Institute gardens; noonish (open to any)
The gardens were a mess.
Well, not really, but if Millie convinced herself that they needed an exceeding amount of work, then she could throw herself into that and not have to think about anything else.
She'd gotten up early, almost before the sun, and gone out to the shed. She was pleased to see that the trees she'd ordered before- the trees she'd ordered had arrived. Ms. Munroe would be happy with that, too.
She spent all morning moving some of the saplings to the spots she'd already marked for their planting. Some were going against the fence, but a good portion were being scattered around the extensive grounds. The entire project would take her a long time, but she didn't care. At least she would be busy and exhausted.
She was avoiding. And she damn well knew it. She didn't want to think about what had happened. She didn't want to consider what had happened to the others while she'd been kept like a little pet inside her cell. She'd never seen one of the robots that the others had been put before, but David made sure she knew what she was missing. In as much detail as he felt he could afford. Which considering the mouth on him, was a lot of detail. And wasn't she just fucking lucky as hell that he'd decided to keep her as his pet so she wouldn't have to go through that.
Yeah. Real fucking lucky.
She started digging. The whole would need to be deep enough to secure the root ball and twice as wide to allow the roots to spread out properly. Maybe three or four feet down and three across. Not that she really needed to be that mathematically correct about it. But it helped.
The work was hard. Her muscles strained and ached, her back hurt, and sweat got into her cuts and stung like mad. Millie didn't care and in some ways didn't notice. She got focused as she usually did when working the gardens, and nothing else mattered.