I want to preface this with an apology to those who I promised a chapter taking place at Peridot's house. I decided to move that back in favor of a more light-hearted special chapter in response to Catch and Release. That episode left me devastated in a good way - it was an obvious start to a Peridot redemption arc, after all! Not to mention the much-needed character development for Peri, who, it turns out, is just as cute as we knew she would be. And knowing what future episodes have in store, it seems that our ship might not be pure crack for much longer. So rejoice, Peridot and Lapidot fans, rejoice!
I also wanted to put together a special playlist for this special chapter, but several of the songs I wanted to use are no longer on Youtube fsr, so yeah, I guess that's not happening. My main inspiration for this was Autumn Romance and In the Eyes of a Child, two gorgeous piano pieces by Philip Wesley. Look them up if you want some atmosphere, if you can find them. Anyway, that's enough from me. On with the show!
-yurImperial
POV: Lapis Lazuli
o~*~o
The sky is an intense expanse of cerulean dotted with white cotton clouds, the air sharp and crisp. Fallen leaves make a soft cadence of crinkle-rustle whispers beneath our feet as we stroll along our secluded path beneath skeleton trees. It's one of those pristine autumn days where the weather is cool enough to wear warm stockings but not too cold for skirts.
I look over at Peridot - she's in the midst of excitedly retelling something that happened in a game she was playing last night, which I can't really follow - and I think to myself how cute she looks, like a little middle-schooler in a turtleneck with a stylized cat face on the front, her small hands barely reaching the cuffs of her sleeves. An innocuous fuzzy warmth settles in my chest as I watch her delve into her passionate monologue with single-minded zeal. I only comprehend a few of the words she uses, mostly the ones that aren't specific to the video game itself, but I'm content to just watch her emote and gesticulate openly without reserve. Knowing that she shows this openness only to me heightens the feeling in my chest so that I'm almost light-headed with it.
Suddenly struck by a peculiar compulsion, I find myself reaching out to link arms with Peridot while she makes a gesture. She pauses in her story and glances at me questioningly, but to my relief and vague surprise, she doesn't pull away. Our arms successfully link and she picks up where her story left off, albeit with slightly more red in her face. I nod along and keep pace with her, our elbows and inner arms rubbing, the smell of leaves and future snow on my tongue. After Peridot finishes her story, we lapse into amicable solitude. My fingers are itching to get out my camera and capture the striking leaf colors around us, but that would require releasing Peridot's arm and I have no intention of doing that just yet.
The sidewalk branches paths up ahead, the right leading to the suburban part of town, the left heading deeper into the park. When we reach the fork, I wordlessly tug Peridot to the left with our joined arms and laugh at her squeak of surprise. She glances behind us and then at me with one eyebrow raised, but my lips curve into a tightly-sealed grin. The path doubles back on itself in the direction we came from before cutting east across the park. Walls of bushes block our usual path from view; Peridot's head swivels this way and that as she tries to get her bearings. I laugh again and bump her shoulder with mine.
"Don't worry, I know where we're going."
"Oh? You're already an expert on the location after just one month?"
"Why yes, I am, as a matter of fact. What's your excuse?"
Peridot makes a noise of mock contempt.
"What sort of plebeian do you take me for? I only travel with my personal chauffeur leading the way, of course."
She grips my arm tighter, indicating that said chauffeur is none other than me.
"But do you know what season it is?"
"Of course; it's-"
"FALL!"
At the very moment I shout, I bring my right leg out to catch Peridot's left, tripping her into a large pile of leaves. Our linked arms prevent her from going down hard, but they also drag me with her and we end up in a shrieking, giggling heap, the bed of leaves cushioning our fall. The pile is so deep that we have to fight our way to the surface. When we come up, our heads and nothing else appearing from the mass, I turn to Peridot and have to bring a hand up to my mouth to stop an explosive laugh. A giant yellow leaf sits on top of her head, the stem stuck into her hair so that it sticks up like a lop-sided crown. Still fighting hard not to laugh, I give a small, seated bow.
"Your majesty."
The line barely escapes my lips before my composure crumbles completely. I burst into a fit of giggling and fall back to roll around on the ground, tossing leaves in all directions. Before I can get up, a wad of leaves lands on my face and I nearly inhale them, making me laugh even harder. When the pain in my sides finally lets up enough to sit up, I see Peridot standing above me with a grin on her face and leaves stuck to her sweater. She extends a hand to pull me up onto my feet, so I begrudgingly pluck the leaf from her hair. It floats down lazily to join the others.
We join arms again and continue until we hit another switchback. As we round the hedge, our destination comes into view - a children's playground, complete with slide, swing set, and monkey bars all contained in a pit of wood chips and hemmed in by tall, bare trees. Here, the ground is a brilliant collage of reds, oranges, golds, and umbers, each color clamoring to be the loudest amongst them. I turn to fix Peridot with a devious grin that says You know you want to.
"Really?" She chuckles. "What are we, five?"
But despite her words, she lets me pull her to the swing set. I sit her down and watch her reluctantly grip the chains before grabbing hold of them just above her hands. She yelps when I pull back on them like she was expecting me to take the other swing, but I can't pass up this opportunity. After walking the swing back a few paces, I let go and watch her swing forward pitifully; when momentum carries her back again, I push her by the shoulders and she sails a foot higher. The next time, I run behind, pushing all the way until she swings high into the air. Ducking out of the way, I stand off to the side and watch her pendulum back and forth. She holds her arms tight to her sides, white-knuckled grip on the chains, legs stiff.
"Swing your legs!" I call out encouragingly.
She does, but when she swings forward again, her legs come out too fast and her feet collide with the ground, stopping her in her tracks and flinging her out of the seat altogether. I rush forward to catch her and just manage to grab the back of her sweater before she face-plants. Jeez, it's like she's never been on a swing before.
"You're really bad at this, you know," I say bluntly.
"Gee, thanks," Peridot grunts as she picks herself up.
"You just need a mentor. Here, let me show you how it's done."
I take her place on the swing and she goes to stand at the spot where I was watching, her arms crossed. Wrapping my forearms around the chains from the outside, I start by walking myself backwards to get some distance. When the chains pull tight, I sprint forward and lean back in the seat just as it catches up with me, letting it sweep me off the ground and send me as high as Peridot's highest altitude on my first go. I tuck my legs in on the back-swing and propel myself forward again with a well-timed kick-off at the lowest point in the arc before pumping my legs out to shift my center of mass. I repeat this process a few more times until I can reach the top of the swing set on sustained momentum alone. Laughing with exhilaration, I look down at Peridot following me with wide eyes.
"How's that for height!?"
She grows smaller as I hurtle back down to earth and away.
"It's all-"
I sail high enough to reach out and touch the crossbar of the swing right in front of my face. My insides rise into my throat as they catch up to the rest of me in a brief moment of weightlessness.
"-in the-"
My weight carries me inexorably to earth in a blur that shifts direction at the last very moment to swing me up and forward again, my hair blowing back and tears steaming behind me.
"-build-up!"
My skirt flaps violently around my knees like wings on which I'm getting ready to take off into the wide blue sky. I feel so weightless and unencumbered in this moment that such a thing wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Movement catches my eye and I see Peridot running a short distance away to scoop some leaves up and carry them back in her arms. She waits until I'm hurtling toward her and tosses the bundle up just as I sail over her head; they explode into a flurry of color against me, my own laughter and the roar of wind filling my ears.
When I come back down, I drag my feet on the ground to halt the swing's motion and leap to my feet, my hair wild and breath coming in exhilarated gasps. I run past Peridot and grab her wrist, pulling her over to the slide where we climb the ladder together up to a platform and the yawning mouth of the tube slide. The plastic is a deep cherry-red bleached pink on top by expose to the sun. Without hesitation, I throw myself into the gaping maw feet-first, my voice echoing in the tight space as I shriek like a child the whole way down. Moments after landing at the bottom, Peridot's muffled screams catch up and she crashes into me from behind, leaving us to lay in a tangled and breathless mass of limbs. Peridot's laugh is an adorable Nya-ha-ha that puts her cat sweater in a whole new context.
It takes a long moment to work out where one body ends and the other begins, and as we slowly catch our breaths, I realize how little the contact affects us now. It's not that we don't notice when our skin touches, but we no longer feel any shame in it. After helping each other up, Peridot races around to have another go at the slide. Meanwhile, I stay at the bottom and scrape leaves into a large pile at the bottom so that when she comes through again, she sinks into a foot-deep mound and flounders for help. Together, we build the pile up even bigger and punch holes through it with our own bodies; I try going down the slide head-first, an equally fun and terrifying experience that ends with a dry salad in my face.
When we get bored with the slide, we race over to the money bars. I laugh at Peridot's feeble attempt to cross with her scrawny arms - it doesn't help that she can barely work her fingers out of her sleeves to get a good grip. We shuffle more leaves into a bed of reds and oranges beneath the bars and pretend it's lava as we dangle above it. I climb up to the top and hang upside down by my legs, reaching out to Peridot as she attempts another crossing on shaky arms. She makes it to the middle, her best distance yet, and I reach out to stabilize her waist. My face is in line with the knees of her jeans which are stained with dirt from scooping leaf-piles. She whimpers and releases the bars to fall into the cushion beneath, where she makes sizzling sounds and feigns death-by-lava.
"My liege, I have let you drown!"
"You don't drown in lava," Peridot corrects me. "You'd burn before you ran out of air."
"Yeah, well, dead people don't talk, either," I shoot back.
"You could have prevented this!" she cries dramatically, sustaining it for a long moment before letting it die away gradually.
"Juliette!" I yell at the top of my lungs.
"Romeo..." Peridot groans as she crawls jerkily up the bars to my position.
"Romeo, I have returned to feast on your lover heart!"
"Eek, zombie Juliette!"
I leap down from the monkey bars and take off for the tree line, Peridot hot on my heals. I reach them first and duck behind one, hand clamped over my mouth to quiet my breathing. Only the sound of crunching leaves alerts me when she gets close. Thinking fast, I bend down to grab a handful of leaves like I'm preparing for a snowball fight. Just as she rounds the tree, I reach out and grab the back of her collar, pull it open far enough to fit my other hand, and drop the wad of leaves inside. Peridot yelps and jumps around patting her back as I make my getaway, but I don't get very far before I hear the pounding of feet pursuing me. It seems I have the upper hand in distance, but Peridot's short bursts of speed can overtake me easily; I blame energy drinks.
I veer in the direction of the slide and start climbing, hoping that Peridot is far enough behind to make it to the top before she catches me. Just as I get one knee on the platform, a hand latches into my other foot. We struggle for a moment before my shoe is yanked clean off and Peridot falls back on her butt, allowing me to scramble the rest of the way to safety, my chest heaving. Standing up, I open my mouth to brag but there isn't enough oxygen in my lungs to speak, so I settle for raising my fists into the air in a triumphant salute, a wide smile splitting my face.
Peridot climbs up and leans next to me after a moment, both of us silent except for our loud breathing. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder as we look out over the playground, a soft breeze tousling our hair. Peridot's is all frizzed out, making it look unbelievably even bigger than usual; she looks remarkably like a big-headed chibi anime character. There's a rosy glow to her cheeks and her brow is damp with sweat; I don't imagine she gets this much exercise, like, ever. This is confirmed when she sinks to her knees and leans back against the slide, still gasping for breath. I take a seat beside her, close my eyes, and just listen to her breathe.
We fall into another long silence borne of exhaustion and contentment. A warm breeze flutters past my arm and it takes me a minute to realize that it's not really a breeze at all. Still keeping my eyes closed, I let my body still and focus on touch. The tickle comes again, a butterfly-touch along my forearm and by my wrist. A flicker of movement by my pinkie, a warm graze against my arm, the sound of Peridot shifting slightly to my right. Finally, her hand slides next to mine and they make full contact length-wise, her left and my right, our little fingers brushing over one another. Electrical impulses shoot Morse Code signals through my body, jumping from her nervous system to mine through our shared contact. The silent message pulses in the rhythm of my heartbeat, the words lost in a static roar but the feeling of them burning bright neon afterglow through my body.
And I smile.