I'm trying not to follow the downfall beat for beat to protect my own mental health, not living in the US I have that luxury and I am so sorry for everyone that does live there and can't look away.
Thank you for posting this, I still want to know what's happening so summaries like this are how I'm keeping informed.
My party do have a pet mimic. He's called Philip and is mostly there for comic relief although he has been known to help with puzzles and things occasionally
In my campaign the party came across a magic item seller who had two juvenile mimics in a terrarium in his shop. This is now canon for how he met his first mimic.
It was to tell the reader that the mimic got out too. The same jagged seams as the first time it became a blanket
A bit like a syllable when you are talking about text based responses. 20 tokens a second is faster than most people could read the output so that's sufficient for a real time feeling "chat".