red balloons for everyone!

Grace is a scientist through and through, he’ll always want to question and experiment. Living on Erid has not diminished that curiosity whatsoever. If anything, Grace thinks with frequent amusement, it’s made it worse. He’s learning from the Eridians as much as they’re learning from him, after all. 

He has a dedicated thrum of Eridians not only working on his Dome around the clock, but also just a bunch of different thrums wanting to come and get his opinion on things which is really cool. He likes it when he gets to sit in a circle of Eridian scientists and discuss the next generation of space craft. 

And Adrian has been helping with some of the environmental experiments much to Rocky’s anxious tapping. One experiment with making sand for his beach leaves Grace warm and overheated, so he takes off a few layers of clothing before the sweating gets worse. 

Why Grace wet, question? Not water used in the experiment today. 

“I’m sweating - it’s a thing humans do to regulate their internal temperature. Kinda like your steam I guess.”

Grace…makes water to cool body down, question?

“Eh close enough. Why?”

…Adrian did not believe Rocky’s description of “wet leaky space blob.” Should have listened to Rocky, statement.

“Hey now.”

And then without even realising it, Grace is noting habits and patterns in his new home and the Eridians that maintain it. Obviously he can recognize everyone by shape and color alone, but now he can recognize most by sound - the pitch of their individual voices and songs, specific gaits and the little individualized thinking taps they all seem to do (it’s honestly the most adorable thing and Grace loves it so much) as they circle around and perform their tasks. The same habits are naturally extended to his students. 

“Ari, please get back to your assigned seat.”

Ari - a small obsidian colored pebble whose name in Eridian actually sounds like the human name Ari - lets out an embarrassed squeak as he quickly jumps back to his assigned area. Ari is the closest thing to a “troublemaker” Grace has had for an Eridian student. He honestly just really likes sitting with his sibling, but in doing so they both get distracted a little too easily. So Grace had been forced to separate them. Now Ari is taking this as a challenge to get back to their sibling whenever he thinks Grace isn’t paying attention. 

Teacher Grace, your back was turned! How you know it was me, question?

Oh he has never been more tempted to make a “eyes in the back of my head” joke in his life. But he knows it’ll only be met with confusion and the little pebbles actually thinking he has another set of eyes somewhere on his person. 

“My hearing may not be as good as yours, but I can still hear you even if I’m not looking at you.” 

Every student has their own unique set of sounds and footsteps that he memorises fairly easily the first few weeks of the new school year. Grace has also become very good at pinpointing where any foreign sounds are coming from in his Dome before any of the engineers can. He’s lived in this space for 16 years now, he knows what sounds are normal and which ones are not. 

“Hey Adrian, I heard this noise from the power lines on the south side last night?”

New noise? I'll go find Moss!

“Sure - they’ll be up on the north side of the cliffs at this point.”

...how Grace know this?

One of the Dome designers - fondly named Moss from their moss agate coloration - has a very distinct gait that Grace can recognise anywhere now. Two heavy feet in front followed by a slight drag as they leverage their two back feet forward, always using their fifth leg to hold equipment. The sound and tempo reminds him of when one of his students had to use crutches for a few months after breaking his leg. They come by three times a week at exactly the same time and maneuver through the same winding path along the cliff edges, checking for erosion and other potential environmental flaws. Grace can pretty accurately time his morning coffee to the sound of them in the morning. 

It means he also leaves very distinct foodprints along the cliff trails. Grace can track him down pretty quickly without even thinking about it, much to the alarm of Moss and their fellow designers. It’s become a bit of a game now. 

How does Human Grace always find us!!??

Eridian’s are not used to sand at all so it makes tracking them down much easier. Not that Grace will tell them that at first. Let him have his fun darn it. And then Rocky gets all up in arms about it and decides to test Grace’s ability to find Eridians hiding in his dome like some sort of bizarre game of Hide and Seek. 

He finds all six of the hiding Eridians, plus one who wasn’t hiding and was just trying to do its work for the day. Oops.