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To Pearl’s dismay, the gloomy, overcast sky decided to unleash its long-held threat in a downpour right as their little trio-quartet of fugitives made it out of the woods and to a stretch of rolling grassy hills.
In hindsight it seems inevitable, really. Their long trek between Homeworld-guarded warp pads has only been made longer by frequent pauses to appreciate the sights and sounds and altogether overwhelmingly numerous and various sensations of the planet.
…some markedly more pleasant than others.
Pearl knows Rose would love nothing more than to run breathlessly through the curtain of rain to splash around in every muddy puddle she can find - the way the fusion, newly self-declared a Garnet, rushed away from them to do not that long ago, making a very determined yet undecipherable claim about not hiding from any of it ‘this time’. Rose, too, certainly wishes to bask in the novelty of the droplets running down her face and shoulders and arms, tickling; to catch the cool water in her cloud of curls, see it stick to her form (her lovely, lovely form, the form she clings to so- so- it’s not Pearl’s place to say desperately, but– the form that is somehow becoming more than a disguise, that Pearl would dare say she wants to - should - have always had–).
It’s writ plainly all over her face and the blatantly yearning gaze of those dark eyes, and would be obvious, certainly, even if Pearl herself had been made for something other than anticipating every whim. But instead of indulging, Rose seems to restrict herself to deeply breathing in the heady, fresh scent, and holds her summoned shield up to make a shelter for both Pearl and (most of) herself.
A small but monumental gesture of caring, a sign of Pearl’s feelings on the matter of odd earthly textures and fluids – or on any matter in general – being taken into account and seriously considered. Even, one might say, taking precedence. Rose rushed forward, ecstatic as the first drops began to fall, and Rose turned around and saw Pearl’s disgruntled expression, and Rose stopped. It is an immensely warming, incredibly dizzying thought, another shift and tear in what should have been the fabric of their relationship, and a moment that Pearl has replayed in her mind’s eye several times by now.
Pearl curls herself around it and into Rose - who not only allows, but encourages the small movement - and watches the rain fall. With this aglow at her core, for at least a little while it doesn’t matter at all that frightfully soon they have to make it to a warp and back to the base, and meet with Blue Diamond herself, and make up excuses for her and Garnet both, and–
Pearl keeps a tally, of course. They’ve been sneaking off down to the planet’s surface more and more often. Even before the latest escalation in Rose’s plan to prove the Earth uncolonisable, they’d been spending more time on-planet than at the base. An unpleasant call from Blue Diamond would so easily lead to some astoundingly frivolous, exploratory, and wonderful frolicking through the incredibly diverse ecosystems the planet has to offer. One particularly frustrating fight over the comms line ending with Yellow Diamond ordering her pearl to cut the feed resulted in a rousing sparring session in a flowering field (Pearl still has the bright pink blossom Rose put in her hair afterwards stored away in her gem, safely bubbled, to be taken out and looked at during… challenging, unsure moments).
Yes, the consequences if they are caught would surely be disastrous. Yes, there are patrols sent after the stubborn, defiant, ever-persistent and increasingly notorious rebels more and more often, what with Blue Diamond once again deciding to “indulge” her favourite little troublemaker and coming over to “help” her with her first colony.
So they’ve frequently needed to hide, most often in caves, cut deep into stone or formed under the roots of monumental trees. And Pearl thinks she should feel some kind of apprehension, or responsibility, or any motivation at all to at least try to discourage these Earth jaunts beyond what is absolutely necessary for their plans - or, oh, even to refrain from encouraging them, as she has certainly done on several occasions. But instead she is left with fond memories of many a breathless rush to a hiding place, ending in giggles of relief and sheer forbidden excitement, and a stretch of quiet, huddled waiting that is somehow never unpleasant.
It didn’t take her too long to realise she’d become as carried away with it all as Rose, and that, when she allows herself to admit it in the rare quiet of her own thoughts, she never, ever wants to stop. She tries to imagine going back to how it used to be, how it’s supposed to be, what they are supposed to be, forever, with the Earth stripped bare and hollowed out as just another colony consumed for the growth of the empire. Imagines herself quietly standing at proper attention and wearing that ridiculous dress, with opening a door or activating a data-filled holo-screen being the pinnacle of her day, and something very deep in her shudders in revulsion and desperate denial.
Then she tries to imagine some kind of expected and logical endpoint to… all this. Because of course that is their endgame, isn’t it? They would convince the other Diamonds the Earth was too troublesome to ever be a viable colony, that it should be left alone. And they would go… back. To their old lives, and their old selves - at least on the surface, as best as they could manage. Perhaps, on occasion, they could even get to visit the Earth again under some pretext or other, but certainly never for very long, not without endangering all they’d accomplished, and never like… this.
The Earth would be saved, with all its creatures, with humans, the endless forms of life growing wild on it…
…but, despite it being exactly what they originally set out to do, it somehow doesn’t feel like a victory to Pearl at all.
She imagines, last of all, what it would mean - never seeing Rose Quartz again. Her lively mind, usually all too eager to oblige no matter how unlikely or outrageous the daydream, refuses her.
Rose is very soft and thankfully very real against her shoulder and her back, and, every so often when she moves to adjust her hold on the shield, against her cheek. But there is an immense underlying strength there that Pearl has become so very certain would never be turned against her. Rose has grown so much more careful than in those early days, with all the excited grabs at Pearl, yanking her up or down or along to whatever curiosity awaited. It makes Pearl want to preen, aglow with importance - any real pull exerted now is far from physical.
And here Rose is, the centre of gravity - always making slight adjustments to her form, fascinated with replicating textures found and felt around the wonder that is the Earth. The cloud of hair, as wild and unruly as the life they are trying to protect here, forming curls as perfect as any shockingly geometric pattern found in the odd structures of the planet’s sea creatures. The waves and layered petals of her dress, the way they flutter and float around her, weighty and weightless in turns. The ease of getting caught in her eyes, dark and warm and welcoming and intense all at once, and deep, like layers of soft, loamy soil. Rose is of the Earth, in a way Pearl never will be and doesn’t wish to be, but can certainly appreciate. It is all of it so much more beautiful and pronounced, when it is with her, when it is her.
So Pearl has to admit the rain is not an altogether unappealing phenomenon either - when observed from a safe and dry distance. There is something beautiful about the grayness, and something oddly profound about the moment entire. The raindrops ring against the shield, each a softly resonant little chime. It isn’t hard at all to believe the Earth is providing the two of them with a private concert the likes of which no diamond ballroom has ever seen.
It reminds me of the day we met.
“Oh?” Rose says, that ever-present curiosity clear in her voice, and Pearl realises far too late she has blurted this out loud. Loud enough to be heard over leaves and grass rustling in the cool, damp wind and the patter of raindrops above them. That’s what too many wild unfettered fantasies in too brief a time will do to you, oh, now you’ve done it–
But no scoff or scolding comes, beyond Pearl’s internal self-condemnations. Instead, the arm that was behind her - the one not holding up the summoned weapon-turned-shelter - now drapes around her shoulders, gently holding her close. Nothing restrictive, nothing Pearl couldn’t easily disengage from if she felt like it. Which she decidedly does not. The shield is rather small for them both, of course, so it only makes sense. Best to stay close and spare Rose the trouble of needing to adjust its size or angle.
“Could you maybe… refresh my memory?” Rose says, bending down almost conspiratively and smiling at her a bit wryly. Then, even softer and with a tugging, pleading look, “Please?”
In response, Pearl scoots even closer to the very Earthy soft warmth of Rose, Rose, Rose, as far removed from the cold, polished stone of a diamond palace and the uniquely demeaning chime of <please state preferred customisation options> as it is possible to be. And of course Rose insists on breathing, that entirely human but pleasantly rhythmic affectation. The rise and fall of her chest brushes up against Pearl, and Pearl decides to match the oddly soothing rhythm herself, for at least a little while.
Then she lets her face scrunch up in concentration as she focuses on remembering.
(Important, very important, for a wide array of reasons, to keep everything consistent.)
“Well. I had just made it out of the cargo hold of the ship I’d stowed away on, the stolen sword - oh, you know, that sabre I favour so much - firmly in hand.”
“You do love that thing,” Rose chuckles, and she’s absolutely right - and the fact it truly was stolen from a training arena weapons rack by Pearl and Pearl alone is perhaps what makes her love it so. “Sometimes I’m afraid you’ll lovingly polish it away into nothing.”
“Unlikely,” Pearl scoffs. And really, she’ll have to teach Rose a thing or two about proper weapon maintenance. But for right now… “There I was, about to sneak right past the first two rings of guards around the landing pads, preferably unscathed, when I first encountered this strange precipitation.”
But that isn’t how it was at all, an annoying, proper little voice pipes up in Pearl’s mind, and she stops, frozen. And of course it wasn’t, she remembers perfectly - it had actually been during their first visit, while the Moon base was still having finishing touches put on it, and potential primary kindergarten sites were nothing more than a list she kept projecting in a convenient hologram for her Diamond to peruse. The first and last time Pink Diamond was expected - or rather allowed - on Earth, escorted by a generously loaned squadron of Yellow Diamond’s elite citrine guards. A very brief inaugural visit - the rain started almost as soon as they stepped out of the ship, and both the endlessly disappointed diamond and the pearl trotting dutifully just behind her were hastily bundled back in. For safety. Supposedly.
Remember, Pearl.
So she does, and casts her mind back. To the bright orange quartzes surrounding the landing site in flawless formation, the sudden pitter-patter of raindrops hitting the hulls of the ships.
A kernel of truth, a fact to serve as core, then layer around it like fine nacre–
“It was an odd sound at first, but it helped, then, to mask my steps - there was an entire squadron of citrines already stationed there, you see. So I was thankful for the cover it would provide my escape and didn’t much feel like examining it all further. New to the planet as I was, with no knowledge of its odd… liquid condensation cycles - or anything, really.”
“Hm,” comes Rose’s voice in a hum, soft but resonating through her form enough for Pearl to feel it brush against her and through her, pervasive and warm, “and now you’re shaping up to be quite the expert in a number of areas. And we get to properly experience rainfall together! Another Earth wonder. Sometimes it feels like the planet is showing off, just for us.”
Pearl feels her face heat up, too, bright blue from compliments and proximity, tinged pink by the muted glow of the shield. “Yes. Well.” She clears her throat. “In- in any case. It was still very dangerous, as those citrines were some of the Yellow Court’s best.”
“Oh, well,” Rose indulges in a grin that Pearl can only describe as dastardly, “I think I know someone better-!”
“Rose!” The heat in her face is becoming distracting at best and uncomfortable at worst, and Pearl feels a tiny pinprick of frustration at her focus being tried and challenged this hard. Preserving the… the flow of the narrative–
“I… I was moving slowly, and keeping as low as possible behind whatever I could see. Cargo containers, equipment racks, the odd bush - but there wasn’t a lot of cover to be found, especially further away from the ships, and the rain made the ground uncertain and slippery. And so, just before I could slip away, I, well, slipped, and was spotted by two of the guards.”
“What did they do?” A gasp and a tense whisper from an increasingly engrossed Rose somehow drawing ever closer, and Pearl feels astoundingly accomplished.
“The citrines? Well, one of them stepped forward and said–”
“Hey, pearl,” came the rough voice of a citrine guard looming over her suddenly, pointing somewhere behind her, “bring me that.”
Perfectly unthinking, Pearl immediately made to step over and grab the carelessly discarded sabre. Her Diamond had dismissed her services for the immediate moment anyway, and was talking to important Gems about the ceremony of setting down her very first colony’s very first warp for its very first kindergarten site.
The citrine’s companion reached over to slap the back of her head - those quartzes, always roughhousing! Even highly elite guards. “That’s Pink Diamond’s pearl, you chalkhead, not yours. Pick up your own garbage.”
“What, come on, she wasn’t doing anything anyway, she was just standing there!”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re for. Look all you want, but no messing with her, or you’ll get us both in trouble. Acting like you were made yesterday, I swear…”
Pearl swallows, with some difficulty. And focuses on the recollection of the perfectly ordinary but entirely unforgettable sword, the heft of it, the gleam of it, the feel of it in her hand, not balanced for her at all, but oh, so right to have her fingers close around its handle, even so very, very briefly…
“One of the citrines stepped forward. She said,” Pearl pauses to clear her throat, then gives her best gruff-voiced imitation. “‘You there, pearl, bring me that sword. Slowly now, we wouldn’t want you to cut yourself.’”
“And?” Rose again, leaning forward with excitement, distracted enough to allow her shield to tilt and splash rain down her back.
Pearl stifles a small giggle, shoulders hunching, a grin pulling at her lips as irresistibly as that sword had called to her hand. “I stood up tall - of course I was positively tiny compared to her, but it didn’t matter - and said… I said–”
‘Maybe it’s not the sharpness of the sword you should be concerned with, but how to fix your own dullness!’
Too wordy.
‘Why don’t you come over here and try to take it from me?’
Not wordy enough! But then, oh, an idea–
‘No.’
Straightforward and meaningful indeed, but- maybe mostly to her? And she has an audience. It wouldn’t do, perhaps, to be so entirely… personal. So purely self-indulgent.
Of course she never actually said anything to the citrines - they’d long lost interest in her anyway, preoccupied with their own petty arguments, and, eventually, she simply put the sword back down and stepped back to her original spot to await further instruction. But the pure glee of even imagining firing back at them, of pretending she did, in fact, do all that and more, is intoxicating, and somehow, somehow, the in fact seems to matter less and less and less. Washed away, perhaps with the rain.
“I said, ‘I’m not the one who should be worried about getting cut!’ and I rushed forward, sword firmly in hand. They didn’t even have a chance to draw their weapons, I timed my lunge just right, and, well, that was it for them! Poof, just like that!”
Pearl grins, looking up with a little huff of excited exhalation. Rose’s cheeks are glowing, rosy, and not just thanks to the shield above, held steady with both hands now as she does her best not to completely succumb to her laughter and delight.
“Pearl. You are amazing.”
The joy on her face is the most genuine thing Pearl has ever seen, and it floods her. I did that, I caused it, I, I, I…
She allows herself a moment, and leans in, all but reclining against Rose, tucked under her chin, increasingly blanketed by her wild curls. She raises a hand and almost idly lets one pink strand curl around her finger, then uncurl, curl and uncurl, curl and uncurl–
But then, the story isn’t over, is it? One of its main attractions has yet to appear at all. And oh, what an appearance to be made…
“It was easy to make it deeper into the woods after that,” Pearl continues, far more quietly, from her unthinkably, altogether criminally indulgently comfortable resting place. “I thought I’d found good cover, finally, and could pause a bit, re-examine my plans in relative safety. But just as I was about to settle under a rocky overhang, a rustling came from somewhere behind me.”
When Pearl pauses in her telling, there is nothing to be heard save for the soft sound of Rose’s breathing right next to her, and the rain with all its tones, as persistent as ever. But the feeling of it all has shifted, somehow, beyond Pearl’s ability to explain.
“I turned, suddenly sca–” No, not that, never scared. “Worried that more of the citrines had followed me. And then… and then there she- you- were, right in front of me.”
How incredibly strange, to be sharing this. Pearl has never had need nor chance to consider her delivery, the, oh, format, as it were– it’s not polished, and it’s not practiced or prepared, and usually she’d absolutely despise this, but here she is and the spontaneity of it all somehow, quite bafflingly, adds to the experience.
“But of course I didn’t know– well, you could have been anyone! A quartz, in a standard Pink Diamond uniform… I had been training with the sabre for a while at that point, yes, but mostly on my own and in secret, and if more soldiers found me, surrounded me, the odds would be very much against me. I reacted faster than I could even think, nothing but pure reflex, and raised my sword–”
Mine. Another little nugget of astoundingly pleasant warmth Pearl can’t resist pausing to relish in. All hers.
“I prepared my attack, but I wasn’t aiming to disrupt your form - I needed to extract information, of course. It was vital that I learn exactly what dangers lurked out there, awaiting me.”
One pearl, alone in an entire world of unprecedented opportunity and unparalleled danger, and nothing, nothing at all to steer her or guide her but she herself. What a thought! What a terrible, wonderful thought, and here Pearl sits, speaking it out loud. She shivers.
“Even if some part of me noticed your posture wasn’t threatening at all, well, I was used to that. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Gem that would take a pearl seriously, and so it was how all of my more… martial encounters started. I dashed forward for a quick feint, first to the right, then to the left, a swipe as if to aim at your legs - and down you went.”
She is caught up in the telling, sweeping out a currently swordless arm, but still with perfect hard-won technique. The rain has started to come down even harder, and the sudden feel of it on her bare forearm startles Pearl back into the present. She grimaces and tries to shake the water off as best she can and, for the first time in what feels like a while, since that strange shift in mood, risks a glance back at Rose - Rose, who has gone so quiet. An icy spike of fear rushes through Pearl briefly - has she gone too far? Holding people, holding her, at swordpoint? Really?
Looking up at Rose, she isn’t sure what she expects to see there, but she finds herself caught in an enraptured, glossy-eyed gaze, a brightly rosy-cheeked Rose so much like that moment of, oh, please don’t ever stop that still somehow makes Pearl feel like the very core of her gem is aglow. She looks utterly, yes, Pearl would dare say smitten, and the realisation comes with a burst of what can only be pride. The rain and everything it touches is suddenly somehow irrelevant, and the world might just be the two of them underneath the shield.
“I stood there,” Pearl almost whispers, “a pearl, with an impressive, perfect-cut rose quartz entirely at my mercy with my sword at her neck, bound to know every patrol route and schedule on Earth. Anything I could possibly want to ask of her.”
The image is almost startling in its crystalline clarity in her mind, but Pearl isn’t sure she can properly convey it with mere words. A hologram, perhaps?
It only takes a brief burst of closed-eyed concentration, and the scene comes to light blue life before them. Rose, near-supine, looking up in wonder with plush lips open in the slightest of ohs, rain dripping down from the lovingly rendered curls of her hair and following the soft, indulgent curve of her cheek. Pearl herself standing over her, just barely tall enough to look down at her even in this configuration, but the very picture of determination even so. The finishing touch of her own reflection in the polished blade, sword held perfectly steady without a hint of the tremble she currently feels in her nervous fingers. A clear, steely threat pressed right above where Pearl is nestled now.
And the rain, just visible through the cyan glow, adding a startling shot of reality to the projection, peeling away another layer of separation.
“You… you just looked up at me,” Pearl tries to continue, though her voice is turning highly uncooperative. “Our eyes met and I… somehow, I knew you didn’t mean me any harm. I knew you wouldn’t try to attack me, or overpower me, or turn me in, or… or steal me for yourself. I knew you were… like me. You were running, too.”
Her words go from hesitant to a full stop, but more kernels keep offering themselves up. Perhaps it is simply in Pearl’s nature somehow, to want to take them and make them into something more appealing, handle them by encasing them in something beautiful, leaving them only barely recognisable to the most discerning eye.
There… there was a tower on Homeworld that they made you… stand guard in, sometimes. A prison tower. Your… agate, a real piece of work. You hated it, oh, your whole cut did, and all of you dreaded those shifts, doled out as punishment. The first time we talked you swore to me you would never see the inside of it again–
But Pearl quickly tucks that nascent part of the story away. It feels… wrong, for the occasion. This story is about running away, about escape. It wouldn’t do at all to drag all of that into it, to drag them both back and down. Distraction, instead. A beautiful fantasy. Escapism in its purest form. In fact, another piece slots into place instead:
Rose Quartz was made on Earth, in its first successful kindergarten, herself a product of the planet she then chose to protect and tied to the life flourishing wild on it. She has never laid eyes on Homeworld and Homeworld has never laid a hand on her.
It feels like a very final decision, but Pearl keeps it to herself, for now. Instead, she waits, quiet, and focuses on the shared rhythm of their breathing, and the coolness of the rain on her arm contrasting with the warmth of Rose at her back.
“I remember that part very well,” Rose says, finally, breaking her silence.
“You- you do?” Pearl blinks, shifting slightly to sit up, inexplicably hopeful. For a moment it seems the hardest thing would be not to pretend, and not to believe the pretense wholeheartedly.
“Oh, yes. You were very terrifying.”
Rose’s smile as she says that holds no hint of mockery, but as she looks away from her own image in the hologram and catches Pearl’s eye there is something new and hardened in her gaze.
“It really got me to think, you know, seeing you there in the wilderness, watching you wield a sword so skillfully. Towering over me. I’d never seen a pearl do something like that before. So imagine-”
Imagine– Pearl’s pretend breath catches and hitches in her pretend chest, and her projection flickers out of existence.
“Imagine what could happen, what else she could do, if only given the chance. What… what other pearls could do.” A shadow passes over her face suddenly, and Rose shakes her head, curls bouncing and droplets flying, doing her best to shake something else off, too.
“Imagine what Gems could do. And be.”
She’s thinking now, Pearl knows, of the incredible, unprecedented sight that unfolded before their very eyes and the eyes of the entire Blue Court mere Earth-days earlier: a Ruby and a Sapphire coming together to form something beyond just themselves, beyond what anyone expected either of them to ever be.
But Pearl thinks, too, of their own bizarre and wondrous almost-fusion, of the way they fell apart in the end, but not quite, of the feeling of tiny strings still pulling them together, the feeling of teetering on the edge of some great and terrifying understanding. They are close, so very close, sitting huddled under the shield, which she knows Rose could make bigger if she wanted, and she thinks, oh, how much closer could we still be–
She thinks of how the Earth has become a sanctuary. For Garnet, certainly, but also for the two of them. How, flying in the face of all reason, their time on Earth still feels safer than any spent on Homeworld.
Just the other night, they met the nearby humans as honoured guests in their little aggregation of domiciles and took part in dancing with shocking abandon around a carefully constructed open fire. Rose first, of course, ever eager to join in, but successfully urging Pearl to put her innate grace to good use, too. Garnet following them both and still curiously feeling out her own way about everything, including joy. She ended the evening holding herself with a genuine tenderness that was beautiful to witness. Rose smiled wider and brighter than Pearl had ever seen her before that night, all the way until the unfamiliar stars vanished from view and the first rays of the Earth’s sun crept up over the horizon - and how could either of them worry about anything in those precious, transcendent moments?
And where else could they possibly… be… like this? Where else could have produced Garnet?
Where else could have produced Rose Quartz?
“I want…” Rose starts, then stops, with a soft exhale and a frown, and Pearl feels an incredible desire to raise her hand and gently cup her face. So she does - they’re on Earth, after all, and isn’t that just the point? - and Rose leans into the touch immediately.
“I want to change it,” she states very simply after a little while, just as another thought forms, slowly making its way to the surface of Pearl’s mind - who else could the Earth become a sanctuary to? It feels something like that moment of almost-fusion, this immense shared notion suddenly taking hold of both of them.
“Why should Garnet ever be threatened and afraid, punished or made to feel wrong? Why should anyone? Why shouldn’t we–” Rose cuts herself off again, passion clearly mounting. Her eyes are still her own, dark and warm, always wide in curiosity and eager to take in every sight the Earth can possibly offer. But there is steel in them now, and Pearl shudders - though not unpleasantly. She traces a cheek with her thumb, meets Rose’s gaze without hesitation, and feels a matching determination mounting in herself.
“Your imagination is wonderful, Pearl. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Where would I be without it?” Rose laughs very softly at her own bittersweet little joke, but grows serious again, even solemn, before Pearl can even think to react. “But what I want is to try to make this real.”
She hesitates, and it is such a strange look on her. On the Rose Quartz who is always bounding forward without a second thought, flying headfirst into both revelry and danger. Then, she shifts her shield to free a hand and place it over Pearl’s. “And I think, maybe… maybe you do, too?”
What do you want? in so many tentative and hopeful little words.
“I do,” Pearl answers with a certainty she can’t quite explain. Surely it should all need so much more thought, and surely the mere act of asking a pearl what she wants is unprecedented enough to merit at least a moment of serious, careful consideration. The sheer implied scope of it is nigh unthinkable–
But no other answer feels possible.
And now they are on the cusp of… something. Pearl wishes she could clarify and define what it is, put words to the immense, looming shape of it, but it is beyond her, beyond both of them, beyond Garnet… and yet it revolves around them entirely. It feels like they are about to plummet, or soar, but really, with Rose, isn’t it the same in the end?
“I want to change so much,” Rose repeats, with a finality Pearl feels resonate deep within herself.
They will change it. They will change it all. Pearl feels ready to fight for this cause, if need be until the last grains of the nacreous dust of her gem settle, trampled into the ground, if she can only make all of it real. For Rose, and for Garnet, and for whoever comes after.
And maybe even, a tiny inkling of a new voice, barely there, dares to suggest, for herself.
Something to unpack another time, perhaps, Pearl thinks as she brushes it away. As blurred rays of sunlight reach them through the shield to interrupt their long stillness, she notices that the rain has for the most part stopped. The sky has cleared, the last vestiges of clouds slowly drifting off… but there is something else in it now. Streaks of colour arc across the pale blue, shockingly lively hues in perfect wavelength order.
“Pearl, look!”
The shield is gone, and Pearl suddenly feels arms around her and a cheek right next to hers, and Rose’s voice all abuzz with that familiar excitement and fascination again.
This, this is easy. A phenomenon Pearl is entirely equipped to explain, even if she finds herself a bit… distracted by their current configuration.
“Oh, that’s… well, there’s refraction and reflection, what with the water still in the air, and the, uh, the sun, coming from behind us.” She looks down briefly and traces, with remarkably steady fingers, a simple but pleasingly symmetrical pattern in the soft give of the arm that’s wound around her chest. “We’ve seen something similar in waterfalls, you’ll recall, only here it’s obviously on a much larger scale. But still just the sun’s rays hitting droplets of water, creating a… rather lovely illusion.”
For some reason Rose seems to find this amusing. “It’s light,” she laughs, but oh, there’s that note of wistfulness once more, “just like us.”
Just like a growing string of iridescent moments, secret and shared. Just like a sudden glow of new understanding in a hidden, flowery grove. Just like…
“It looks real to me,” Rose whispers softly, nuzzled against her cheek, and it sounds like a plea again. “Don’t you think it is?”
Pearl steps out of the embrace and turns to face her, very deliberately. She takes both of Rose’s hands in hers, and allows herself a moment to take in the contrast in size and build, and bask in the feel of them, the weight and warmth, before looking up.
“Yes, it is.”