"Clods?" asked the green girl in the dirty dress.

Peridot was there but she was not Peridot the gem but Peridot the ragamuffin. But that didn't matter to Steven. What mattered was that the word was uttered, the one that was originally intended as an insult but was morphed into a term of endearment overtime.

"Peridot!" said Steven.

Suddenly, Peridot's look of befuddlement gave way to that smile that Steven always liked.

"Steven!" she said. She raised her arms into the air, preparing for the inevitable.

Although Peridot looked wildly (quite literally) different from her original Home World look, Steven hugged her anyway. Since Peridot was not a human, she did not have the smell of sweat or other bodily fluids on her skin or clothes. She just smelled like dirt and twigs, which was kind of nice. Since Steven's hand was on her back, he took this time to feel the hair that she had let down. It was straight in some areas but fizzy and unkempt in others. There were bits of broken leaves woven into her blonde locks. It felt strange hugging a gem who was wearing a piece of clothing that she had actually slipped on as opposed to "clothing" that was bound to the skin through shapeshifting.

"Peridot," said Pearl in a chipper tone, "It's been so long! You look positively… different."

Peridot looked up and down at Pearl.

"Why, you do, too, Pearl," said Peridot. She then turned to Steven and whispered into his ear. "I think she's been letting herself go."

Steven smiled because this was the perfect time to give Peridot the news. "Oh, she's not fat, Perry! She's pregnant!"

"Preg… nant?"

"You know what that means, right?"

"Of course I know what it means! I've been around natural processes for the past two years. I just never thought it would happen to… her."

"Well, it's a long story," said Pearl. "Would you like us to tell you?"

"Maybe later. What matters is that you're doing it and you don't seem to mind."

Garnet had her head turned, looking at the marvelous land of mushrooms that the group had walked into.

"I think you should tell us what you've been up to," said Garnet. "We'd love to hear it."

"I'd like to know more about this wacky place first," said Amethyst. "I like how you've decorated it." She then plucked a small, brownish mushroom from the soil and took a look at it.

Peridot gasped in horror and shook like a piece of rubber.

"What are you doing!" she exclaimed. She ran over and grabbed the mushroom from Amethyst's hands. "You've just hurt poor Lloyd!"

Amethyst snickered.

"Lloyd?" she said, "You named a mushroom?"

"It isn't the name of the mushroom, you clod." Apparently, "clod" still had its reputation firmly planted in the "insult" category. "It's the name of his fungus. He's an Agaricus bisporus and he's hiding underground. This mushroom is just one of his growths. Thankfully, he should sprout more of them soon to make up for this sudden act of carnage." She walked back to the cremini bunch where Amethyst harvested the mushroom. "Are you all right, Lloyd? I promise she won't hurt you anymore."

Peridot seemed a bit more eccentric and deranged than usual, even for Peridot. She had been putting so much energy into this hobby of hers but Steven was happy that she was happy. Like the growth of the mushrooms that she was stewarding, this was what happened when she was left alone for a little while.

"You care a whole lot about these mushrooms, Peridot," said Steven.

"Of course I do! You're not looking at Peridot the Kindergartener or Peridot the Crystal Gem. You're looking at Peridot the Junior Mycologist!"

"And a mycologist is..." said Amethyst.

"I think it's pretty obvious by this point." Peridot signaled for the gems to follow her as she led a tour of her own little area.

As Steven followed her, he felt like he was taking a tour of a work of art that he had just become a part of. There were clusters of mushrooms of all types – big ones, small ones, brown ones, ones that grew on logs, ones that grew on trees, and this fascinating one that looked like a spongy puffball. They had no eyes but he felt as though they were all looking at the gems and that they didn't have many worries about strangers. They just stood there as living decorations.

"Welcome to my domain," said Peridot. All of these specimens that lay before you are my hard work and nurturing. Well… it wasn't hard work, really. I just lay the spawn into the soil and they practically pop up overnight. I am here to make sure that they have plenty of water, dirt and decaying matter to make them happy."

Pearl looked uneasy about being around this diversity of fungus. She never liked dirt or dead things, so it made sense that she wouldn't like things that liked those things.

"What are all of these mushrooms?" asked Steven.

"Well, let's see. I'll start with our good friends the polypores." Peridot pointed to a bunch of mushrooms that looked like a bouquet of brown flowers growing at the base of a tree. "These are maitake or "Hen of the Woods. They like to grow at the bases of trees and are a perennial fungus..."

Peridot explained all the different types of mushrooms. Steven was engaged in this lesson, Pearl and Garnet were engaged to varying degrees and Amethyst placed her two index fingers near her face and played around with the "finger sausage" optical illusion. Peridot lifted a half of a cantaloupe covered in white fuzz.

"Oh, you'll like this one," she said, "This is Jeff. He is Penicillium chrysogenum, which is what penicillin is made from! I will never need to use him but humans everywhere have him to thank for the contribution he's made to their health." She walked up to Pearl and held the moldy melon up to her. "You want to pet him?"

Pearl backed away quickly. She bore her teeth and bent her fingers at the fuzzy fruit.

"Ugg..." she said, "Erm… maybe some other time, Peridot. I'm sure he's very nice."

"Can you please tell us how you got here?" asked Steven, "And why you have mushrooms? And where you got that pretty dress?"

"It's not that pretty," whispered Pearl under her breath.

Peridot took a few moments to collect her thoughts and sighed. Steven could tell that introducing them to her mushroom friends was just one way that she was trying to delay the inevitable.

"All right," she said, "I knew it would come sooner or later. Everybody take a seat.

Pearl found a rock to sit on. A nice, clean rock (for the most part). Garnet and Amethyst didn't mind taking a seat on the leaves. Steven found a large, spotted mushroom and squatted down to sit on that.

"Steven!" said Peridot, "Don't sit there, you'll crush Amy!"

Steven quickly stood back up and saw that the mushroom was, indeed, too small to accommodate his rump.

"You're right, Peridot," said Steven, "It's called a toadstool, not a human stool."

"That is indeed true, Steven," said Peridot.

"I was going to sit on it but there wasn't mushroom." Steven nudged Peridot in the shoulder and winked. Peridot responded with a roll of the eyes.

"As much as I hate to admit it, Steven, I did miss your terrible quips," said Peridot.

"What can I say? I am a… fungi."

"Peridot, start your story before he spouts any more terribly puns," said Amethyst.

"All right." Peridot sat down and looked at each of the gems. "My story starts when I chickened out on you guys. After defeating our previous enemy together, I had my little identity crisis and decided to leave you guys for a while. And by 'a while' I meant an indefinite amount of time. After leaving you that heartfelt note by the barn, I disappeared into the woods, far away from human civilization..."

On that sunny summer two years ago, Peridot walked solemnly through the trees, not looking back. She carried with her a bindle made from one of Steven's shirts, a wise decision since Steven had so many of the same shirt that he wouldn't notice if one had gone missing. She had left her phone and I-Pad with her farewell note to ensure that nobody would contact her. As she walked aimlessly through those woods, she had a weary, weakened look on her face. The mockingbird made a call that was diverse and unpredictable. There was rustling through the trees, perhaps a squirrel. Uneventful noises like this followed Peridot on her journey.

She eventually reached a point where she sat down on a felled tree to rest. She reached inside her bindle and took out a small, rectangular sheet. It was a slightly-bent string of photos that was taken at one of those photo booths at Fun Land. Each photo had her and Steven in different silly positions – tongues out, bunny ears, winks – but they all looked jovial.

"Oh, Steven," said Peridot, "Through it all, I can never get rid of you." She put the sheet back into her bindle and went on her way.

Peridot wandered farther and farther until the forest she knew eventually ended and she found herself on the side of a highway. She managed to wave down a white truck, although there was barely any room in the passenger seat. She had to make do with sitting inside the giant freezer in back along with the frozen food being transported.

The truck eventually stopped at a grocery store, where she escaped and walked away from the parking lot. Although she was back in civilization, she still desired to leave it. She walked cautiously so as to not draw attention to herself. Soon, she was back in the woods but this time, it was a different forest.

For several days and nights, she wandered with no rest, not that a gem needed any. She encountered roads along the way but otherwise, it was wilderness and she tried to stay away from any places where she could hear the clamoring of people and vehicles. She wandered behind houses and encountered family pets, none of which knew or cared about the tumultuous, millennia-long fight between Earth and Gem Homeworld.

She eventually encountered a bubbling stream. Water flowed over the rocks and smoothed them out over time. Peridot couldn't help but observe this natural phenomenon. She sat down and wrapped her arms around her legs, staring at her sad reflection, which managed to stay put no matter how fast the water rushed.

"It's like concentrated, sideways rain," she said. She touched it, obstructing some of the water. But the water never stopped; it just diverged and kept going. She tried this a few more times, looking more focused each time and keeping her fingers in the water for longer periods.

She continued her journey for a few more days, walking through a forest that seemingly never ended. All the while, she accumulated leaves in her hair and dirt on her feet. She was soon unable to keep up her normal pace of walking but kept going anyway. Like a car running out of gas, she walked slower and slower and slower until she finally collapsed on her face. She was sprawled out in the dirt and pine needles, unnoticed by anybody in the area.

Several minutes passed until… POOF.

Her sentient form disappeared and all that was left was the gem from her forehead. It landed several inches away from Steven's bundled-up t-shirt and the stick that was carrying it.

And so, her gem lay there for weeks, exposed to the unforgiving elements. Some days were windier than others. Some days were rainier than others. Animals and the smaller corrupted gems would come around and sniff at her gem and then leave when they found out that there was nothing edible in the bindle next to her. All the while, her gem became tarnished and dirty.

And then one day, a human came around. She was a woman with brown skin and long, fluffy dark hair dressed in colors that often didn't go together. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, old enough to be aware of how the world worked but young enough to have many years left ahead of her. She carried a bag with her filled with things that she found on the forest floor.

After scanning the ground, she came upon Peridot and her few material goods. The woman picked up the gem and held it between her thumb and index finger. She immediately noticed the bundle of goods next to it but didn't inspect it as much. Her face lit up in a smile and she felt the need to run back to where she came from.

And where she came from was right by the outskirts of civilization. The beaten path that she ran to lead to a property that was decorated with a sign that said "Lion's Mane Farm" with a painting of a drooping, anemone-like organism.

This trail lead to a house with a large, dirt driveway, large enough for big trucks to use.

"Cilantro!" she called, "Oh, Cilantro!"

Inside that house, in the colorfully-decorated living room, a lanky, middle-aged man dressed in jeans and an Aztec-inspired dashiki shirt sat in the middle of the imported rug with his eyes closed. He had light brown skin, salt-and-pepper hair that grew beyond his shoulders and a short beard that stuck out of his face and curled toward the sky. As he sat cross-legged, he kept his back straight and his hand rested on his knees with the middle fingers united with the thumbs.

"Ohm…" he chanted. He didn't so much end the saying of that word as he did let it trail off in a pleasant hum. He said it every minute or so.

"Cilantro!" called the chipper young woman. She pushed the screen door open so hard that it hit the wall with full force.

By that point, the man was so relaxed that he only reacted by opening his eyes – one blue and one brown – and blinking.

"Pranna, what did I say about interrupting my mantra?" he asked. He was supposed to be angry but those words came out as slow and only slightly stern.

"But… you have to see this!" she said. Without hesitation, she pulled the gem out of her pocket and held it up for Cilantro to see. "It looks like it belonged to someone. There's no way something this intricately cut could have come from nature."

"Well are you going to give it back to whoever had it?"

"I don't know… whoever had it must be long gone by now. If they truly wanted it, they would have come back for it. Something this pretty deserves to be used and not left on the ground."

"That is a good way to think of it, sister. Waste not, want not. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go back to being one with the universe."

Pranna took the gem into the other room. There was fabric everywhere along with a sewing machine, thread and bottles of dye. None of it was put back to where it was originally stored, resulting in a mess of things that constantly reminded people of where they were last used. She placed the gem on the well-worn wooden table, where there was a half-done beaded necklace. She kneeled by the side of the table and opened up a drawer where she pulled out a power drill.

When she plugged the power drill into the socket, she tested it out. With each squeeze of the trigger, the drill spun and emitted a grinding screech, which caused Pranna to smile.

Before her little art project could continue, the gem started to shake. Soon, it was glowing a bright green, causing Pranna to drop the drill in amazement.

"Oooooh," she said. She couldn't pry her eyes away from the sight even though it must have been detrimental to her vision. "Cilantro! Cilantro! You're not going to believe this!"

The gem floated to the center of the room like a spirit, where it was about to present its sentient form…