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Thanks to the way sound travels through her house, Rubra can hear the ongoings in the basement quite well from her own bedroom. The basement is largely for storage, so it’s unusual for anyone to spend much time down there. But this morning, when she awakens, she hears occasional sneezing and yawning from the basement. Someone’s gone down there.
Rubra lounges in bed for an hour. By the time she gets out of bed, the noises from the basement haven’t stopped. She finds Flair making lunch in the kitchen.
“What’s going on in the basement?”
“Penny has a test for her Music Theory class tomorrow. Since I took the same class a few years ago, I let her go down to the basement to find my notes so she can study,” Flair explains.
“But it’s bad luck to study the day before a test!”
Flair shrugs. “I know. But she seemed pretty stressed, so I didn’t want to… deny her the notes, y’know? Maybe humans don’t consider it bad luck.”
“I’m gonna check on her.”
Rubra goes downstairs to find the human sniffling as she pores over a variety of papers, taking notes on her laptop. From her hunched body language, she seems tense. She doesn’t acknowledge Rubra’s arrival. Rubra watches Penny for a moment, in awe of her hyperfocus. It’s like she’s tuning out everything in the world except the papers and her screen. Even when she pauses for a moment to sneeze into her hoodie, she immediately continues working. It’s as if her life depends on it.
The sound of her sniffling hints at congestion. She’s partially breathing through her mouth — breaths which turns into occasional yawns. From what Rubra could hear from her room, Penny’s been at this for quite a while.
Rubra folds her arms. “Why aren’t you taking a break?” she asks, expecting to disrupt Penny's focus. But Penny’s ears may as well be shut off. Rubra wants to get her attention without startling her. She goes upstairs and returns with a handkerchief, gently placing it on a paper that Penny is reading.
With the handkerchief blocking her ability to read the page, Penny’s hyperfocus is broken. She looks up.
“Why aren’t you taking a break?” Rubra asks again.
Penny shakes her head dismissively, turning away from Rubra. “I’m too busy to take a break. Can’t you see?”
“You know what I see? I see someone who isn’t listening to her body.” Rubra puts her paws on Penny’s shoulders and squeezes gently, inviting her into the feeling of relieved tension. The two of them are close enough that they now touch each other without asking.
Penny looks at Rubra suspiciously, as if wary of being tricked into slacking off. Then she sneezes. She blows her nose into the handkerchief her friend has provided.
"Bless you. These papers are probably really dusty. I’m concerned by how much you’ve been sneezing.”
Penny rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on. I appreciate the concern for my health, but I think you’re being a little dramatic. I’ve sneezed like three times.”
Rubra’s mouth drops open. “Are you serious?”
“What?”
“You’ve been down here, sneezing, for over an hour.”
This gives the human pause. She looks at the crook of her elbow. It definitely looks like she’s sneezed quite a few times into it.
“Come upstairs to get some fresh air. Please?”
“Okay,” Penny concedes, following Rubra upstairs. She plops down onto Rubra’s bed with a big sigh. “Wow, I really didn’t think I was down there for that long.”
Rubra scoots over next to Penny, rubbing her shoulders some more. “I’m gonna have a chat with Flair about this. She’s enabling you by letting you use her notes the day before a test when you’re supposed to be resting.”
“But I’m supposed to be cramming.”
“What’s cramming?”
“It’s when you study really hard the day before a test.”
“Is that a human thing? Because that’s bad luck in Graymalk.”
“Why is it bad luck?”
“You won’t do well on a test if you’re getting yourself too stressed out. The day before a test is a time to relax and listen to what your body needs, not to keep studying. Otherwise, you can’t process what you’ve learned.”
“That… makes a lot of sense, actually.” Penny yawns again, snuggling up to Rubra. “I think I do need to rest.”