"It's too quiet!!!!"
The sudden exclamation pierced through the silence that had been reigning, and (almost) all eyes in the room turned to face the one responsible. They didn't even need to say anything, just the sheer weight of their stares, and the disapproving looks on their faces, was enough to indicate that something was wrong to even the densest and most oblivious of beings. Even a blind man would be able to tell that he had made a mistake in that situation.
And Ebony was neither blind nor dense. She was, actually, quite a smart little dragon, particularly for her tender age of two years old (not that anyone, particularly Ebony was counting). And she knew that all of the mean faces in the room were directed at her, even that they were all mad at her. She even knew why: because she had been loud in such a quiet room. But she didn't really care, and she wasn't about to apologize.
After all, it really had been too quiet.
So she just stared back at the disapproving looks, setting her mouth into as much of a pout as she could manage (which wasn't much of one...as dragons are not particularly good at pouting). Even without the helpful pouting expression that she would have had with a human face, they should have been able to tell exactly what sort of an expression the one on her face was. They had seen it more than enough, as it was quite a common expression for young Princess Ebony to be wearing on her face. And it was probably expected, even though all of the others in the room thought her to be the one in the wrong, not them.
"Shhh, Ebony," Sam said, the first one to break the silence other than Ebony with her exclamation of discontent. Ebony just stared back at her and pouted some more, convinced that she had been completely in the right, because it was no fun when everyone was all quiet.
Sam, who knew that she was in agreement with the rest of the room, refused to let Ebony have her way. Someone would have to teach her eventually that she couldn't just do whatever she wanted. And while Sam wasn't exactly thrilled to be the one doing it, she couldn't leave it at this point, not after she had already corrected Ebony once, and then promptly been ignored. So, she stared back, not willing to give an inch to the willful dragon staring at her with full confidence that she was a "good girl," even when she knew deep down inside that she wasn't.
The impromptu staring contest that sprung from the exchange lasted almost five minutes, before Ebony finally realized that she wasn't getting anywhere, and that the rest of the room seemed to be backing Sam. As much as she hated the idea, she turned her eyes away, still pouting, and then sighed as the collective breath of the room was released in one great exhalation, and the tension flowed out of the others in the room. The one problem was that this annoyed Ebony quite a bit, and she proceeded to turn her back on the rest of the room and sulk, radiating spiky emotions of childish dislike to anyone who might be able to feel them.
And so, in a way slightly less obvious than the one everyone might have guessed, Ebony was the one who disturbed my concentration that day, drawing me away from the work I was so focused upon. The others all thought it would be Ebony's exclamation, from boredom as the rest of the room watched with bated breath as I did my work, but to be completely honest, I barely heard or saw anything but that which was right in front of me as I worked. Instead, it was Ebony's spiky emotions that drew me out...breaking the trance I had fallen into and bringing me back to the real world just moments before I finished the task I had set out to do...