She was born in that room. Once the time came and the contractions were no longer friendly blows, Yellow set herself on the bed with Blue offering her a hand. She had left in the middle of a meeting to let Yellow wring the color from her fingers between determined howls. Blue clutched as strongly back, encouraging her to push.
"She's crowning!" Blue let go. "Just a little more!"
Yellow pushed and collapsed, giving up the last of her breath as sharp cries filled the room. They reverberated loudly enough to drown out any sigh of relief.
Blue, holding the child, wiped away the blood and afterbirth from her face. She cleaned her as if unwrapping a present, desperate to uncover the gift underneath, no matter how the baby cried. But upon uncovering her skin, Blue stopped. She stared at the creature howling from the sting of fresh life, before turning to Yellow.
"What's wrong?" Yellow sat up and winced.
Then she looked at the child, weeping fiercely enough to escape Blue's arms. Her flailing limbs were white, complemented by the pale yellow diamond glinting from her forehead. It flashed like an alarm as she screamed.
"How long did you know?"
The crying caused Yellow's ears to ring as she studied her daughter. With every passing moment, trying to find an explanation, Blue's breathing grew harder. Tears marred her eyes, and she stopped waiting for an answer, leaving the baby to Yellow. She exited with blood smeared on her gown.
As the door slammed, her crying had stopped and her eyes had opened. They found each other, approximately, through two different kinds of hazy golden eyes.
Yellow attempted to call Blue. The baby, hours old in her arms, wailing. No answer. The baby in her crib for bed time, wailing; no answer. Yellow paging through one of the few parenting books in existence—the one that Blue had read several times over—the baby wailing; no answer. The baby stopping her wailing to feed; Yellow's face in the mirror, eyes caved in. No answer.
She texted. With the baby wriggling in her arms, she wrote, "How do I comfort her?" and "Is she supposed to cry so often?" But received, of course, no answer.
Yellow called White. Her baby asleep in her crib, she dialed steps outside the nursery. As the book had suggested, Yellow propped her up with pillows to keep her from rolling, facing the ceiling and covered by a mint-colored blanket. She tried several times, the line ringing on and on, as if she didn't have legions of servants to take the call. The fourth time, the ringing stopped early.
Yellow sent a message reading, "I need your help." She lingered for minutes as the baby stirred, making noises that threatened a cry, but never exploded into one.
Yellow said to Pearl, standing in the corner of the room, "Alert me if she starts crying," words spoken quietly.
"Yes, My Diamond," Pearl whispered back.
Aching, Yellow sat in her control room chair, which responded to her presence by opening its screen. It did so quickly and quietly, as if to issue an apology for the messages that had flooded her inbox, status updates she had requested from her colonies, work reports, gems in need of assistance. She scrolled through them, message after message like the bricks of a tower. Nothing from White. Nothing from Blue.
Every corner of her ached, but she responded, filed the reports, sent more texts, wrote to the leader of a fleet, checked if Blue had written back, took a call, checked to see if Blue had written back, took another call. The baby was crying.
Her noise nearly drowned out Pearl. "My Diamond, I'm not sure what's wrong. I attempted to sing to her, but—"
"I'm coming."
Yellow returned to the baby clenching her fists, face squeezed a sharp and angry gold. Her eyes, reduced to slits, had filled with tears, and she screamed from the toothless cavern of her dark, little mouth.
Yellow sighed. "You were sleeping so peacefully. Surely there's no reason to be this upset."
To her mother's logic, the baby wailed louder, furiously kicking her legs. Yellow lifted her. They sat together in the nursery room rocking chair as she aired her complaints. They went from shaking the walls, to medium lamentations, to sleepy vowels, until Yellow placed her in the crib and went back to work.
But it wasn't long before Pearl called again, over the sharp notes of the baby's screaming. Aggressive and desperate, they pulled her in every time. She wrote to Blue again, "She really won't stop crying," to no response. "Is this normal?"
By the fifth time, Yellow brought the baby with her. Two days old, she lay in her mother's lap, cradled in the seat of power as Yellow held her with one arm and typed with the other.
"Why does she need so much?"
Yellow's gems came to see her. Filing in, one after the other, they made their reports, staring full-faced at the baby in Yellow's arms. They caught especially the diamond in her forehead, her dusty blond hair, her porcelain skin.
The baby would holler, a cry that might call for a shattering. They stumbled their way through their "My Diamond," or sometimes even "My Diamonds."
"She cries at least twenty times a day. That can't be normal."
Yellow fed her outside the control room, as if her visitors didn't stare enough, sitting on a sofa.
The sofa itself stood out against the utilitarian wasteland behind the control room, being the only piece of furniture between the throne and the nursery. Blue had suggested it. They had finished decorating the nursery and she said, "Oh, Yellow. This room is so barren." So she ordered it, blue and gold like both of them, embroidered in endless silver thread.
Yellow followed the pattern until glancing at her communicator, catching her baby's face. Around her cheeks were hairline scratches, not deep enough to bleed, but visible, as if caused by the tip of a pin.
Just as Yellow touched one of them with the tip of her index finger, her communicator rang blue. Her heart pulsed in her throat, and she opened Blue's singular, long response. "It's natural for babies at this age to need plenty of attention," a sentence quoted from Young Gems. "Unlike regular gems, these beings come into the world knowing very little and grow over time, and as such need constant care, ranging from feeding, bathing, and playing. Although more research needs to be done on the topic of young gems, they seem to respond well to being spoken to, and are happiest when all their needs are met." There was a lull. The light from the first message dimmed only to ping back to life again when another arrived. "Talk to her. Play with her. Treat her like your daughter."
Yellow's fingers hovered above the keyboard before she replied, "Thank you."
In Young Gems, there was a section about play. With pictures showing various 'games,' it listed activities one could do with her child, most of which involved sitting or walking. But there was one that had the mother hiding her face and revealing herself. An easy 'game' with the explanation, "At this age, young gems don't possess object permanence. Unless something is in front of them, they won't be able to remember it's there."
Yellow set the book down and stood at the foot of the crib. She gulped, her three-day-old baby's unfocused eyes on her, waiting. She stuck her tongue out, sighed a little.
"Look at me." Yellow told her.
She made a noise, perhaps to signify that she was paying attention, and Yellow hid behind her hands. She held her position for several seconds until revealing herself.
Her baby hiccupped.
"I'm going to try again," Yellow told her. "I want you to look this time."
Yellow hid and waited, but the baby made no audible reaction. Slowly, Yellow lowered her hands to peak over her fingertips, finding that the baby wasn't watching at all.
"You're not looking. Here, we'll try again."
Yellow waited until the baby (kind of) made eye contact to cover her face. She waited a few seconds, lowered her hands, but the baby was no longer looking. Instead she had found her foot and held onto it, fascinated by all five of her clawed toes.
"You're still not looking." Yellow stroked her forehead, past the gem embedded into it. She was so soft.
The baby secured her mother's thumb. She squeezed especially hard.
"I'm sorry," Yellow said, leaning over, kissing her forehead. She settled their heads together and the baby closed her eyes. "I'll do better."