The moment Steven left, they were on the move again, crawling through an exhaust pipe Rhodonite believed would lead to a landing strip.
Lars thought his sense of time passing would disappear with Steven, but the fireflies helped as their lights started to fade. They were a reminder that life was still moving on Earth and the people who loved him were waiting. Steven said he'd been helping Sadie with her shifts at the shop. Apparently, his parents were still going to work. The Crystal Gems were trying to improve their warp pad, but they didn't have technology capable of travelling across light years.
It was so unreal, knowing he was light years away. They'd have to steal a spaceship that travelled at light speed (like that evil blue fairy's ship), or he'd probably die of old age... right?
His hand covered his barely-beating heart. Zombie or no zombie, Steven had never mentioned immortality. Just how old was that pink lion of his?
Fluorite noticed his frown and asked slowly, "What... troubles... you, Lars?"
"Missing home?" the left Rutile Twin guessed.
"Yeah, but there's... something else." How could he explain this? "I could be getting older – or not getting older – without even knowing!"
"Older?" Rhodonite echoed, staring him up and down. What – had his hair gone gray now? He'd rather stay pink!
"Don't you guys age?"
"Of course we do," the right Rutile Twin said, smiling. "We're all thousands of years old, but Fluorite's been around the longest."
No wonder she looked and sounded like an alien grandmother. At least she had a better memory than Lars' Mima. (He really, really hoped she didn't kick the bucket before he got back.)
Lars shook his head and focused on the rest of the gems. "You three don't seem any older than my mom."
Rhodonite raised an eyebrow. "'My mom'? Who's that?"
He corrected, "Only I call her Mom." Except when he was in a bad mood, then he'd call her by her first name. "Her name's Martha."
One Rutile Twin touched her lips. The other twin touched their stomach. "Is she the one who made the ube?"
"Yeah..." He'd rather not relive the time Steven spent explaining the digestive system to them.
"I'm the youngest," Padparadscha exclaimed, cupping her chin in her hands.
You'd think she was born yesterday, but Lars knew better. He grinned. "Second youngest."
Fluorite steered the conversation back on track. "Do humans... change form... with age?"
Lars nodded. "We start as babies and then we grow bigger – till we lose our hair and teeth, and we get liver spots and wrinkles."
The wrinkles in the corner of Fluorite's mouth twitched. "Fascinating."
"So, you stay old forever?" Rhodonite said.
"No. Eventually, we die." His depressing reply was met with blank faces. "It's sort of like… shattering – " This made Rhodonite flinch. " — Still painful, but slower. Everybody falls apart, sooner or later." The gems were speechless. He sighed. Biology wasn't his strong point. Time for show and tell! He picked up the fireflies' jar and pointed to the bottom. "See? Some of their lights just... go out."
"And there's no way to turn them back on?" Rhodonite whispered, wiping away a tear.
Fluorite pointed out, "Steven's tears... could save them... as he saved Lars."
"We'll get Steven to cry on them when he comes back," Lars said. Hopefully, there wasn't an expiration date for making zombie fireflies.
The Rutile Twins wondered, "Did they perish..."
"...Because they were hungry?"
Lars shrugged. What did fireflies eat, anyway? Did they need to eat at all? Steven didn't really think that part through...
"Could we release the others?"
Lars blinked at the Rutile Twins. "What?"
One twin rephrased, "If they're hungry, they could eat ube with us."
"They could set everything on fire," Rhodonite gasped, her top eyes gleaming with fear – or was it excitement?
"Including us?" the twins said.
Rhodonite shrugged her upper arms. "Rubies are always setting themselves on fire."
"They're just bugs," Lars reminded them. "They don't set things fire and they don't eat ube."
"Oh," Rhodonite said. She looked as sad as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over her.
"Yes, they should be free!" Padparadscha concurred to no one in particular.
"As they were... a gift to Lars... it must be his choice," Fluorite decided. The younger gems looked at him pleadingly.
"Oh, alright," Lars huffed. What's the worst that could happen? As far as he knew, there weren't any living creatures here apart from the gems, and it wasn't like they'd be destroyed by a couple of fireflies. At the most, they could annoy the diamonds. Lars could live with that.
"Here goes..." He opened the jar and the surviving fireflies flew out. If there was enough oxygen for Lars, then there must have been plenty for those little guys.
The Off Colors breathed in awe at the sight. Rhodonite held out a trembling hand for a firefly to land on. "It... doesn't burn – " She squealed as it started crawling up her arm. "But it tickles – ha ha ha! Padparadscha, you have to try this!"
She placed the firefly on Padparadscha's arm. After a moment, the littlest gem burst out laughing. "What glorious being they are!"
Another firefly settled on the Rutile Twins' glowing gem. "They're not..."
"...afraid of us. Oh, Lars! Let them try the ube."
"If you say so..." All that remained of the cake were a couple of crumbs. Lars scattered the crumbs on the floor and the fireflies descended on them.
"Huh. Guess they were hungry enough for ube." Not even insects could resist his mom's cooking. Lars watched as the fireflies finished their meal and flew down the pipe – probably towards the exit.
He started following them. "Let's go."
[[A prompt from lumos-of-pi on Tumblr, which I tweaked slightly for plot reasons.
I read that 'Mima' can mean grandmother in Spanish, or it's at least a term of endearment... I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.]]