She hums for a moment, tail swishing as she thinks. "Mantle is colder, for one, but I don't think that's quite what you're looking for. Hmm... Mantle is starker, with discrimination being more blatant when it's present. At the same time, there's a fierce sense of community, of Mantle sticking together against the economic bullshit from Atlas."

She nods at the three kids, who've now stepped inside the comic shop. The shopkeep, visible through the window, closes a glass display door over some figurines. "Something like that would never happen in Mantle. It would be all or nothing, either the Faunus kid wouldn't be let in or the shopkeep would welcome them gladly."

Says the girl who can't decide whether or not she wants to - 

Not funny, Violet. 

"Yeah. Life in Vale is... it's hard to know who your friends are, around here. Even if you're not a Faunus." 

She taps her chin.

"You're different from that."

She gives Lilian a warm smile. "Give yourself a little credit, Lilian. So're you."

Lilian looks away. "Yeah, I guess so. It's maybe foolish of me to trust you so fast, but..." 

She looks back at Sable. "I guess I feel that a person who does so many real things can't be fake."

Sable laughs and pulls Lilian into a hug. "You're going to swell my ego at this rate."

Lillian takes the opportunity to wrap her arms around Sable's waist. 

"Maybe you deserve that," she says softly in Sable's ear.

She blushes, smiles, and buries her face in Lilian's shoulder just a bit. She can't win here. She'll just blush and hug the pretty girl she's taking on a date.

She squeezes, gently. 

She really is awfully fond of this girl. 

After a moment, she releases her. 

"Botanical gardens," she says brightly.

"Botanical gardens!"

And, sure enough, after they walk one more block and turn the corner, there are the botanical gardens!

Flowering vines twine around and through the wrought iron of the gate, making the entryway a riot of oranges and greens. Visitors walk freely in and out, with no ticket gate or fee or check-in. Beyond the gates, Lilian can see a row of trees bedecked in vividly red and orange and yellow leaves, above a terraced collection of brilliantly flowering poppies.

"Gosh, already this is really beautiful. I can't believe I've never been here before..." 

Her gaze lingers on the poppies, then moves on to the trees above.

"I was delighted when I found out Vale's gardens are free to the public. Mantle doesn't have their own, just people's individual gardens outside their homes, and Atlas's gardens are expensive to keep the 'wrong sort' out. But Vale knows what's up."

The trees seem to be some variety of maple, with multi-pointed leaves. The entry path hits a T-junction here, with frilly little white flowers off to the right, and chrysanthemums to the left.

Little white flowers are well enough, but she prefers the chrysanthemums. She'll wander that way slowly.

"Vale has a few things like that," she says. "There's also a public library I used to go to. December would take out books on Dust manufacture when she was small and didn't have to hold down a job." 

Then chrysanthemumward they go! A spectrum of 'mums gives way to coneflowers and Mistrali anemones, then black-eyed susans, and then a riot of azaleas in yellow, orange, red, and pink.

"That sounds adorable, frankly. Smol December just sitting there with a book on Dust engineering in the library," she shakes her head and grins wide. "She'll definitely enjoy the weapon design process, then."

"This is really gorgeous."

Lilian smiles slightly. "Yeah, she had big dreams. The family wasn't so supportive - since when does that change - but she tried her best. And now we're going to get to learn it up close and personal."

She leans against Sable's side. "But enough about her, this is a date for us."

She wraps an arm around Lilian's waist, and her tail wraps softly just below that. "You're right. It is. So tell me about your big dreams, Lilian Morning-Glory. I know on the range you mentioned something about making a difference against the Grimm, and I know you've only.had your own space in the mind to think about it for one chaotic week, but I wanna hear it, even if it's rambling and only half-figured-out."

"I was saving, before all this. Getting money together for... I don't know what. Something worth doing. I think I kind of wanted to get an education of some kind, but that was mostly December's idea... I just knew that money was real and could be used to some end, eventually. And then my carefully laid plans were all disrupted..." 

She looks out over the azaleas. "I dreamed of a future that would be better, somehow, but I never really put together a solid plan. I just thought that eventually I'd be free of the foster family and then... who knows what."

Lilian looks over at Sable. "But I guess I'm a Huntress now, so I had better learn to be a good one. It's not a forgiving profession."

She shakes her head. "No, it's not. There's room in it for lots of kinds of Huntress, though. Thanks to how much respect there is for individual fighting styles, as long as the Grimm get dead and you save who you can, people won't complain."

"Simple and stark. I like that. I like problems I can reduce to equations or items on a list. A series of steps to achieve it."

She looks over at Sable. "Step one, kiss the beautiful girl who introduced me to weapons handling. Step two, go on a date to a lovely botanical garden. You know, that sort of thing. It hides all the messiness of life. Makes me feel like I'm in control."

They reach an arrangement of lilies in pinks and whites, before a small bridge over a stream.

"Step three," Sable replies with a blush, "spin the beautiful newly-awakened Huntress into a low dip," she places a hand at the small of Lilian's back and another at her shoulder blades as she puts word to deed, tail hooking around her hips, "and kiss her."

She presses a gentle, lingering, tender kiss to Lilian's lips.

She blushes deeply and lets herself be kissed.

Sable sets Lilian back on her feet among the lilies, blushing a bit as well.

"Step four, show her a gorgeous display of her namesake flower that doesn't quite match her beauty."

She grins, she can't help it. She's being romanced. With lists. 

"Go on," she says, that ridiculous smile still on her face.

"Step five," she leads Lilian over the bridge, beyond which dahlias fountain up all around them in a riot of oranges and magentas and violets and reds, surrounding a core of gorgeous black dahlias.

"Show her something she's never seen before."