Lapis hummed cheerfully to herself as she held her hands over a bowl of water, gently shifting the liquid molecules back and forth between the space as she controlled it. The large globule of water floated delicately above her, the fish that had been swimming in the bowl swimming obliviously in the new space its water was being shifted into. She was, of course, very careful to be certain that her manipulation of the water wouldn't hurt the scaly creature. Earth creatures were so delicate after all. Had to be very careful, to make certain they didn't break.

"Waaaaaaaaaaahh!" Speaking of easily broken things.

"Steven?!" She lost her concentration for a moment and released the water, letting it, and the fish, splash unceremoniously back into the bowl (unharmed, thankfully, for Mr. Splashy). She got up just as he ran into the room, crying and grasping one hand with the other. She knelt onto the floor, skirts floating up before settling down, and he ran right up to her. "Steven, are you alright?! What's wrong with your hand!?"

"Aaaah. Lapizz," he voice was nasally due to the runny nose he was currently sporting. "I wuz outside by de wader, and I daw Jadper pudchig ztuff, ad I waded to try it, too, but then I hit a rock ad dow by thub hurts ad I cadt bove id ad-"

"Oh, Steven." Lapis murmured, she couldn't stand to see him like this. She slowly reached out her hands towards him. "Here, let me see it." Steven immediately yanked his hand away from her, shaking his head furiously. "Steven, give it here, please." He only shook more furiously.

"Do! I dod wad you do douch id!"

"I won't touch it, Steven, I promise," she said soothingly, looking at him with an open expression. "I only want to take a look at it." He looked at her warily for a moment, but at last he held the hand out to her, and placed it gently atop her outstretched hands. Her lips pressed together as she saw the damage. There was no blood, but his knuckles were bruised pretty badly, and his thumb was oddly out-of-shape. Considering he hadn't shown any ability to shapeshift yet, she hardly thought that was intentional. "Oh, Steven," she murmured again, looking at it with a worried expression. "Um... it-it's okay, we can make this all better. " She stood up and went to the fridge-freezer, pulling out a tray of ice cubes that were frozen up top. Then, after she drew some water out of the tap, she put it all into a bowl, and had him stick his hand into it. "This should help numb it a bit. I'm going to go and Peridot and Jasper so that they can help us with this, okay?"

"...Bokay," he sniffled quietly, drawing another look of sympathy from Lapis as she briskly made her way to the temple door, intent on getting the other Gems' help with this matter.

–

Steven sighed as he looked at his bandaged and fixed up hand. Peridot had given him a sever tongue-lashing when Lapis had called her for help with his injured hand. Going on about how dumb it was that he had punched a rock, and how he was more delicate than them, how badly did it hurt, he should never do something stupid like that again. Lapis had tried to soften the blows, but they still made him feel bad. He should have known better, it was just... he'd wanted to see if he was as strong as her.

"Hey, Steven." Speaking of her, there was Jasper now, climbing up the stairs that led to his bed.

"Hi, Jasper," he sighed. He scooted over as she approached, leaving room for her to sit down if she wanted. She did, and the bed creaked and sagged under her weight, but it still held.

"So, I heard from Peridot that you messed up your hand pretty bad, huh?"

"A little." He avoided her gaze, preferring to look at his hand rather than see a look of disapproval from her. "Peridot and the orbs patched it up for me, though."

"So I see," the orange Gem nodded. "So, what's all this I hear about you punching a rock because you saw me do it?"

"Well... yeah, that is why I did it." He felt kind of stupid to admit it to her now, though. "I was walking on the beach, and I saw you doing some of your exercise stuff by punching the rocks. You looked really cool while you were doing it, so I wanted to try it, too. But then I did, and it hurt really bad and my thumb got broken..." He trailed off into silence, worrying that she was going to scold him over this, too. She usually did when he did really stupid stuff, and this felt really stupid.

"...How did you punch that rock?" Well that wasn't a question he had expected to hear. He looked up, but her expression told him that she was serious.

"Um... kind of like this, I guess?" He held up his uninjured hand, balling it just about the same way as he had when he'd injured the one, then swung it forward just as forcefully, throwing himself slightly off-balance in the process. Jasper looked it over critically, eyes narrowed. "Wh-why?"

"Well, now I think I see what you did wrong," Jasper nodded. "See this?" She placed one of her enormous hands over his, pointing to his thumb. "You're not supposed to put your thumb into a fist, it'll be too much force when you hit what you're going for." She carefully moved his thumb so that, rather than being inside the fist, it was just resting on the side of it. "See? You wanna' put it on the side like this, otherwise you'll break it like you did. And you don't have to put so much force behind your punch, unless you know you can knock the other guy out in one hit. Just punch," she whipped one arm out, then snapped it back to herself, "And pull back, fast. Hit the other guy, and you don't have to throw yourself off-balance when you do it."

"Oooooh," Steven looked at her with awe, he hadn't thought you could punch someone like that. He only saw all those movies where big, buff guys threw themselves into every punch.

"But, most importantly, kid," she smirked as she rubbed his head, "you might wanna' wait a bit before you graduate up to being a rock-puncher. Maybe stick to these guys for now," she picked up a stuffed bear from his bead. Steven gasped in disbelief.

"No! Not ceremony bear!" He snatched the toy out of her hand. "He never did anything to anybody!" Jasper snorted with amusement, then patted the little bear on the head.

"Fair enough."