"saw spider thing. frightened. need hug."

"Aww, scared of spiders?" Under one heavy arm goes the Katie.

"very." She clings tightly to Mo's soft, warm bulk.

"Noted." Scritches.

"You'll protect me, right? You'll protect me if anything tries to hurt me? Because you love me?"

"I will not let spiders eat you up. Because I need you and you're cute." Scritch scritch.

She's disheartened at the lack of an explicit "I love you" but is not in a state to say so out loud.  She tries her best to forget and lean into the hug.

Squish squish.

"What've you got there, Monoceros?"

"I'm gonna grow Gilesian pearls in her."

"Ooh, hence the dress, love it. What's got her wibbly, did you kidnap her from someplace sunshine-and-rainbowy?"

"Not hardly, she's scared of spiders."

"Ha! Going to use that information for evil?"

"That's always a possibility."

Audible whimper. "Please don't." God, she just wants to be loved and cherished and valued. Why must the world be so cruel.

"Well, you're usually a very good little pannetone so I probably won't find myself moved to do so." Pet pet.

Fear. Second, louder whimper.

"Awwww. Button mushroom, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, nobody's bringing spiders over to eat the tunafish."

Deep breaths. Her back straightens a little. She gets up and has another slice of the sashimi. "Thank you."

"Naturally." Pat pat.

"I love you." Tears are welling up in her eyes.

"You are the cutest peanut butter cup ever to come down with Stockholm syndrome."

"You too." Out go the tears.

Monoceros giggles and pets her.

"It sucks because all the other stuff looked cool. I'd love to see more of it, but..."

"But a convention of biotinkers isn't exactly profligate with the trigger warnings. You could plot a route with your map."

"I forget the exact definition of profligate, does that mean they do or don't have them?"

"Profligate is like liberal. Not profligate means they don't have many."

"Yeah, that's what I was guessing. I'll figure something out. How long until lunch?"

"Hour or so."

"Yeah, let me look at my map and see if i can find something to do that won't risk further freakouts."