Camp Steven

Steven woke with his face pressed against the window, the remnants of the city flashing past the bus. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, trying to get his head on straight. Sunrise lines blazed through the scratches and marks on the panes. They turned the bus's interior into a kaleidoscope of white and gold, blinding the tired child.

The driver had her face hidden behind dark glasses, which she pressed up her nose as Steven approached the front. Before he opened his mouth, he turned to look at the rest of the bus. He was the last passenger.

"Excuse me?"

The driver smiled down at him, as if she had been waiting for the child to make a move.

"He wakes at last," she chuckled. "What can I do for you, young'n?"

"I'm just wondering how far until we get there."

"Only about an hour. You excited to see your mom?"

Steven paused, but the knot in his stomach reminded him of the lie he had told the woman to get on the bus in the first place. He gave his best smile and nodded.

The driver smiled back and downshifted. Steven sat back in his seat and pulled out his backpack to make sure he had gotten everything that he needed. Lasting out here was not going to be as easy as he had first thought, and the pangs of food, water, and a bathroom break were all starting to hit him at the same time.

He had packed two extra shirts, one extra pair of pants, and more than enough socks and underwear. The seemingly bottomless pack wasn't as colorful or interesting as he would have liked, but it did its job, and for now, it was all he needed. Coloring books lined the outside, joining the ranks of pencils and travel games, bottled water, gently positioned bags of chips, and sandwiches sealed in their plastic baggies. On top, Steven picked up the photograph of himself and his father.

The two Universe men were in the back of the van, where Pearl had snapped them laughing and playing their instruments together. The boy shoved the picture back into the bag and zipped it up again with a shiver. Pangs of guilt racked his body even hours after he had left the house.

Steven looked out the window again. Towns and buildings were disappearing as the trees grew denser and the horizon grew bumpier with the green and white mountains of the northeast. He had never been up here before, not as far as he could recall.

In all his eight years of life, this was the farthest that he had been away from home. Steven had to reach into his bag and pull out a sandwich to stop himself from panicking. He tore the plastic off and ate ferociously, forcing his mouth to take out all the frustration and fear on the food he had packed late at night, when all the Gems were out and taking care of their mission.

"They don't need me," he growled to himself between bites. "They don't want me. They don't, they don't, they – "

"What's that?"

The driver's interruption nearly made Steven choke. He covered his mouth and wiped the crumbs away as he composed himself.

"J-just talking to myself!"

She turned and raised a sharp, discerning eyebrow at him, then shrugged and came back to the road.

"As you wish."

The time could not have passed any slower for the poor boy. He stared out across the unfamiliar landscape, feeling smaller and smaller the more that the trees encroached upon their vehicle. The glimpses of flatland were fewer the farther they drove, and soon even farmland was taken over by heavy conifers and the summer green of the northern mountains. Lichened boulders and granite-lined rivers appeared as gray blurs in the foreground. Even the sunlight was hindered by the giants around them. Cracks and potholes in the road were more frequent than even in the worst parts of the city, as the forest attempted to overrule what had once belonged to nothing but the roots below.

Steven didn't even see the town until they were almost in the middle of it. A single gas station across the street advertised neon drinks and snacks that had been out of business for nearly a decade. Down the curves, Steven saw the outlines of what he presumed were other residential buildings, though he couldn't be sure.

"Last stop. Now, I don't know this town very well, but I'm also new on this route so I assume you know what you're doing. After all, you didn't come all this way without a plan, right?"

The driver laughed to herself, and Steven smiled back, lying through his teeth as he realized that, thankfully, she was also too tired to be skeptical about his journey to this town in the middle of nowhere. He hoped that she was going to be alert enough to drive back on her own.

"Thanks again for taking me."

"No problem, kiddo. Stay safe, and tell your mom I said hi!"

Steven only waved as he stepped down the stairs and onto the concrete platform of the bus stop. The engine revved, and he watched the nearly-empty bus lurch off into the gas station driveway, turning itself around and heading back towards civilization. It wasn't until the bus had officially left that Steven realized how alone he was out here. His feet felt dirty and exposed in his sandals, with nothing but loam and dust around the places where the pavement hadn't covered. And he also realized then that he had no need for socks if all he had brought was sandals. This plan was not shaping up to be all he had thought it was going to be.

But at least the woods were pretty. When he turned to the trees, a welcoming breeze blew his hair backwards, like it was brushing it aside with all the tenderness nature could afford. Steven couldn't stop a shy smile from coming over his face as he breathed in the fresh pine and unpolished oak, the raw smells of nature without industrial dilution or concrete obstruction – disregarding, of course, the poor excuse for a town.

He stepped around the barrier, and an idea started to form. Steven hefted his backpack and took a deep breath. There was only so much time, and the world was not going to conquer itself. Before he took the plunge into the woods, the boy felt under his shirt for his gemstone, rubbing his thumb over the perfect cuts.

"It's gonna be a long road," he said.

And without a path or a destination, Steven started to walk into the woods. Twigs and roots provided surprisingly little obstruction as he stepped on and over them, barely poking into the denim of his jeans. This patch of woods was devoid of brambles or thorns, and Steven found himself without a scratch as he turned back around. Not three minutes in and the world as he knew it was gone.

But he felt excited – elated, even! Steven felt weightless as he marched through the underbrush, kicking up dead leaves and scattering little beetles. If being a Crystal Gem was impossible, the rest of his life as a wanderer wasn't a half-bad compromise.

"No, wait," he said, pausing to sit on a downed log. "This isn't about being an explorer. Most of the world's been explored and all that. I need…"

The sound of the breeze in the trees died down, and between the birdsong and whirring insects, Steven heard the telltale trickle of running water. He jumped up and started to jog over the uneven ground, breaths accelerating with the wind picking up in his ears. Nature was calling, but this time literally.

When he finally got to the edge of the water, Steven nearly gasped.

"It's perfect."

Presumably, the lake was "L" shaped, and the remainder of the water was around the bend of the pines. In the open stretch, dark water clipped and chopped in tiny onyx waves, frigid underneath the sun-kissed surface. The middle of the lake was disrupted by an island of sorts, a massive boulder with an embankment of nutrient-rich clay around its base. The dirt collected on top was enough to support a solitary tree, its twisted evergreen branches spiraling proudly from its trunk. Ruddy pebbles and sand lined the edge of the lake at the shore, and Steven pressed his sandals into the grit. Along the perimeter, the occasional break in the shore was the result of yet more boulders, miniature mountains standing twenty or thirty feet above the lily pads.

Steven took his time walking around the beachfront, letting the breeze tickle his skin and raise goosebumps up and down his arms. This was the kind of secluded kingdom he had envisioned from the beginning.

But all that aside, there were the important preparations that he needed to take care of before he could truly relax. After all, there wasn't a preteen on the planet who could withstand the force of nature without some wherewithal and craftsmanship. Steven started to pick up the pace as he made his way to one of the more imposing beachside boulders, climbing back up into the woods. By the time he reached the top of his peak, he was feeling the first bouts of work taking a toll on his system.

"Shelter. We need sticks, and good ones," he muttered, slightly out of breath. "And then we get 'em together and make good sticks into great sticks. Right!"

The downed, rotting logs weren't going to be of much use to him, but wandering out, the boy found some larger chunks of branches, some of which were just lying on the ground and others which he had to lean on in order to separate them from their bodies. Each snapping sound was satisfying in its own special way.

After an hour of scavenging – or maybe it was more or less, one could never tell when working like this – Steven sat down on what he had mentally designated his 'chair rock' and took a breath. He had found a good number of sticks, enough to get him some kind of head start towards getting himself sheltered.

"But I don't have any rope. How am I supposed to get them secured?" he asked aloud.

If he didn't have any means of securing them, then the sticks were useless. Getting up from the rock, Steven started to walk down the hill in search of inspiration. Through the trees, he caught a glimpse of the center island and the minerals clinging to the base.

"Clay!" he shouted. "Dirt! Nature's glue! Thank you, nature!"

Steven scrambled down to the edge of the water, taking off his sandals to squish his feet into the earth. It was cold and rough under his toes, and the boy shuddered all down his body with the instant sensation of being met with the temperature difference. Now his only concern was getting the earth transported from the shore up the hill to his shelter-in-progress. Without an adult telling him not to get his clothes dirty, that wasn't going to be a problem. Steven tugged off his shirt and laid it on the bank, ready to be folded up with dollops of clay inside.

Out of the dozens of identical shirts he had been given over time, this was the first one that truly made him pause for thought. Mud and lake water seeped through the red fabric and underneath the star on the chest. Everything was washable, he knew, but the tainting resonated in his heart and the first bout of homesickness set in.

Shirtlessness was chillier than he had first expected. Steven crossed his arms over his chest and looked out towards the lake, trying to ignore the breeze on his gemstone. There were no words to describe the physical sensation, none that he could explain to his dad or to his human friends in Beach City. Having a gem in his body was all he knew, and even then he didn't understand how it worked.

He didn't have to understand. The child's brow furrowed as he got on his knees and started to scoop mud onto his shirt until his palms were stained dark ochre.

"Steven will never be a Crystal Gem."

The forest didn't judge him. Doubts blew away with the beating of robin wings. Steven brought the corners of his shirt together and dismissed the line from his head. Out here, he could become more of a Gem than they ever would make of him. There was no training like the training of nature. The boy trusted his survival instincts and the communion he had with the world around him. Humans worked like that.

Steven huffed his way to the top of the hill and set his bundle on the chair rock. He spread the sticks out and put them together in order of size and bendiness. When they had been arranged, he spread the mud out on top as evenly as he could, making a couple trips up and down the hill until the whole platform was covered and ready to dry. In between, he took his much-needed bathroom break away from camp, but returned as soon as his body allowed until his lean-to door was ready to rest.

He chewed on his lip and wiped sweat from his brow, tapping one finger on his chin.

"Well, that's going to take a little while to dry," he mused, "but there's gotta be something else I can do to pass the time."

Steven circled around and got one of the rejected sticks, as well as the soiled shirt. He shoved the joint through the arm-holes, letting the damp fabric rest on its own accord. He tromped over to the edge of his boulder overlooking the lake, feet bending over the uneven cracks as he found one suitable for jamming the flag.

This was his new home. Well, calling it a 'home' was a stretch, but Steven knew that he was going to make it somehow. He shoved the flag into a crack in the rocks, and the wind picked it up and flapped the red fabric in the open air.

Steven saluted his streamer and puffed out his chest as much as he could.

"Camp Steven!" he shouted.

The boy's victory traveled out over the empty lake, and he felt a shiver of pride inside. Already, he was coming up with all the rules and regulations, the little ticks that could make this place truly somewhere he could live.

He looked up at the sun. Noon had already passed without him looking, and the early autumn was dragging down the light from the sky. Steven looked out over the lake, creeping closer to the edge. His stomach turned a little as he glanced down at the water, but he had jumped higher before. Already, the giddiness was pumping adrenaline into the madcap idea.

Steven cleared his throat; "Alright, rule one," he muttered. "No fear at Camp Steven. I… I'll face my problems head-on! Right! That's what we do!"

Rules two through two thousand could come later. Steven hopped back over to his back and his drying lean-to wall, looking to make sure he wasn't being watched. There was no need for embarrassment this far away from humanity.

Steven unzipped his jeans and let them fall, stepping out of his sandals as he folded them neatly and placed them on top of his bag. Bare leaves crunched under his soft soles. The wind was making his bare legs pop with goosebumps, but a quick dip was necessary, like a christening of the water. He briefly considered skinny-dipping, but that seemed uncouth; underwear was his limit for now. After all, he was a distinguished hermit.

His own clothing seemed to tighten in fear as he stepped towards the edge of the rock and peered over once more. Even though he was absolutely positive nobody was around for miles, he still felt a touch of redness in his cheeks. Perhaps he should have brought swimming trunks, or –

"No!" he muttered to himself. "Rule number one, rule number one…"

Mantra on his tongue, Steven stomped back to the edge where the leaves and the stone matched up. He repeated it once, twice, three times: Face your problems head-on. No fear. Face your fears head-on.

Calm and collected, he dug his feet into the earth until he felt it resist. Each rock and pebble urged him forwards towards the cliff edge. The distant sounds of waves and loons cheered him on. The silence of the lake's bottom beckoned him to break in the surface where no child had jumped for weeks, months, maybe even years.

"Let's go."

Steven began to run.

Bare feet pounded on the old granite, so fast that he could not feel the coldness on his bare soles. Blood pumped through from his heart to his head, sending a pounding, exhilarating beat around his temples. The edge of the cliff drew nearer and nearer. The closer he got the more his body felt weightless in the late afternoon, as if the sun's rays could lift him over the skyline.

Near the end of the precipice, Steven's right foot slid on a patch of moss. The straight-pointed limb turned sideways, sending the child stumbling.

The momentum sent his foot into another one of the large cracks, not dissimilar to the one where he had shoved his flag. Steven felt his body lurch forwards as his leg remained in place. It rested for only a moment before his weight forced half of the bones inside forwards. The pulse in his ears prevented him from hearing the brunt of the crunch when his tibia broke through his skin.

Freefall was a brief and confusing moment. Steven had no sense of time as his foot was wrenched free of the hole and his whole body plummeted into the lake. Shock made each second unprocessed and unbound by pain.

Such was the intensity and the unpredictability of his fracture that Steven only became aware that he was screaming when his lungs filled with water. Even hitting the surface barely registered in his mind. In an instant, he had to tug and claw his way through the weeds until he hit fresh air. He blindly lurched his way to the bottom of the cliff. Mud and rotting plant matter covered his face and clogged his nostrils.

The water was cold and unforgiving. Steven shivered as he hugged the rocks. He had lost his motion and direction. His eyes were blocked with muck and he couldn't distinctly feel anything from his collarbone down.

Several minutes of rest and hacking up lakewater helped the boy come back to reality. His head throbbed in anxious thought, and once his faculties were in place Steven realized that just about every single part of his body was in pain. His arms were sore from having to cling onto the rock, his chest ached with the water he had just expelled, his stomach churned in nauseated cycles, his underwear was beginning to cling and chafe to his hips, and his left leg intermittently sent bursts of irregular agony straight to his spine. Under the surface, as he was now, it was impossible to assess the damage.

"Oh… Oh, no…"

His whispers could only be heard in his own head. The waves took the words and sliced them in dismissed slivers so that only the mosquitos could drink the plea.

Steven knew he was hurt. He had done something bad to his leg, but he didn't know what had happened. Even the gentlest motions were enough to make him freeze up. Slowly, with the water chilling him to the point of teeth chattering, Steven pulled himself along the rock face until his toes grazed the pebbled bottom. He pushed with his left foot and let his body float as he pushed his way onto the beach. The water washed away some of the grime from his face, enough so that he could see the shadows of the trees darkening the beach. The shadows were coming from the other side of the lake.

Whimpering and sniffling, Steven pulled himself out of the water, trying to keep his injured leg from dragging along the ground. He could move his hip and thigh, just barely, but anything below the knee was too agonizing.

The white cotton, his only garment, was soaked through and nearly transparent with how long he had been in the lake. Steven felt naked, exposed, and dreadfully cold. The sun was a mere pinprick behind the top of the pines, and no warmth drifted through the winds that dried him. Only his gemstone shone over his skin, a consistent source of warm light in the clammy field of goosebumps and baby fat.

"I gotta get up," Steven whispered. He knew nobody could hear him.

This was now a matter of survival, or at least one of recovery. Even the brutal extremity of the situation barely permeated the boy's frozen mind. Pain and process were at odds with one another, but somehow, Steven found the ability to sit up and look at himself.

When he saw his leg he nearly vomited. Near the middle of his calf, the whole limb was suddenly misdirected, leaving his right foot uselessly limp.

A red-spotted lump of bone stuck up through his skin. Muscle and gristle underneath leaked blood down to his ankle. From where he had crawled out of the lake, a dark trail stained the sand, spread like oil paint by the waves.

Steven choked and tilted his head back with his mouth open. Some bastard noise, a sob and a cough, pushed through his vocal chords. Words were impossible for the moment, as was a cry for help. All the exclamations he could think of were nullified by isolation, stifled by the very notion that he was alone in the woods. No amount of screaming or crying could bring back the people he had abandoned.

The child began to move in frantic, erratic motions towards the woods. Steven had to push himself with his weight on his left side, his right heel dragging uselessly and leaving a groove in the sand. He reached an unidentified sapling and pulled on it until he could bend his left leg and support some of his weight. Every muscle seemed to resist his efforts to rise.

Wordless grunts huffed from the boy's throat as he denied his body's desire to collapse again. It didn't matter where the strength came from. The combination of shock and adrenaline was enough to get Steven upright and lurching towards the top of the hill. In order to not fall, Steven practically threw his body from tree to tree, pulling himself over and hopping on his left leg, minimizing his motions so as not to aggravate his exposed fracture.

He couldn't tell how long it took to reach the top of the hill. Finding the easiest way up was a matter of instinct; rational thought had left him several minutes prior. By the time he had found his way to the landing where he had removed his pants, the mud was beginning to crumble to dust on his skin.

Each little motion had dragged his leg along the ground through the dead leaves. Steven's brain conjured images of earwigs and carnivorous beetles clicking up his skin, burrowing inside the muscle and gnawing at the bone. He couldn't shake them off and he couldn't shake the feeling, leaving every limb trembling as he tried to get himself situated.

Red ringlets circled his waist and thighs where his briefs had started to rub against the raw skin. Steven sat down on the chair rock and let his legs rest. Slowly, painfully, he peeled the graying fabric from his hips, cringing at the cold granite rock against his flesh.

He attempted to toss the balled-up underwear towards his bag. It crunched somewhere in the leaf litter near his belongings. There was no strength left in his body to pick it up, to hang it out to dry, to take care of the necessary worldly possessions he had left.

Another crunch, some distance away, made Steven hold his shallow breaths.

Intruders were the last thing that Steven could deal with. He was completely naked, sweating icy bullets, and was still recovering from the shock of his leg bone sticking through his skin. Had the bleeding stopped? He didn't know.

"W… Wh…"

His voice broke like a glass effigy. Dry and meek, Steven's throat had no projection behind the words clawing their way past his lips. The boy could barely raise his head to look in the direction of the sound. The light was fading in the woods, and shadows began to meld together in upright braids, stiff and throbbing – or perhaps it was his own nausea, a headache tossing him into the throes of hallucination.

The stag that walked from inland was very much real. No amount of shock (as far as he was concerned) could shake Steven from his foundations of the corporeal. It was much more massive than the child could have imagined, though nowhere near the size of an elk or moose. Tawny fur rustled in matted chunks over the animal's body. Its slender legs took delicate steps over rock and root, crushing the dry twigs underfoot. Steven couldn't make out its specific facial features in the twilight, but he saw the impressive rack swivel around as the deer's stiletto ornaments followed its line of sight.

Nature had not been as kind as Steven had first hoped. Still his heart beat with anticipation as the herbivore approached.

"You want the food, don't you?" he whispered, barely above a croak. "I-I'm sorry, I can't get them for you right now."

The deer ignored the strange noises coming from the child's mouth and answered by nuzzling the outside of the bag. In his delirium, Steven couldn't stop a smile from coming. Peril was not yet upon him, and an animal appreciation made the eight-year-old's soul alight once more. He cleared his throat.

"Do you understand me? Can you get help? Please?"

A first interruption left the deer unperturbed; a second awoke its nervousness. Steven smiled hopefully at the animal as it raised its head, taking a step in the boy's direction. Before the light from the sun faded, the world outlined the deer's face once more.

There was nothing.

Steven brought his legs as close to the rock underneath him as he could. He looked again, and there was definitely a deer still there in front of him. But there was nothing underneath its skin, its muscle, nothing under the skull. It might as well have been a mechanical attraction, a wind-up plaything, with only gears and plastic under the tarpaulin.

The deer's eyes were hollow. It blinked once, and the blackness underneath showed only the crestfallen, horrified expression of the boy staring into them. The glass was not callous, for there was no callousness to be had. It was not uncaring, no – there was no chance that it could care to begin with. Soulless and automatic, the stimulus behind the deer was mere nature, altogether limitless and simplistic at once.

Why was he crying? Steven had wished for something, some kind of hatred or even fear, some emotion in the deer. There was nothing. If there was hatred, he could fight or feel sorry for himself. If there was compassion, he could feel the warmth of love. But without any response, the coldness enveloped him like the lake had an hour or so before, drowning him in universal apathy. There was nothing.

He choked out a sob. The deer snorted in surprise and turned on its hooves, tromping into the underbrush. Its powerful legs stepped over the lumpy clay-covered sticks, cracking Steven's shelter covering as the animal fled into the woods. In mere moments, the stag's sounds were gone.

Wind and rustling plants filled the child's ears. Unguarded coldness blew over his exposed skin, freezing every inch of his flesh except for the tiny trails where his tears ran down.

The starlight was not strong enough to permeate the coniferous canopy. As he sat in shock, Steven watched shadows condense until the woods became a black pit split only with slivers of pine and scrub. Somewhere over the lake, he could swear a coyote howled.

Steven held his hand up to his stomach, over his gemstone. His fingernails dug into the flesh around the edge of the rock until he finally felt something in his body that reminded him of physical pain. Control over his body grounded him. It was time to be fearful.

"But he just got here!"

Garnet sighed and adjusted her visor as Pearl tapped her spear on the ground. Even Amethyst's usual irritation was curbed by Pearl's anxiety.

"Garnet, is there any chance that the Chalcedony Temple can wait?" Pearl continued. "It's a three-day cycle, and Greg's hardly prepared to help with the work he has to do on the was ownership transfer, and at least one of us should stay –"

"That's impossible."

Garnet hated to interrupt, but the explanation – which she had gone over at least twice before – apparently needed reiteration to permeate her companion's anxiety.

"The Temple's ritual cycle ends soon, and if we are to obtain its core disrupter, we need all of our strength. Together. Otherwise, the earthquakes will continue without end. Thousands of human lives are at stake."

"Can't we, like, take him with us?" Amethyst asked. "He's been wanting to go on a real mission ever since he knew where we were going."

Garnet was thankful Pearl's natural response kicked in before she had to explain yet another obvious fact:

"It's MUCH too dangerous."

Amethyst grimaced and looked back from the warp pad to the door leading to the beach where Steven had gone to build a sand castle. The last lights of summer were meaningless to them, as they would be hopping time zones yet again.

"Still," she added, "I feel real bad leaving him here by himself, even if it's only for a couple days. Garnet, you can see him through, right? Is he gonna be okay?"

The seer didn't move, but she was silent for a half-second longer than she needed to be.

"Humans are unpredictable. Human children even more so. No matter how long we've been around Steven, his paths continue to diverge. Even I can only guide him so far."

Pearl let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.

"This is all coming so fast. I wish we could be here to help him get settled in more. One week isn't even long by human standards."

"We know, Pearl, but this has – "

"Yes, this has to be done, I know!"

The irritation in her voice made Amethyst raise her eyebrows. Garnet remained unperturbed, waiting for the response she knew was coming.

"But…" Pearl sighed. "When we get back, we are all going to be there. We have to be. Steven doesn't just deserve this, he needs it. Without our help, there's too much left to chance, and I know that we're the only ones to train him for what's going to happen."

The door creaked.

"If we don't, we would have to live with the fact that we did nothing and Steven will never be a Crystal Gem."

The pattering echoed through the room as Pearl finished her sentence. Three heads turned to see the silent, unsure stare of a round adolescent in a bright red shirt and bright blue jeans, a trail of sandy footprints following him from the door to his sandals. His black curls were windswept and as messy as ever. A yellow bucket and shovel dangled from his hands.

"Steven!"

He didn't smile back as Pearl beamed at him.

"I'm sorry, but, well, we have to go take care of the Chalcedony Temple right now. I'll make sure that I have the history of the temple prepared for when we return. There's leftovers in the fridge and your father should be coming by tomorrow morning to – "

"Pearl, c'mon," Amethyst said none too softly. "The sooner we leave the sooner we can get back. Right, Steven?"

Garnet stared at the child without betraying her absolute frustration and fear. So many paths. So many risks. What she saw ahead of her could make or break everything she knew about this world – and she couldn't tell the child at all. The rush, the bustle, it all made her more panicked, and she said the only words she could force out of her mouth.

"We'll be back, Steven."

The three warriors stepped into the warp pad. A burst of light engulfed the room and left Steven standing in an empty house. He gripped his pail with both hands, squeezing until his knuckles burst. He felt like crying from frustration.

But there was another way. The books by his bedside sparked in him dormant energy that now pushed his hands into the fridge and the pantry, into his drawers and closet. It was time to pack. It was time to leave home.

(Thank y'all for reading! Comments and faves are much appreciated 3)