Little Marriage
Note: I've been on hiatus for a while for a number of reasons, but the most important of those reasons is that I finally finished my novel and got it ready for publishing. I decided to go the self-publish route because I have limited time as it is and I'd rather spend my spare time writing new content rather than getting in touch and waiting on agents. I would like to tentatively put a link to my novel here, it's availiable on Amazon, and if you've enjoyed my work in the past I think you'll enjoy the novel, it deals with a lot of the same themes I work with in the Breaking Down series. The more people I can get reading my original work, the more time I can dedicate to writing both fanwork and original.
dp/B07BGSPPBY
Anyway, back to SU. Yes, this is based on the song and I've had this in mind for ages, I just now got a chance to write it up. I had thought about putting it in String of Pearls but I think it needs its own place.
…..
A year and a day could pass just as quickly
And I don't mind, I don't mind
If they end as they should be
At first, Ruby didn't even know Morganite had a pearl.
She had been tasked to patrol outside Morganite's vast compound, and was only inside the walls every now and then, and Morganite kept everything inside pale and wispy and shimmering for her 'aesthetic'. The Rubies she hired from time to time were the only things that went outside of her vision, and a gem could tell just by looking at her that she thought the Rubies were ugly little distractions.
Stanfing around Morganite's gardens for cycle after cycle was boring. Naturally, Ruby's eyes wandered of their own accord and on one of these cycles, she happened to catch a flicker of movement in the window.
Who knows how long the pearl had been there? It blended in so perfectly with the shimmery drapes and the polished floors that it practically disappeared into the scenery.
Your open eyes are two private oceans
They don't cry, I don't mind
To see your devotion
The Ruby had been working there for three orbits, seventeen cycles, eight quadrants and one hundred and seven parsecs.
Pearl had been observing her since the very first cycle. Morganite kept everything so pale and washed out that seeing the Ruby for the first time was such a shock it felt like she had been slapped. She was a burst of colour on the landscape, a brilliantly vivid focal point to zero in on.
Morganite hated having a Ruby on the property, but given how many times she had been robbed in recent times she had to bring in some sort of protection. Pearl had only managed not to be stolen herself by slipping under the drapes and holding still.
"It's crude but it will have to do," Morganite mused, looking out at the Ruby patrolling the garden, more to herself than to pearl.
She's not crude. She's wonderful.
Little Marriage blew through this home
With a difference between us and have & hold
What is this marrow we're burrowed upon
When your face is the answer and the question's this song?
It was a bad idea to try and interact with the pearl, Ruby knew that. She could get in a lot of trouble. She could be sent to iso-pod or even shattered if Morganite thought she was trying to steal the pearl.
Well, nobody ever said Rubies were smart.
At first, she just waved. The pearl just stared back, but Ruby kept doing it. Waved and smiled.
Once, she tripped and fell flat on her face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the pearl start; she had seen. She had reacted. She was concerned.
Ruby sprang to her feet, dusted herself off and threw her arms out wide to show that she was okay. She expected the pearl to just stare like she always did.
This time, however, she smiled. And she raised her hand to her mouth to hide it in the next instant.
From then on, Ruby's mission was to make the pearl smile at her again. That smile, although it had only existed for a moment, was the most amazing thing Ruby had ever seen.
I got caught on a day thrill
Can't see you tonight
I don't mind but you do?
I don't mind what you say
If you don't mind where I'm going
Devotion is known and not for showing
She wanted to warn the Ruby not to pay so much attention to her. Not when Morganite was stalking the compound all the time looking for little imperfections to straighten out. She straightened pearl's posture multiple times a day, as still as pearl tried to hold herself there was always a lock of hair to be smoothed or a wrinkle in her dress to shake out.
There was always a warning shock from the nothing on the way whenever the Ruby first arrived, and that shock always messed her up just enough to make Morganite unhappy. Pearl lived in perpetual fear that Morganite was going to replace her.
But how could she stay still now? The Ruby filled her vision to the point that everything around her just faded away. She was everything. Pearl couldn't help but react. It was involuntary. There was no pearl on Homeworld that could have resisted.
When they didn't get caught the first few times, Pearl let herself smile more easily.
Something smaller keeps us in tow
With a difference between us and have & hold
I started minding not having it all
One little marriage or big love
Morganite reshuffled all of her furniture, which she did all the time, but the difference was that this time it included the pearl. She was moved outside into some little alcove under a bunch of wispy curtains.
Ruby could barely breathe she was so excited. She went to work and home again with a big stupid grin plastered across her face. Other Rubies asked what had gotten her in such a state and she couldn't even answer them.
She would see the pearl up close.
She might even get to talk to her!
When the actual cycle arrived and she managed to take that first step into the alcove, she couldn't speak. She was struck dumb, because the pearl didn't seem real this close up. She looked like some sort of spectre, ethereal and glimmering in the low light.
Up close, she wasn't pure white like Ruby had thought. She was blue, silver in places. Her hair was curled softly over her shoulders. Ruby wanted to touch her, but if she did she knew it would ruin the perfection of her.
Surprisingly, the pearl was the one who touched her. She touched her hand. A tremble ran from the hand through Ruby's entire being. Her skin tingled.
"Morganite is coming this way," the pearl warned. Her voice sounded like a glass bell.
"Oh," Ruby stammered. "Right, right..."
She still grinned all the way home. The pearl had warned her. The pearl wanted her to be safe.
It was a start.
Little Marriage blew through this home
With a difference between us and have & hold
What is this marrow we're burrowed upon
When your face is the answer and the question's this song?
The absence of Ruby was like a burn across pearl's eyes. Since being moved to the alcove, they were closer, but she couldn't watch Ruby from the window like she had been doing for so long.
It was risky, too, to be so close. Ruby made her foolhardy, she knew well what happened to pearls that stepped out of line, but when Ruby was near she was the only thing that mattered. Every other thought just drained out of her head.
Ruby was so vivid up close, pulsing and alive with a crackling energy. It left pearl breathless, and so overwhelmed she constantly felt faint. And yet, she wouldn't have it any other way. It was better than feeling nothing, as she had for so long.
She exchanged memory with a nearby neighbour pearl, who warned her that she was heading into dangerous territory. As if she didn't know.
Something smaller keeps us in tow
With a difference between us and have & hold
I started minding not having it all
One little marriage or big love
The first kiss blindsided them both, they couldn't say who had initiated. Perhaps they had both gone for it at the same time.
When they broke away, Pearl starting rocking on the spot, clutching her head. Ruby tried to calm her, but she was on the verge of panicking herself.
"She'll shatter you, she'll shatter you, she'll shatter you..." Pearl mumbled to herself.
"No, she won't. We'll be fine," Ruby tried to tell her. "She can't see us from out here...she keeps forgetting you're in here! She won't find out, I promise."
Any gem would have been a fool to believe a line like that, but Pearl didn't know anything beyond the walls of the compound and she did believe. Nobody could blame her for that.
I got caught on a day thrill
Can't see you tonight
I don't mind but you do?
I don't mind what you say
If you don't mind where I'm going
Devotion is known and not for showing
Fusion was the next natural step. They had gotten careless; they had gone undiscovered for so long. The stolen kisses and caresses were intoxicating. The alcove was the best thing that had happened to either of them, Morganite ignored it completely, and they could do just about anything in there.
The hadn't even danced, or had a common goal in mind beyond losing themselves in each other's embrace, but they went that little bit further and melted into each other.
It wasn't a fusion anyone would have considered successful or strategic; all of Ruby's nervous energy combined with Pearl's sheltered frailty made for a very frightened, very skittish creature. But it was warm and sweet, because it was them.
Little Marriage blew through this home
With a difference between us and have & hold
Morganite moved Pearl back inside, to sit by the curtains and compliment her décor once again. Ruby burned with fury, because she knew now that Pearl was much more than an ornament, and being Rhodonite had shown her just how much it pained Pearl to be stuck in one place for so long.
They were lonely, without each other, so lonely it felt like they would shatter right there and then.
They took risks. A brush of the hand here, a window cracked open there. Three steps to the door for a hurried kiss. Gestures through the glass, whispers through the drapes. Notes on Morganite's schedule, when she would be out of the compound for business.
They managed to find a few quadrants here and there where Ruby abandoned her guard post and Pearl stepped away from the drapes to be together, but those stolen moments made the long waiting in between so much more painful.
In a way, it was almost a relief when they got caught. Both of them swiftly replaced in Morganite's ruthlessly efficient way, they'd been put in the same tracer to have Pearl wiped and resold and Ruby sent to isopod, when they took the opportunity to fuse and run for it. Ruby knew to head immediately for Homeworld's underground, and that is where they went.
Underground life was terrifying, but they were together. There was always a knowledge lurking at the back of their minds that they could un-fuse, Pearl could sneak into a sales booth to be re-sold and Ruby could blend back in with another troupe, but it was unthinkable now.
They made the best of it, right up until that strange quartz and his hu-man thing arrived on Homeworld. And that was when their lives got really interesting.