Work Text:
“So this is basically for housekeeping, you know?” said Olruggio. “Saw a lady in the village the other day—quite an old lady—mopping up something her grandchild—a toddler, by the way, real tiny guy—had spilled. And I thought gosh, she has to crouch down all uncomfortable with her old knees and do that, and I bet she does the sweeping and general housekeeping too, and it just didn’t seem fair, you know? So I was wondering, I was thinking, what if there was something that could sort of suck up all the dust and stuff around the house? That’d save a lot of people a lot of time and effort, don’t you think?”
“Will it detect the dust, or will a person need to guide it?” Qifrey asked, looking up from the massive textbook he’d been poring over.
“Ah, hm…” Olruggio doodled a small cat on the top corner of his scroll as he thought, then added a little witch’s hat to it for good measure. “Good question. I don’t know, what do you think?”
“I’m…not sure either. Maybe if you ask some senior citizens…?”
“Like a survey?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need a questionnaire, then.”
“Right.”
“D’you think Sage Beldaruit would read through it and give inputs?”
“On your survey questionnaire? Why him? Surely your master would do as well?”
“Well, it’s just that Bel’s old, you know?” Olruggio mumbled. “Way older than the target segment, sure, but old’s old, right?”
“I think he’d be affronted to hear that,” said Qifrey, “and I also think he’d be useless as he does not do sweeping or mopping of any sort.”
“He doesn’t?”
“You know him, he either turns the whole place upside down, or simply asks me to do it.”
“Then you can look over my survey!”
“I am not old.”
“Right, right, hm…”
Olruggio gnawed at the top of his pen, and Qifrey nudged it out of his mouth automatically.
“You’ll find someone,” said Qifrey, “just start writing out the questions first.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
Silence fell over them once more as Qifrey turned back to his reading and Olruggio doodled three more cats and a dog, and then designed unique hats for all of them. Once he was satisfied, he found he had no choice but to actually think about the survey.
1.
He wrote, then stopped, mind simultaneously blank and too full of potential questions.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
He wavered between the blank spaces against the fifth and sixth questions, then settled on five.
Rank this statement: I wish I didn’t have to sweep the house.
Never - Rarely - Some days - Most days - Everyday
Against the two, he wrote
Rank this statement: I clean the house alone
Never - Rarely - Some days - Most days - Everyday
He yawned and glanced at Qifrey, hoping for some distraction, but Qifrey was busy scribbling notes, hunched over too close to the table.
Beside one, he wrote
I clean the house
Daily
Weekly
Bi-weekly
More than once a day
Less than once a week
Other:
He yawned again, and felt his head drop. He detested writing out surveys. Trying to solve problems was fun—it felt like a puzzle he could play around with endlessly in his head, finding variables and accounting for them, slotting pieces in so they fit just right and cutting out excess till he landed on the perfect solution—but all the paperwork and formalities that he was forced to do before, that stifled his process, was miserable.
He drew a few halfhearted lines on one of Qifrey’s pages of notes, but that did little to lift his mood.
What is the most difficult part of house cleaning? Select all that apply.
He wrote beside three,
The physical labour
Remembering to do it
The repetitiveness of the task
He could barely keep his eyes open. Every time he blinked, he was falling asleep, and he knew it, but no amount of sitting as straight as possible or sipping water was helping.
When he came to next, the first thing he saw was Qifrey with a much thinner book, leaning back in his chair as he read. Then, as he tried to lift his head, he felt the paper stuck to his cheek and pulled it away. The third question, he saw, was complete gibberish. It just was a bunch of random ink strokes and loops, not even in a straight line.
He glared at it, hoping it would right itself and save him the trouble of starting on a new sheet and having to rewrite the other three questions too, but it remained stubbornly illegible.
He sat up with a groan, and something slipped from his shoulders. Qifrey’s cloak. He stared numbly at it, head filled with sleepy static. Qifrey looked at him, then at the cloak on the floor, and back at him again.
“Oh—” Olruggio finally processed the situation and started to reach for it, but Qifrey pushed him back by the shoulder and retrieved the cloak himself.
“How long— how long did I—” Olruggio winced at the sleepy drag of his words, but try as he might, he could not get the sentence out.
“Less than an hour,” said Qifrey, fastening his cloak back around Olruggio. “Are you up now, or…?”
Olruggio shrugged. He could go back to sleep—he was always ready to sleep, truth be told, except at night, when everything was dark and quiet and he could think and read and try out combinations of spells in peace—but right now, the idea of staying awake and talking to Qifrey seemed rather appealing too.
“Tea?” Qifrey carefully pushed a half-empty but still-steaming cup towards him.
Olruggio shook his head. Swallowing something so hot felt like too much effort.
“Go back to sleep then,” Qifrey said, “I’m almost done, I’ll wake you up then, and we can get something to eat. Would you like that?”
Olruggio nodded and tugged Qifrey’s cloak closer around himself.
“Wonderful.” Qifrey pushed Olruggio’s head down rather forcefully and turned back to his book. Olruggio watched him, vision hazy as sleep enveloped him again.