July 9th, 1892 — Zelfred's Bedroom, Sanditon Terrace

Alfred could sleep through anything, or nothing. It was a skill one acquired as a sailor, helped along by the fact that most days involved some amount of hard labor that would leave one exhausted by the end of the day. There was always some amount of noise on a ship, and motion, and periodic gaslights or wandtips being lit and then extinguished as different people woke up to take over the dogwatch. Any sailor who wanted to survive had to be able to sleep soundly through all of that. On the other hand, any sailor on a Navy ship had to be equally ready to wake at the drop of a hat and be ready to respond to an emergency, should one arise. An attack, a fire, or holes in the wall of the ship wouldn't wait patiently while someone rubbed sleep from their eyes. This was especially true as captain, since he was often woken up for reports in the middle of the night; he'd have to make a reasonable, alert decision about something, then fall back asleep immediately and soundly if he wanted any rest before the next morning.

This was unexpectedly coming in handy recently, because Zelda wasn't sleeping well. Apparently that was normal, though monstrously inconvenient for her. For his part, he could sleep through the baseline level of tossing and turning without even realizing anything was amiss, but usually woke up at least briefly whenever she got up from the bed. He could ask her how she was doing and offer some sympathetic remarks, then fall back asleep as soon as she settled in next to him again — he was a conscientious husband and he was reasonably well-rested. He really was making out like a bandit from this whole thing. Too bad he couldn't pass any of that sleep on to Zelda.

Something she'd just done had waken him — what it was he couldn't have said — and Alfred reached out to caress her arm to let her know he was up too. "Can't sleep?" he asked, although the answer to that seemed fairly obvious.

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