Author's Note: This piece is paired with the fic 'The One Good Thing', which can be found on my profile. Both were co-written by LadyRavenEye.

oOoOoOo

The Petal Thing

Amethyst sped up the hill, charging forward, clambering over rocks on all four legs, then jumping down and loping back to Pearl, a wild grin on her face. Pearl greeted her each time with an amused smile. She never raced to catch up, just continued at her own steady pace. Amethyst didn't understand why. She knew Pearl could run fast; she'd seen her do it, during training. She just didn't seem to bother with it most of the time.

Eventually, Amethyst reached the top of the hill, and figured this had to be the place. There was a single tree there, tall and strange and spindly, covered not in the green leaves of all the others she'd seen, but instead bright pink flowers. Something about it just instantly screamed 'Pearl' to her.

"Wow!" she shouted. "Is this what you wanted to show me?!"

"Yes!" Pearl shouted back, from down the hill. "I'll be there in a moment!"

Amethyst sighed. Why did Pearl have to be so slow?

Instead of just sitting there and waiting for the other Gem to catch up, Amethyst decided to explore. She investigated the tree first. It was nice enough, she supposed. 'Pretty', she thought the word was. She liked the flowers a lot. She considered climbing up and getting a closer look at them, but the tree wasn't very strong; it shook under her weight. Amethyst backed down. Things out here weren't as strong as the rocks back in the Kindergarten, and she wouldn't want to break it. (Unless maybe she was meant to break the tree? Maybe that was why Pearl had brought her up here?)

She looked around to see if maybe there was something else important. There didn't seem to be. The top of the hill was pretty small, gently sloping, covered in grass which felt nice against her feet. If you went to the hill's very edge, you could look down and see one of the small beaches below. Amethyst liked water, and she liked beaches. They had waves and tides; things were always happening there, always changing.

Finally, Pearl came up behind her. "Do you like it?" she asked.

"Yeah!" said Amethyst, smiling brightly.

Pearl smiled back. "I'm glad," she said. "This is my favourite tree. Or, currently it is."

Amethyst cocked her head. "Currently?"

"Yes, well, they don't live very long," said Pearl. She stepped past her to go place a gentle hand on the tree's bark, her smile gone. "Compared to us, at least. Trees are actually some of the longest living organisms on this planet. There hasn't been a lot of research, of course, but it appears that some have lived as long as five thousand years. Most won't even make it to a hundred, however."

Amethyst blinked at the tree. She hadn't been alive for anywhere close to that, but she was vaguely aware that that wasn't a very long time. "Why do they die so fast?"

"Oh, various reasons." Pearl shrugged. "Disease. Lack of water or sunlight. Storms. Humans cutting them down for materials. Rose and I take care of the trees here, however, so that rarely happens. Mostly, they simply die of old age."

Amethyst stared. She didn't know that was a thing that could happen.

"What happens when they die?"

"Oh, they decompose. Their nutrients get recycled into the soil. Rose plants another seed on the spot, and it's only a matter of years before another one grows back. Anyway," said Pearl, with a flourish of her hand. "Shall we get to the matter at hand?"

"Yes!" Amethyst jumped, excited, then scrambled to sit in front of Pearl. She stared up at the taller Gem, eyes wide and eager. "You gonna show me how to summon my weapon?"

Pearl's expression was fond. "Yes, exactly.

"Our Gems are us. They're the core of our being. One would think that should mean that we understand them perfectly. This is far from true. While we are all incubated with some essential knowledge, there are many things that a Gem can only learn by themselves, through experience." Pearls eyes danced with light. "Even after millennia, even the greatest of Gems are still discovering new abilities they hold within themselves."

Amethyst was pretty sure Pearl was talking about Rose there.

"But how do you do that?" whined Amethyst.

Pearl smiled at her, and that smile seemed to know the answers to every question Amethyst could ask. "Study. Dedication. Hard work." A cool wind blew off the ocean, ruffling their hair and rustling the the branches of the tree. "Observe these petals, Amethyst," Pearl instructed, gesturing to a few of the flowers which had been blown loose and were now drifting down towards the ground. "Do you seem the complexities in the way they fall? How they flutter and twist? It seems random, improvised. But in actuality, the movement is the product of the exact physical properties of this planet. By understanding the properties of your gem, you too can perform your own dance!" She spun, raising her hand to her gem, which glowed brilliant white from her forehead. From it came a long, pointed staff. Pearl took it in hand, twirling it from finger to finger, as it extended into a long, deadly blade. "As so."

Not long ago, Amethyst would have watched with undisclosed awe. That awe was still there, but overshadowed by hunger- a hunger she'd never felt in the Kindergarten, because there'd been nothing to hunger for.

So Amethyst grabbed a handful of petals off the ground and said to Pearl, "Show me again."

And Pearl did. And Amethyst, younger and shorter and wilder and Earth-born, did her best to copy her.

Amethyst tried. She really, really did. She tried with the same stubborn persistence she'd used when she'd gotten it into her head that she was going to climb up the cavern walls of the Kindergarten, to try and reach one of the mysterious matching holes she saw far above. She threw petals. She spun around like Pearl did, waving hands, tried to visualize her gem glowing, her pulling a beautiful, strong, powerful weapon out of it, spinning it with the same easy grace…

After a long, hard climb, Amethyst had eventually made it to one of the other holes. She found it was completely empty; no other Gems in sight. She curled up in the back, and tried to sleep there, like she did in her own, but she found it was too big, and that it smelled wrong, and it just wasn't comfortable. She'd tossed and turned for hours, until giving up into screams of frustration. When the sun had begun to set, and still Amethyst had not managed to summon her weapon, that's what she did now.

The wild scream tore from Amethyst's throat, ripping across the landscape. Pearl's spear vanished as she clapped her hands over her ears.

"Amethyst!" she hissed. "Stop that!"

Before she had been found, nobody had ever told Amethyst what to do. The order just made her scream louder.

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until she screamed herself out. Then Amethyst slumped to the ground, defeated.

"Finished?" asked Pearl, with a sneer.

That sneer- that condensation- disappeared quickly when Amethyst began to sniffle.

Amethyst rubbed the tears and snot away quickly. "This is stupid," she muttered.

Pearl looked aghast. "I- uh- Amethyst- are you okay?"

"Fine." She didn't look at the other Gem, letting her short purple hair hide her face. "Let's just head back to camp."

"What? No- no, Amethyst, listen. It's alright. Don't- don't cry, okay? Come on, Rose always told me, it's important to get up and try again in these kinds of situations…"

"What's the point? Just accept it. I can't summon a weapon."

"Yes, you can! You just need to try harder!"

"What do you think I've been doing?" Amethyst half-screamed. "I'm just not like you, Pearl! I don't have a weapon, OKAY?!"

The words seemed to spark a strange, terrible ferocity in Pearl's eyes. She bent down, staring straight at Amethyst, her faced flushed blue. "Yes, you can," she said. "Every Gem has a weapon to summon, no matter what the others say. Do you understand me? Every single Gem. Even you."

Amethyst stared up at her. Pearl had to be right. She had to be. She knew about these things. She knew about everything.

"...okay," Amethyst eventually relented. "I'll- I'll keep trying. But… later, okay?"

Pearl pinched her long nose and took a deep breath. "Later," she said. "Okay, yes. Let's head back to camp, and take a- a rest."