Peridot had been absolutely certain to have packed everything she might have required in every literal and theoretical issue that might arise during her minutely stay in the African Safari. She'd brought her passport, itinerary, travel insurance documents, an extra pair of prescription glasses, binoculars, toiletries, her preventative pharmaceuticals- quite literally everything that would fit into the compact backstrap strapped readily to her small back.
But none of these things only did so much to combat the heat of the early afternoon of the Kalahari.
Seriously, why hadn't anyone from the biology department warned her before they sent her off across the globe to observe the native species? Couldn't she just have watched hours upon hours of recorded footage from the database in the remote, air-conditioned recluse of her tiny apartment? Here, it constantly felt as though she were receiving the blowing end of a hairdryer, right into her bespectacled face.
Grumpily, she snatched up the pamphlet she had received from their safari vehicle driver - a friendly, perpetually sunburnt man by the name of Gregory Universe (but he insisted to be referred to only as "Greg." Why he would demure to such a mundane alias, Peridot was clueless,) - and began to fan herself.
Her safari crewmates were quite. . . colourful, to place it mildly. Literally. Beside her, a tall, toned dark-skinned woman with a thick head of compact hair lounged, dark sunglasses positioned anonymously over quirked features. Garnet, she'd introduced herself as at the start of the tour when they'd all joined together and went over the procedures and safari etiquettes.
In front of her, a short, stocky woman had her feet kicked up against the back of the driver's chair. If Greg minded, he didn't say a thing. She had thick, fluffy, lavender-coloured hair and a lazy smirk deep enough to give an old conservative heart palpitations. Beside her was Pearl, and in Peridot's opinion, she was. . . incredibly bird-like. Long, wiry limbs and a short, swept head of pale pink hair- not to mention her, ah, pronounced nose.
At the very front, though, in the passenger seat, there was the more elusive of them. Lapis Lazuli, she'd murmured, with a head of electric blue hair and freckles smattered across her face and arms, as bountiful as the stars in faraway galaxies.
Not that Peridot had paid too much mind to her, anyways. It wasn't like she'd been absolutely, enigmatically smitten from the start. Absolutely not, who could even consider such a notion-
"Whoa- whoa, Pearl, look at that!"
Ah, yes. The resident prepubescent teen was speaking. Peridot glanced through the corners of her eyes, spotting the blur of peach-and-pale-red that was Steven, wobbling on his knees beside Pearl. The boy was excitedly gesturing towards the zeal of zebras clustered around the edges of a small watering hole, up to their knees in the browned liquid. They weren't awfully far from them; in fact, the animals seemed rather indifferent to the presence of the safari crew.
"Look at all the zebras!" He continued, fingers drumming excitedly against the cloth wall hitched up to preserve what little false sense of security the Jeep harbored. "They're letting us get so close!"
Pearl hummed and gently coaxed Steven down, lips parting to speak, but Greg beat her to it. "That's because they've gotten used to us, buddy! Or, at least, they've grown used to the Jeep. They don't take too kindly to the old van. . ." He remarked over his shoulder, brow furrowing thoughtfully.
"That's because the van is coloured so loudly they could see it a mile away," Pearl noted stiffly, patting the curls atop Steven's head as the boy finally sat back down in his seat, eyes still glued to the striped animals now milling just beyond the vehicle doors. Pearl raised her camera expectantly. "The animals will come closer when you're in neutral colours, you know."
"Is my hair considered a neutral colour, P?" Amethyst chipped noisily in from beside Pearl, poking her head practically underneath the lithe woman's armpit and flashing Steven a trademark grin. "They don't seem too phased by this velvety mane o' mine."
"Op- Amethyst!" Pearl shrilled in a loud whisper, jostling Amethyst's grinning face out from beneath her arms. If you keep speaking so loudly, they'll be phased enough to run o- oh, look, now they've begun to leave. . ." Dejectedly her arms lowered, camera in hand, as the animals began to canter some way's away from the watering hole, and thereby, the safari vehicle.
"They'll be back," Garnet chuckled from the back, earning Peridot's attention as she sent the taller woman a questioning look. How did she know that?
Garnet must have sensed her incredulation, because she swore she could see her head tilt just a little bit towards her as the woman elaborated. "It's the watering hole." Peridot flushed defiantly and stuck her chin back into her palm, staring adamantly outwards at the African terrain.
"Right," Pearl sighed, stowing away her camera for now. "Now- where's the itinerary?" Amethyst shrugged lethargically. Pearl huffed and turned to shuffle through her bag. "What stop are we headed to next? Greg?"
Greg tapped pensively on the rough vinyl of the steering wheel, lips pursed. Peridot felt her lip curl. Surely, their safari guide knew the itinerary by heart? Hadn't be traversed this route a multitude of times? How else did he become so outrageously sunburnt?
"What do you say, Lapis? Where should we head next?" Greg inquired to his neighbor, an encouraging wink sent the blue-haired woman's way. Peridot saw the back of her head stifle, her freckled shoulders tense momentarily, before she relaxed and gave a small, contemplative hrmm.
"What about. . . the meerkat dunes? They. . should be out by now, right?"
Peridot wasn't sure what it was, but the idea of staring at small carnivorous creatures looking as if they'd been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time- all the time- didn't seem too boring right then. She sat up a little straighter, adjusting her pack and sparing a glance to the others as Greg shifted gears and began to move more swiftly over the savannah.
The journey continued, albeit a little more uneventfully. They didn't see many animals, which, Peridot wasn't shocked. One couldn't just expect to see the big five on their first safari venture. Steven waved at the zebras as the Jeep cruised past the moving group, before moving across Amethyst's lap to join Pearl on the other side of the second row, peering through her camera lense as she snapped some diminutive pictures of the bush shrikes flying in the sky.
The lot of them began to talk together, Amethyst asking Garnet for the water canteen, Pearl explaining the habitual characteristics of the birds she'd snapped in her camera roll to Steven, and if Peridot strained her ears she could hear Lapis and Greg quietly talking to one another up front. A part of her kind of wished she'd sat nearer to Lapis.
The chatter was sliced into by a small, ragged gasp from Amethyst, who was leaning over the edge of the guard and staring out at a large acacia tree, encompassed by a circle of spindly grasses and thicket bushes. The sound immediately earned Steven's attention, who appeared at her side, pressing his cheek playfully against hers as he tried to find the source of her noise. "What's uuuu- oh my gosh."
Steven's reaction started a domino effect, earning first Pearl's quick attention with a high sound of inquiry, then Garnet's, then finally Greg's and Lapis'. Peridot didn't know whether or not whatever had won their attention should thereby win hers, but when the vehicle rolled to a gentle, silent stop, she took it as indication it was remotely noteworthy.
With a huff, Peridot detached herself from her immense pack and hobbled up onto it, bracing her knees against its back- minding her prosthetic, of course- to look over their fat heads- didn't they know they were blocking the whole window? She wanted to see now, too!
"I- uh, I didn't think that the pride would be out so early," came Greg's voice, and Peridot thought she detected a hint of nervousness hidden behind the amicable tongue. "Gang, that there by that acacia tree is one of the only prides governed by a female lion in this side of the Kalahari. I wonder if she's out. . ." His tone drawled off, like he was looking for something.
"A lioness? Governing a pride?" It was hard to ignore the disbelief in Peridot's tone. "Oh please. It's in their biological nature that lionesses adhere and hunt for the male lions in their pride." She waved her hand dismissively, lips cracked into a grimace as she leaned back.
"Does she have a mane, dad?" Steven seemed undeterred by the supposed flaw of nature. Peridot couldn't say she was shocked. "A mane like other lions?"
"See for yourself." Lapis' voice came quietly, hardly audible underneath the gawking of Amethyst and the flustered squabbling of Pearl- and the silent (but- it still felt quite loud) gaze of Garnet.
Peridot couldn't help but feel inquisitive at the cursory comment. She looked over to Lapis, head ticked like she was trying to study a specimen. Lapis' arms were pulled taut, thumb tracing the same spot over her toned forearm repeatedly (whoa- and-- okay, wow, they were toned. Did she do track? Or just run? Or swim? Stop looking at her arms, Peridot, you useless lesbian).
Well, whatever was stifling the blue-haired mystery girl, Peridot didn't have the chance to realize yet- because Amethyst stole the whole vehicle's attention with her low, excited cackle. "Is that her?"
She followed Amethyst's gesturing index finger out towards the grasslands, expecting to see nothing short of a typical lioness making her rounds.
She suddenly felt the need to compulsively contact her biology professor and enquire as to the specific genetic mutations that might render. . . her.
"There she is. ." Greg exhaled with a nod. "Jasper, Queen of the Nyumbani-Dunia Pride."
Prowling no more than fifteen yards away from the vehicle and its mind-boggled onlookers, a colossal lioness with deep, ginger-tinged fur was emerging from the brush. She easily dwarfed any typical African male lion in height and stature, with powerful, contoured muscles that bulged against her pelt. True to Lapis' word, a fluffy ring of hair erupted from the ruff of the beast's neck, a rich gold at its base before tapering and fading into, uncannily, a soft creamy white at its ends.
How that was even genetically possible, Peridot was unsure. She was feeling unsure about a lot of things right now. She tried to point out how the features were obviously that of a male specimen- but the shape of her temples and the contour of her maw were indication enough that. . . yep. . . that was a lioness beneath all that fluff.
The ruff of unnatural hair wasn't even the most startling part about her, though. For a split moment, the queen turned her eyes towards the vehicle, and her eyes were a sharp, dangerous, and unyielding shade of amber. Peridot had half a mind to shrink back away from her intimidating gaze. And- had that been a scar across the bridge of its nose?
"She's. . . huge," Steven murmured breathlessly. Even he seemed to realize the caution and quiet that this certain situation required.
Amethyst, however, did not.
"Dude! Take a look at that girl! Yass, queen! Look at'cha!"
Immediately, Pearl went to assume her place at the head of damage control, wrapping her arms around Amethyst and yanking her back with a petulant squawk. "Amethyst!"
Garnet chuckled with Steven, but Lapis remained stiffly unphased by the presence of the pride and its leader. Peridot blinked, taken, before she heard Greg's voice rising up over Amethyst and Pearl's squabbling. "What locals live on the game reserve called them Nyumbani-Dunia, or- in English, the Home-world Pride,- because they seemed so out-of-place as opposed to the rest of the animals on the reserve. A play on aliens, y'know? Homeworlds?"
That, at least, Peridot could appreciate, as an enthusiast of the alien motif culture. Her eyes roamed outwards to the pride of lionesses again. There were no cubs, it looked like, but then again, they were only seeing two lionesses currently, as another less notable lioness had prowled out of the brush behind Jasper. She was still quite large, though.
"Who's she, dad?" Steven piped up, obviously having seen Jasper's passive curtailer. Greg gave a shrug. "Hard to tell now- Jasper sticks out, doesn't she?"
"This one's got notches in her ears," Pearl noted, reaching up to her own to rub at the lobe. "She's awfully muscular, to note."
"Are you ogling the lions, Pearl?"
"No, Amethyst. I'm simply observing them, isn't that what we're meant to be doing?"
Steven giggled and started chanting. "Buff lions! Buff lions!"
Greg laughed from the front, calming Steven's hushed chanting with a hint of remembered familiarity. "Oh, yeah- right- that's Topaz! Poor girl, she's got hearing issues from being in one too many spats with the hyenas further north."
Another lioness then bounced out of the brush, her chin stuck high, almost as if she had a sense of childish haughtiness about her. It was almost darkly comical, since she dwarfed in comparison to the other two big cats. "And her, dad?"
"Only Aquamarine could be that small and walk with her nose stuck to the clouds," Greg chuckled drily. "There are some others, and if we're lucky we might see them on a second run past this area tomorrow. But we'd best leave them be now; we don't want to hang around when it starts to get dark."
Peridot seconded that. She didn't want to be caught in lion territory before nightfall, and if the others had half a mind they wouldn't want to be caught here when the sky went dusky either. Amethyst seemed hesitant to want to leave, but soon was resigned as Greg quietly started up the safari vehicle and began to give the pride a wide berth, cruising deeper through the shivering grasses. "Now, off to the meerkats!"
"They'll pale in comparison to those beasts we just saw." Peridot said before realizing she'd used her voice instead of her subconscious to state that. "How is that Jasper even genetically possible?"
She couldn't see Greg's face, but she saw his broad shoulders bob with what she assumed was a shrug. "Beats me, kiddo. It's just a weird phenomenon that happens sometimes. I haven't done much research on the science side of it all."
Peridot faltered, sinking back into her seat as she hovered atop her stuffed pack. Jasper probably had an aberrant genetic contribution during conception, an extra Y chromosome to disrupt the femininity of her physical characteristics. Possibly infertile, she noted, not unlike the similar characteristic in other gender anomalies in cats - like the male tortoiseshell house cat.
At least her venture here from Delmarva had granted her one find worth pondering. They hadn't seen enough to see much of her behavior, but she wondered if the male characteristics bled into Jasper's personality.
Ugh, enough on that lioness, she'll give herself a headache at this rate.
She sank back, kicking her legs out over the pack, hand reaching up to scratch irritably at her good knee when she thought she felt a mosquito on it. She hadn't brought enough bug spray, she determined with a foul grimace. She folded the same leg beneath the other, hand absentmindedly resting on the knee when she felt something nudge her shoulder.
She glanced over abruptly to see a tubule of some sort being pressed unwillingly into her hands. "Uh-"
Garnet closed her hands around the tube of repellent cream, and even through her glasses, Peridot swore she just winked at her again. "Wow, thanks," Peridot mumbled, clicking open the tube and dabbing a sufficient amount of the concoction between her fingers and giving her leg a second dousing, before wordlessly handing the cream back to Garnet.
The rest of the trip towards the meerkat dunes was relatively calm, save for Amethyst and Steven stopping to gawk at a passing animal or the shuttering click of Pearl's camera. Greg would explain where they were, and what the nearby terrain did for its animals, and pointed out a notable creature when they saw one. Garnet remained a silent, but almost comfortable and steadfast, figure beside Peridot. Lapis, still, was earnestly soundless.
There were a few more animal sightings, but seemed much more mundane now that the thrill of the lioness pride has passed. The safari crew bore witness to a few baboons relaxing (or screaming, there was no in-between) when passing a dense copse of arching acacias. There were some extraordinarily small antelope specimens that Peridot recognized as dik-diks, a name that Greg had to sheepishly whisper as Amethyst balked up in laughter as they drove past. Pearl seemed disillusioned that they hadn't seen any elephants or rhinos as of yet, but Greg told her not to give up hope yet, there were still some days left in the safari tour.
It must have been a few hours since spotting the lion pride when they stopped for a small break to relax around a smaller watering hole. There were no animals aside from a few grass rats that ran up to Steven, stole a piece of ham from his sandwich, and skittered off when he wasn't looking. The boy hadn't even seemed mad, he just laughed. They got back into the Jeep when Greg noted the time, 17:00.
They had been rounding a thick tangle of scrubby bushes, Pearl pointing out a lilac-breasted roller (a pretty avian, admittedly, a shimmering blue with a rosy breast), when there was suddenly a terrible spitting sound. The others seemed immediately alarmed at the noise, thinking it a possible snake having snuck into the vehicle while they were watching some other creature, but Peridot knew the sound of a coolant system overheating. She didn't even try to withhold the groan that spilled from her lips.
"Oh boy," Greg muttered darkly from the front as the Jeep cruised to a quaking halt on the rough, coarse soil.
"What? What is it?" Pearl flustered, leaning forward to give Greg a frustrated look. "What's happened?"
Steven joined her, hand cupped around his ear as the vehicle continued making particularly concerning noises from the hood. "Uhh- is the Jeep okay?"
"I believe it's just suffered a severe coolant loss," Peridot bemoaned from behind them, hand reaching up to pinch the higher bridge of her nose. "Steven's dad, is your vehicle prone to overheating?"
Greg's face pulled taut, features blank. "Uhh- no, not really. She gets a little tired, sometimes, but-"
"Did you check that the coolant system was clean and in operable condition before we left?" Pearl cut him off, brows set deeply now that she'd processed the issue at hand.
". . Can't say that I checked particularly that."
"Of course." Peridot pressed her lips together, hands finding her hips as she re-positioned herself so she could crawl off of her pack. "Fortunately, I'm a technical engineer more than I am a biologist. If I can check inside the engine I can see what the primary cause is and what can be done."
She heard Amethyst utter a sarcastic 'wow' as all eyes in the Jeep roamed to her as she scrambled down from her seat. The clicked open the Jeep door and carefully maneuvered her way down, grunting as her prosthetic briefly became unbalanced with the brief jump down. To her surprise, Pearl was opening her door, as well, grumbling to herself. Peridot's arched brow must have revealed her skepticism.
"I'm also quite proficient in engineering," Pearl cleared her throat as she stepped out of the vehicle. "I earned my degree in mechanical engineering just shy two years ago."
"Well, aren't you special," Peridot uttered under her breath as the two marched towards the front of the Jeep. She placed her hands over her hips as Pearl opened the hood to reveal a mildly smoking engine.
Peridot cursed her height as she hovered, hands over the rim of the engine tank as she and Pearl poured over the coolant system. Her only consolation was that she was able to spot out the issue before the other mechanic. "There! The heater core is obviously worn, and the radiator looks as though it's about to shake out of its hold if Greg so much as turns the key again." She gestured to the faulty machine, then caught something else. "And the spark plug is worn, too," she added, an insult to an already concerning injury.
Unfortunately, Peridot couldn't do much, hand-wise. Her arms couldn't quite. . . reach, into the engine, so she allowed Pearl this one moment of control as she took a moment to assess the faces in the vehicle.
Steven and Amethyst were busily chatting with each other now, and Garnet still seemed indifferent to the world around her, arms pulled up and pinned comfortably behind her head. Greg had pulled out a radio walkie-talkie and was trying for reception. He didn't seem to be having much luck, from the worry line creasing his forehead.
She let her eyes roam to the passenger side door, where Lapis had briefly been glancing back towards Steven, before her eyes moved back and briefly met with Peridot's. A lump clogged Peridot's throat as she hurriedly lowered her eyes back down to the engine.
"This would be more convenient with tools," she determined, marching around the taller woman and over to beneath Greg's window. "If you haven't got any tools I brought a few spares in my pack. But I think it'd be up to standard that you do."
Greg's eyebrows flew up at Peridot's sudden appearance at his side, but nonetheless he nodded towards the back trunk of the vehicle. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. They should be right behind yours and Garnet's seat!" He paused, his eyes having spotted Peridot's pack that was easily thrice her size. "What's in that there pack, anyways?"
"Essentials," Peridot supplied curtly before moving to retrieve the appropriate apparatuses from the back. Fortunately, there was a cooling system filtered filler among the disorganized fray of tools, and Peridot grabbed a few other tools to hitch into her beltline before returning to the front of the Jeep.
Pearl only glanced at her through the corner of her eyes before tautly asking if there had been a wire brush back there to clean up the spark plug, which Peridot only nodded affirmation to. "You can deal with the coolants, I'll refurbish the spark plug." Pearl hummed with confirmation before setting to work with the coolant kit.
As she grumped over how this all could have been avoiding if the Jeep had gone through a check-up procedure before heading out into the African wilderness, where signal was null and the temperature far too hot, she began to work with the machine. However, her eyes kept reaching upwards, up the hood and behind the windshield, where Lapis was sitting. Was she watching her?
She didn't know if that frightened or intrigued her. She went with both.
In time soon enough, she'd done her best to clean up the spark port, but, the spark plug itself needed to be replaced. And she hadn't foreseen an issue like this popping up, not on her professional, guide-led visit into the savannah. And apparently, neither had Greg.
"What do you mean you have to wait until morning to send a rescue rover out?" He was whispering disbelievingly into his walkie. The voice on the other side, from what Peridot could tell, was warped and filled with static. "Yes, I get that, but-" Greg sighed, his thick eyebrows falling with defeat as he rubbed his hand forlornly over his jawline.
"Okay, Barb. Fortunately we had some mechanics in the crew, so we'll head back as soon as they finish." He sent Peridot a wry, tight-lipped smile through the glass, one she didn't react to apart from a quirk of the brow.
"The spark plug needs replacing, but if we're lucky then we might be able to make it back to the reserve hub before it wears out completely," Peridot told Pearl when she noted her watching her tiny hands move to finish the job. "I see you've made some progress on the coolants. . ."
Pearl's lips deepened with a small, confident smirk. "A little overheating issue is no match for my technical skill. The chain that became loose has been re-fastened, and- was there any cooler fluid in the back there?"
Peridot blanched. No, there hadn't been any coolant fluid in the back of the Jeep. "We'll need to substitute water for it," she grumbled, fishing through her pockets until she'd pulled out her smaller canteen. "It will boil away at a much more rapid rate, but-"
"It's better than nothing," Pearl interrupted, snatching Peridot's canteen and ignoring the smaller mechanic's indignant 'hey!' as she refilled the cooler with the kit. Peridot's nose scrunched unhappily as she stole back her now empty canteen. "What if that had been the last of my water?"
"Then I'd ask Steven to share his with you. We brought spares," Pearl replied simply, sealing the system off and snapping the Jeep hood shut with a satisfying click. "Try it now, Greg."
Peridot grunted, feeling sour despite knowing full well that she had spare water canteens stored in the front of her pack. Still.
Greg keyed the vehicle, and for a moment, the engine roared contentedly, and it gave a satisfying hum of mechanical growls.
Then it sputtered again, and it seemed to visibly sink closer to the ground, like it had grown tired and needed to rest on its tires. Peridot sighed and refrained from the urge to kick the thing with her good foot in the hopes of. . kickstarting it. Ugh, unintentional crafty puns.
"Well," Greg lamented, face wrought with disappointment. "It looks as though we'll need to find some place to camp out until Barb sends out another crew tomorrow morning to pick us up."
"You mean we're going to be stuck out here?" Peridot reiterated, just to check to be sure she'd interpreted that correctly. Greg nodded, and Peridot pressed further, growing increasingly uneasy. "Overnight?"
"Well, yes-"
"The temperature's going to drop by the time the sun's fallen!" Pearl fluttered, pulling at the lapels of her khaki overshirt as if envisioning the cold, crisp, dry depths of a nighttime savannah. "There has to be a solution to this- it only gave us grief for but a minute before the Jeep stalled."
"The spark plug," uttered Peridot with a grimace. "I have a lot of things in my bag, but a spare spark plug is definitely not one of them."
"So. . ." Amethyst chimed in for the first time in a bit, her expression a mix of bewilderment and uncanny excitement. "We're going to be camping out here, in the wild?"
"Looks like it, y'all," Greg answered lightly, scanning for reactions. None of them seemed too extreme, save for the fluttery panic painting itself white over Pearl's face and the deep frown on Peridot's lips.
Begrudgingly, Peridot and Pearl returned to the others who had begun to unpack and detach from the Jeep. Garnet had the mind to bring a spare tent fit for two, but aside from that, they had no shelter apart from the Jeep. Peridot considered the tense cushions of her seat for a moment with a grimace. At least she'd brought a sleeping bag proofed against the cold.
Steven had run off with Garnet walking leisurely after him, shouting about finding some dry kindle to begin a fire with, while Amethyst, Pearl, and Greg all worked together to pull out and stake up Garnet's tent beneath two huge acacia trees a little walk away. Lapis had gathered her things and was sitting absently on a limestone boulder, fingers wrung together like she was either deeply upset or deeply in absent-minded thought.
Peridot stood remotely by the Jeep, pack hoisted up on her back as she ran her eyes over the savannah's bruising red horizon.
This was going to be a long night.