Work Text:
I yawn, waking up. This is the 5th night or so I've spent sleeping in the tunnel, with Rocky watching me. I've watched him sleep just once in that time. He's learned more about human sleep than I about Eridian sleep, to be sure.
"Good morning," he trills. We might not have a real day and night out here, but he was very excited to learn the phrases used to mark my beginning and end of sleep. I sleep way more often than him, and almost want to blame myself for being what gets in the way of us talking about science and our species and other stuff. As much as I understand about his sleep at this point, it's a serious affair so, needless to say, he's happy when he sees me awake. "Good morning," I say back.
Our days start with more and more words in common. We also go right back into words we don't yet have between us, though. He taps the thick Xenonite wall. "What is thing, question?"
'Thing' has been such a useful word. However, I'm not at all sure what he means. "What thing?"
"On body." I still have to look at the translations on my computer a lot. I pull the laptop onto my mattress that I stuck in the tunnel. "Um, clothes?" I try. Though I've witnessed Rocky having an excellent memory, maybe he did forget a word.
Rocky shakes his carapace faintly. "Know clothes. What is large cloth, question?"
Large cloth...? Oh! I tug on one corner of the blanket that I have draped around my shoulders, not ready to shed it when I've only just woken up. "This here?" "Yes," Rocky trills, and repeats, "Is what, question?"
"A blanket," I say simply and he makes a sort of...A-ha-sound. That's the best description I have of this at the moment. Very little pause from him pondering it. "What is purpose, question?"
"It's to keep me warm while I sleep," I explain. As I sit up, I make a motion of pulling the blanket closer around my shoulders and kind of shrugging into it. I wonder, what the Eridian word for blanket is, but... "Eridians no have this." "Oh." Hence the sound he made, I suppose. And I'm a little disappointed to not get my trade on a new word to put in the computer. But I could have figured as much, since I didn't see him get anything to help his sleep.
"For humans is required, question?" "Sort of. Humans can sleep without, but I'm more comfortable with."
He chirps. Some noises I still don't understand; are they supposed to be words? I think this one just means curiosity, so when Rocky doesn't follow up with anything, I do. "Like Eridians," I suggest, "Can sleep without being watched but prefer to be watched, yes?" His insistence on me observing his sleep was very clear, after all. Without missing a beat, he makes a happy sound, "Yes!"
I now know that Eridians, when they sleep, let their bodies cool down to about 210°C throughout the whole body, in order to let the worker cells come out and do some maintenance.
I figure that, now that Rocky's been hurt, his worker cells need to be doing a whole lot more work than normal. I know that putting my blanket on him isn't going to make much of a difference, much less hurt him, since Xenonite is such a good insulator. Still, I drape the quilt over the airlock sticking out into my side of the ship, that I put him in.
There's other stuff I need to be doing now that I got the soot out of his radiator, and unlike Rocky I can't see though the walls when I'm in another room... But I want him to be comfortable.