"Woah." She photographs the fancier petal and tries to identify it, while acknowledging to herself that this is unlikely to help much with her basic confusion of "what are the fundamental laws that govern the world". Did the sunflower seeds and dandelion puffs scoot across the floor to end up at the edges of the new grid, or are they off in uncolonized floor? (Also that reminds her she should tell the cleaning service not to come by tomorrow, and the incongruity makes her laugh.)

The other harvested objects remain where Petal originally put them. She helpfully consolidates the thirteenth fancy petal into the same grid as the other twelve, but doesn't move any of the other isolated objects.

Ari goes to the pantry and gets out a bag of sunflower seeds and puts one of them down next to one of the others. "Will this . . . merge?" she mimes a bunch of things scrunching together to illustrate.

She inspects the new item very closely, noses it a few times, then lines it up in a grid with two of her harvested seeds and gives it a shove. Nothing happens.

"This merge no," she concludes.

"Things Petal make merge yes, things Petal does not make merge no?"

Petal thinks about this.

"...yes," she says hesitantly.

"I--Ari--get more things Petal did not make? Experiment." She realizes she just defined 'experiment' before the concept of preferences or 'could', which is very the sort of thing she would do, and this is amusing.

"Experiment?" she echoes curiously.

"Do a thing and see what it does!"

"Do thing!" she says supportively.

Plasma interrupts by flying down and saying "Why do things disappear? Give sunflower seed?"

"I don't know! I'm trying to find out!" Ari says with a laugh, forking over some sunflower seeds.

"I will go and I will come back," she adds to both of them and leaves the apartment for a few minutes.

Petal goes to sleep.

Plasma eats one of the sunflower seeds off the floor and then goes and hangs upside down from a rope and chews on his cuttlebone.

Ari comes back in with several dandelions in each of yellow and puff, and a couple of clover. She observes the missing sunflower seed and says "Plasma, have you been making mischief?"

"Yes."

"Don't eat food on the floor, okay?"

"No!"

"I mean it, Plasma! It could make you sick. Don't eat food off the floor."

"Ooooookay."

"That's a good birdie." Scritch scritch pet.

"Good birdie!"

"Yes you are." 

She sets down the flowers in a little hex grid of their own, which contiguous blocks of each type, cancels the cleaners and tells the Zendo team that weekend practice at her house isn't happening this quarter-segment, and gets herself some lunch while she waits for Petal to wake up.

It's very convenient that she doesn't have work today or tomorrow, and she really hopes that by the day after she'll be confident that Petal can be alone in the apartment with Plasma all day without either of them having any problems. But hope is not a strategy so she orders a webcam for delivery by tomorrow.

Petal wakes up, yawns the teeniest yawn, nibbles a peanut, and inspects Ari's hexgrid.

"Merge no," she diagnoses. "Make yes?"

"Yes, please do."