A String of Pearls
Chapter Four
Last week I opened up a prompt submission for my Tumblr followers to give me a quote, a word or a subject to write three sentences about for a drabble. I need a few more to fill my quota, so I'm going to open it up here as well. Comment below if you'd like to add to the drabble, and you can submit more than one.
I prepared for this chapter by watching a few Jane Campion films. I wonder if it shows.
…..
Soul
The pearl is a retirement gift. As far as Lapis Lazuli is concerned, it's an insult.
She shoves it into the corner until she can figure out what to do with it. Selling it would just be hassle she doesn't need, she has more than enough money and it's an older pearl model too. They wouldn't even spring for a brand new one.
After a time, she gives it odd jobs to do around her home, just to keep it busy. The way it sits staring at nothing is unnerving. One day it goes to brush some dust from the surface keys of the symphonaria and Lapis looses the run of herself, grabs its arm and wrenches it away so hard it falls over.
"You don't touch that," she snarls, though to what end she doesn't know. The pearl doesn't feel fear, it nods and goes back to work.
She takes care of the symphonaria herself, rubs liniment on the strings and washes distilled water through the pipes, relishing the little rise in spirit she feels when she tests them to find the instrument in perfect tune.
Her gem is no longer smooth as it had been, and her playing has lost much of what made it special, but the symphonaria is hers and will be her companion as her retirement stretches before her.
She agrees to tutor some young Lapis at her home, not because she needs the money but because it's a shame for her magnificent instrument to sit without being played. She can no longer play it herself, the deep crack in her gem grows every cycle and though she has been patched, it cannot replace what was lost. Her fingers do not sync with the symphonaria as they once had. They don't move they way she wants them to.
The first Lapis is a callow, clumsy little oaf with no real interest, and after three lessons Lapis tells her not to return. The second is good, has nimble fingers and a keen memory but is impatient and hammers the strings far too hard. Lapis tells her not to return too.
The third and fourth are in awe of her legacy, and it makes them forget to lose themselves fully in the music. They don't even make it past the first lesson.
"None of them are a match," she mutters, fixing the strings where the last Lapis had knocked them askew. "Give them the notes and they'll put them in order, but there's no soul in their playing!"
The only other gem in the room is the pearl, who could be listening or not. It doesn't matter.
Time marches on, and her visitors decrease with every cycle. She can't blame them, when she played she was happy, and now that she cannot she is bitter. Increasingly she brings up old holo-casts of when she was young and the music she made had no equal. Sometimes she asks the pearl to watch with her, so she has someone to talk at. At least it never talks back.
"Look at the flow," she tells it, zooming in on the spread of her fingers across the strings. "Fast, but smooth, like water."
"Yes, it's beautiful," the pearl tells her, and she's startled because she's never heard it talk before.
She has moments, shameful awful moments, where she sits at the symphonaria and tries to recall her music and can't. How could she not, the music was so much a part of her that it's a half-life without it. She screams and cries and tries to pull out the strings that won't answer to her but only hurts herself in the process, while the pearl waits until she has exhausted herself and silently takes her to her rest pod.
A strange notion occurs to her, after one of these moments. She tells the pearl to sit at the symphonaria and play something.
"You can't be any worse than those Lapis they brought up here," she says casually.
The pearl doesn't object (why would it?) and takes up a position that makes Lapis sit up because it's eerily familiar. It's not a beginner's posture.
What flows out of its fingers is a song she's long tried to recapture, one that has escaped her newly-awkward hands. It speaks of love, longing, euphoria. It's a difficult song, it dips and swirls and picks up with two conflicting melodies at once. It is not a song one can play without soul. Without soul, it is incomplete.
For the first time, she sees the pearl properly. Its face doesn't look any different, but there's a spark there, something in its stance (her stance). She has never touched the symphonaria before. She has learned this from watching Lapis' old holo-casts and took it for herself.
When the song is finished, she remains seated, awaiting Lapis' next command.
But she cannot bring herself to make a command. Now that she knows.
What now?
…..
Company
Of course she knows the jokes. She's not afraid of the jokes. Not really.
It's an old pearl she ends up with, a shop display model she got for a bargain price. Its gem is faded and its mass is discoloured slightly, but they don't make ugly pearls and this one is beautiful regardless.
Chalcedony's quarters are not built for a pearl's long limbs, and it's hard to find a place for it. Her bulky rest pod takes up half of the room, and the commu-console the entire far wall to be accessible at all times. She makes up a little corner for it, with a cushion on the floor and a space on the wall for its charge pad. It looks happy enough there, she thinks, and then she shakes that thought from her head because that kind of thinking is what lead the others into trouble.
Even now, checking the commu-links, she sees posts from Chalcedonies that talk about their pearls as though they were actual gems that chose to be there. As if they hadn't bought them from a shop or traded on the black market for one.
As if any freely-thinking gem would choose to live with a Chalcedony.
She is a realist, or at least she likes to think so, and she is aware that she is not an attractive gem. Her mass is disproportionate, her gem is an awkward shape and she's not much bigger than a silica barrel. The shining example of gem beauty is Pink Diamond and she's so far removed from that paragon that they might as well be two different life-forms.
Even if she was beautiful, she hasn't much to offer a partner. All she does is work, and work is done where she lives, and there's hardly a need to go outside. Other gems tend to stare when they see a Chalcedony outside, though it's not like they're forbidden like the Sapphires are, or even restricted like the Rubies.
So really it's no wonder some of the others have become so attached to their pearls. Pearls don't judge, and you can keep them anywhere and they won't complain. Chalcedony hardly goes outside so she doesn't have to worry about it being stolen either.
She won't get attached, she knows that much. She's a sensible gem. She just wants an extra pair of hands to help with the switchboard from time to time, and something to answer back when she gets bored, and maybe something to play with in her rest pod if she gets the urge. She won't get attached.
Except...
A mere three cycles after buying the pearl, she finds herself talking out loud a lot more.
Three cycles after that, she's taking breaks from her work to sit and flip through catalogues with the pearl, asking its opinion, as if it had one.
She reads out a story from the message board and the pearl laughs without being ordered. Chalcedony puts it down to a glitch.
The pearl gets this odd look in its eyes whenever Chalcedony turns around in her chair. It perks up, almost.
Little non-sensible thoughts worm their way into her mind. She buys new apparel to replace the shop-scuffed dress. A bigger cushion for the pearl's corner.
Thinks she, not it.
It's a slippery slope then, and she practically throws herself down it. Notices all the little quirks and movements she hadn't seen before, and looks for small things she imagines might make the pearl happy, stories and pictures she's collected from the holo-casts. She talks about what her pearl does on message boards, what they do together.
She still considers herself a sensible gem. What could be more sensible than enjoying some company?
But then the crisis hits, and with repairs to her console and mainframe she has almost no money left to live on. It's not just her, many Chalcedonies are in the same situation.
She sells the pearl for half the price she paid, and is bitter about it, but that's the best she can get and she needs the money. Other Chalcedonies have sold their rest pods and kept their pearls, and they will regret that. It's foolish.
A pearl is, after all, just a pearl and anything she saw beyond that was probably just lonliness. She thought it looked sad when it was lead away, but that's not possible. It was all in her head.
…..
Communal
It could be worse. She'd thought she was destined for the barracks. She had given away many memories in preparation.
Instead, five Peridots had pooled their money and picked her out of a line-up because...
"That one's green! We like green, right?"
She was hustled back to their quarters, a set of small adjoining rooms with rest pods set into the floor for efficiency. They left her sitting in the rest pod as they made out a very specific, very thorough schedule for which one got to keep her in their room on different cycles. Then they squabbled for nearly half a cycle on who got to take her first.
Their arguments (and she witnessed them very often) were shrill, full of out-of-context insults and usually over very quickly. Sometimes they collapsed into physical violence but never past the level of some jerky slapping and a few clumsy kicks. It truly felt like a good chunk of her existence was taken up by silently watching them fight over her.
Peridot 17-X wanted to stay in the rest pod with her during their cycle, but never asked her for anything beyond a cuddle. She liked the pearl to massage the setting around her gem for some reason, too. Afterwards she would brag about just how much sex they'd had and pearl would go along with the lie with a small nod.
Peridot 22-X used up the time on her production line coming up with new theories and ideas that she would furiously sketch on holo-screens for most of their cycle. She ran the math through pearl's inner processor and formed simulations with her holo-form. Then, having worn herself out, she would have pearl tuck her into her rest pod and leave her to tidy up the mess.
Peridot 24-X didn't speak much, but brought scraps from the assembly line to see what could be done with them. She asked pearl mostly to hold things in place while she soldered them together, or cut them into strips to weave into something. If the result was of no use but looked quite nice, she gave it to pearl to keep. Over time she amassed a collection.
Peridot 31-X liked music, though she wouldn't admit it to another Peridot, and she asked pearl to sing to her in the rest pod, as it was soundproof and nobody would hear. Sometimes she brought up a holo-screened concert and mimed playing the symphonaria though she knew she'd never get to touch one.
Peridot 35-X just wanted someone to talk to. She would talk for their entire cycle together, in the rest pod, voicing things she'd never say to another gem. Things about how much she hated the assembly line, things about the Diamond Authority that would be deemed traitorous. She talked about how scared she felt all the time, but she couldn't say what it was that she was scared of, and that just frightened her more.
Once, in preparation for a Diopside race, the Peridots invited a similar group of three Peridots over with their pearl so they could combine their holo-screens to get a better view of the casted race. As soon as the Peridots had chosen a place to view the race and gotten the pearls into position beside each other, they began to squabble.
"You can't use an ion spear, it'll crack her gem," Peridot 17-X snapped, knocking the spear out of the stranger Peridot's hand.
"You get a better signal this way, I've done it loads," the stranger Peridot growled.
"So then do it to your one, this is our one," Peridot 22-X yelled and pushed her.
As they devolved into a scrappy bundle of shrieks and shoving, the pearls talked with their hands and eyes.
Are you doing well?
I am quite well. Are you well?
I believe I am. They are very good to me.
It was true. The nothing had little to scramble when it did hit, and every cycle was much the same with no awful surprises. What pearl could ask for more?