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Now that I’ve moved everything back to how it was, I am starting to think I liked having it all arranged differently. It’s a wonder what a little bit of interior decorating can do to a space as claustrophobic as this.
Rocky’s next sleep cycle should occur some time within the next few days. Until then, I have planning time.
“What is Grace doing, question?”
“Oh! Mornin’, buddy,” I say, greeting Rocky as he wriggles across the floor in his ball. He’s been working on his own project (secret, he tells me), so I’ve had ample opportunity to execute my plans. I had, however, evidently lost track of time, because Rocky apparently fell asleep fourteen Earth hours ago. “Just grabbing lunch – though, now that I think about it, it’s probably dinner. Sleep well?”
We both know the answer. It’s always the same. I asked him the first time, at which I got a lengthy explanation of Eridian sleep cycles and rest. All the other times, it’s just been out of habit.
“Yes,” he confirms, chirping slightly to get a better look around the room.
It’s not the most beautiful thing on the planet – and certainly not the most functional – but the lab-turned-dining-room has a kind of energy to it now which it hadn’t before. It feels less… clinical. “What did Grace do, question?”
“Why d’you keep asking me that?”
“You are doing ‘I have Done Something’ face. Is for when you have done something,” he adds by way of explanation, as if I couldn’t have gathered it myself.
Despite my dear old Eridian’s awfully block-headed commentary, I can’t help but smile.
“I’ve redecorated!” I announce, hands on my hips as I stand proudly in my newly feng shui’d dining room. The table is still open on all sides, but I’ve moved it a little so there’s more space to walk around; the Taumoeba tanks are the one thing I’m not moving, so I’ve haphazardly hung a shower curtain (or a particularly thin old blanket) I found in the storage containers between the two, acting as a sort of room barrier. Then, because it looked a bit dull, I hung fairy lights around it.
Rocky clicks a few times again, and then looks at me.
“Wow, Grace is interior decorator now, question?” Somehow, while completely lacking the necessary equipment for it, Rocky manages to roll his eyes at me. “Is joke! Grace decoration make no difference.”
“It makes a difference to me,” I half-argue, half-pout.
“Yes yes, very sure of that.”
I regret teaching him sarcasm.
The next time Rocky sleeps, I wrap his ball in tinfoil.