it up to geothermal heat."

He glanced toward her, and with a wink, couldn't quite help the terrible joke of, "I mean, great cover for doing terrible things though." ... Not that he was. On Abzu at least--

Abzu glanced to his own lantern, and decided this was as good of a time as any to get his lit up. As he started to mimic what she had done, he too got distracted, but it wasn't by the terrible things so much as--

It didn't take him too long to realize why her voice had changed tone, and his expression had gone from a jocular charm to surprise to mild amusement--nothing malicious or at her directly, but a funny miscommunication was funny nevertheless. "Ah, nothing bad. Found some art pieces that I question what the artist was thinking though."

He chuckled.

"Was making a joke. The darkness provides the perfect cover for some scenes playing with sensory stuff. Kinky stuff." He snickered lightly. "Didn't mean to worry you."

Abzu left his lantern alone for the moment to glance away from Pendour directly to look up at her lantern as it floated upward. "But it would be better if that had it's own dedicated space. The entire place right now has that lighting."

It was nice how quickly she was able to calm and focus again on the lantern. Abzu wanted to see her calm, really. She did so much for everyone else that she deserved that moment of peace all the more. When she set her head atop his and played with his hair, he closed his eyes for a moment, let out a happy sigh, and opened his eyes again.

Idly, he resumed readying the lantern he had brought with him.

In theory there had to be light somewhere. This had been a functional facility used for art at the very least, considering the trappings of paintings that he found a couple times. Didn't make sense they would do all of that with no lighting, it was the key of finding where it was. Did the geothermal heat power anything other than the fact that it was a livable space that wasn't freezing?

Throughout his life, someone else had always done the renovations. Someone else who had usually been paid a pretty hefty amount all things considered (although his not actual parents were surprisingly cheap for the amount of money they had). It was different to think about himself doing the renovations, by the same token the idea of having lighting he could adjust was giving him ideas... "I had another Mauvian offer to help me get something wired up there. Realta?" He didn't know if she knew her, but, "She was the one that got my ring updated to act like a phone. If I could actually recruit her to do it, I wonder if I could get her to create some adjustable lights."

There would be more opportunities than just sensory decoration with that... Just a nice dim comforting lighting, bright light for particular projects, maybe a darker lighting if they wanted to watch something on like a movie projector... And of course, for the types that preferred the seductive romance type approach--

"Being able to turn the lights on and off would definitely give a lot of opportunities for play," her choice of word was correct and he kept it, even adding a bit of a purr to the way he said the word. His tone quickly recovered when he continued with, "Lots of types really, not just a sexy kind," a beat, "though my brain is often on the sexy kind."

He wasn't afraid to admit that.

"But imagine a nice backlight for a movie night surrounded by the mysteries of the deep sea."

"You don't need to help me make it look sexy. I got a pretty good eye for that."

It was, admittedly, partially because his mind was perpetually in the gutter. While he was good at keeping it under wraps and leaving people out of it who weren't interested or hadn't displayed interest, it didn't mean he wasn't fairly attuned to it. The excess of money he possessed gave him plenty to use to play with it, too, in designs included.

"I'd love to go shopping, though," he grinned, "especially since you already have an idea of what works out in space. Never been a renovator myself. Could use the assist."

It wasn't quite as easy as watching his own glowing lantern float upwards.

"Don't think I've ever seen Tangled," Abzu mused, adding with a snicker, "Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention." But that was alright either way. For him, movies often ended up being background noise, lost in the backdrop of conversation, or of naps, or of ... other things, but that wasn't terribly relevant here. "I'd love something soft. Get the sense that'd fit right in, at least in some areas."

In others, he was fairly sure he saw where a sculptor had been working, or a little desk filled with knickknacks he didn't quite recognize -- not really places for a comfy movie night. An intimate little stage, though? Abzu bet they could do something with that.

Abzu was happy to let her play with his hair as long as she wanted.

"I could use a sweet movie, I think," and even if he stopped paying attention after fifteen minutes to take a nap, it probably wasn't a terribly hard movie to figure out in the aftermath. Tangled was a Rapunzel story, right? Or something like that?

His thoughts cut as she was suddenly no longer quite as entangled with him.

His eyes lit up. While this suitcoat wasn't exactly built for swimming in, the guise that he wore could easily be refreshed afterward, whether to just stay off in favour of being himself again or just as a quick hit of the his-outfit-needed-a-wash. "I'd love to!"

The reservoir was so refreshing, and while it wasn't his hot tub or a swimming pool, it was refreshing in a different way. Something was nice about swimming under the stars, or the dancing lights of the lanterns.

"After you?"

"Don't think you have, actually," but that was fascinating knowledge to learn. Their wonders could grant the ability to do things like breath underwater. He wondered if he would get anything similar as he went to his wonder more often.

There was a lot that could be done with the ability to breathe underwater through gills--

Abzu pulled his thoughts away from the fantasy world to watch Pendour leave her shoes behind and leave the land behind altogether. She looked ... happy. Truly happy, and the smile on his face only solidified and widened to something of a playful simper. Seeing her that happy was good. Nice.

It was what he wanted to see, ultimately.

Taking any part of his outfit off was a pain in the a**, and his conductor's suit was not quite giving the same mermaid vibes that she was, but he discarded his shoes and then his suitcoat to make it a bit less weighty and unpleasant to join her. "I think it's too warm out for that water to be anything but refreshing." In a lot of ways, really. When he caught the light from the lanterns dancing in the water, he let out a contented little sigh.

And then he followed after her, accepting that he could discard this whole guise fairly easily to get a dry outfit once he hit the surface again.

"The water really suits you, you know," Abzu ended up having to stop going further into the water a bit earlier than Pendour, mostly because his shorter statute required that unless he felt like doing more than wading. "The mermaid looks and the smile it brings your face is lovely. You look like you belong here."