~Here we go again, guys. Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed. Whether I've managed to reply to you or not, I hope you all know how appreciated you and your feedback are!~

The door-chime sounds, and when you pull the front door open Dr. Drakken stands on the narrow front step, his weight tilted up on his toes, a bold streak of color against the pastel shades of early morning. His face is a plump wisp, like the clouds floating above him, and he smiles, still luminous with the memory of victory.

"Good morning, Lapis!" he exclaims.

You give him a subdued grin in return; you could never hope to match his enthusiasm, and you don't recall ever having felt pressed to try. "Hi. Come on in." As he does, you add, "Are you feeling better? From last night?"

"Oh. Right." Drakken's eyes lower, and you recognize the look of someone trying to circumvent shame. "That."

You frown. "What about 'that'?"

Drakken pushes forth a sigh, closes the door, locks it behind him, and walks to the sofa with a peculiar lagging in his steps. His voice drops to a more confiding level without growing quieter, and you lean in closer to him to maintain privacy. "That's…something I'm working on. Believe it or not, I can be rather absent-minded when I'm working out a new plan or excited about other matters."

"I believe it."

"And especially back when I was a villain, I would get so stressed out that I would go practically an entire day without eating, and then when I finally figured out I was hungry there was no stopping me! I would eat so much I'd be fit to burst before I was done. The longer you go without eating, the more likely you are to overdo it as soon as you can."

You nod. "Kind of like Peridot once she discovered feelings were a thing."

"Kind of exactly like that." Drakken chortles a moment before his face sobers. "Well, the supervillain community is a cruel and unforgiving place. Duh, right? It's not like that lifestyle attracts a lot of warmhearted folks. And I used to hear some less-than-kind things about how I ate too much or ate the wrong foods or ate too much of the wrong foods. Etcetera."

You examine him, from the small hands churning in his lap to the crack engraved on his cheek to the honesty of his face that stays any uncharitable thoughts you have ever had toward him. You can picture people treating him with less than kindness, but you don't want to.

"I mean, what you put in your body is none of my business," you say with a shrug. "I just don't want you to be sick."

Drakken's smile returns, and his lips graze your forehead. It is a miniaturization of the moment you arrived at the beach and found your people healed. "Thank you," he says.

Peridot dashes through the living room door then, excising any chance for secretive conversation. She hugs Drakken around the waist, as far as her arms can reach, while Pumpkin dances around at his feet.

"Good morning, ladies!" Drakken sings the words, though he does not attempt to secure them to any one tune as you know he can. Yellow petals spring from under each ear. Pink erupts on his face and he plucks them, grumbling something about his desire to appear suave. You doubt such a thing could ever happen, but you don't say so.

"Hi, Drakken," Peridot says, hanging around his waist like a loose belt for another moment before letting go.

Drakken paces back and forth in front of the sofa. "Ladies, I've been pondering something all night, even in my sleep, and I've finally found a solution!"

"I didn't realize there was a problem," you say, feeling your eyes widen.

"Not really a problem in the truest sense, but…" Drakken inhales sharply and exhales with the same amount of force. "I know Bismuth is going to build you guys a house." He glances at you when he says Bismuth's name, and you give him another nod to let him know all is fine. "But I hate the thought of you going back to just this big, empty house full of nothing instead of all your wonderful meepmorps!" He chuckles. "What a fun word. I don't think I'll ever say 'art' again."

You know you never will either. The word has a commonplace stodginess to it that cannot do justice to what it describes. Such a word does not need to be extravagant, but it does need to have color shining through. Meepmorp does.

Peridot's mouth twists to one side. "I get that. I really miss my bagged-bean chair, and a lot of other little things. Don't you, Lapis?"

You nod again, unable to speak. For a moment, you see the barn before you, its ledges and rafters as vivid an illusion as your own physical form. A gentle ache creeps down the length of your back, sweet and patient, its ends dragging in mist behind it. It reaches forward to suffuse every facet and hollow of you, and before you can determine whether it is weakening or strengthening you, it fades and you stare at the path of light across Mama Lipsky's carpet.

"Exactly!" Drakken says. For an instant he pauses; for an instant the lanky gesturing arms slow. "I want you girls' new house to really feel like a home. Now that I think about it, Bismuth can probably make furniture, but this is going to take more than a coffee table and a couple of armchairs. You should be able to pick out stuff that captures who you are – bright and colorful and amaze-terrific!"

You giggle without correcting him.

"And between the Middleton Mall and our very own Smarty Mart, I think we just might be able to find that stuff!" Drakken says. "Why, we'll –"

Peridot's green eyes widen and her hand shoots into the air as though in apology for her interruption. "Are you suggesting that we go to these 'stores' and purchase the accessories we select?"

You giggle again. That is a term she could only have picked up from Pretty Hairstylist: accessories are used to embellish an outfit or, apparently, a home. Your gem feels lukewarm as you realize those books have been destroyed as well.

"Precisely!" Drakken says.

"Yeah, only one problem," you say. "It costs money, and Peridot and I don't have any. Like, at all."

"Oh." Peridot's shoulders sag in a manner both comical and painful to watch.

Yet Dr. Drakken's shoulders pull forward and tighten, the movement a boast. "I considered that as well! But there are lots of ways for people to earn money on Earth even without long-term employment! One that works particularly well is to go around doing odd jobs."

"Any job that Peridot does will be a really odd job," you say, nudging Peridot.

Drakken smiles with you as Peridot cheerily sticks out her tongue. "Odd as in 'assorted,' not as in 'Oh, wow, that was super-weird!'" he says.

"So – what assortment?" Peridot asks. "Do we get to wax spacecrafts? Fix laser security systems? Cleanse toxic waste?"

"Err…I wouldn't rule that out," Drakken says. "But more likely, it'll be things like mowing lawns, trimming bushes, washing windows….You do know how to mow and stuff, right?"

"Yeah," you say. "That was the kind of thing we did back when we were growing crops." You think back to the thick-bodied droning instrument that Peridot discovered was called a tractor; the channel that opened between your mind and the bucket of nourishing water, allowing you to water the crops without the need to lift your hands; the morning you parted the corn stalks to see Pumpkin bouncing and barking on the vine.

"Perfect!" Drakken says. "Now all we need is to advertise."

Peridot leans forward on her hands, the way Pumpkin will do when she is excited to meet someone new. "Advertise? As in, on television?"

"No. I tried that once, and it led to disaster…which was then intercepted by the Lorwardians, leading to another disaster." Drakken's face folds, the black circles beneath his eyes constricting.

"You survived a battle with Lorwardians?" Peridot's eyes grow larger still.

Drakken's thumb turns up, his nearest finger pointing at Peridot. "You better believe it, Peridot!" he says. "But…uh…yes, I was saying something…something else… ah, yes! Advertising! My conclusion is that we should go with flyers, which is such a bizarre word considering they don't even fly. They're just those little pieces of paper, and sometimes the fancy ones are tantalizingly shiny, but none of them have ever flown, in my experience.

"We can print some up, though! Just saying you're in Middleton for the summer, earning money to furnish a new house, willing to do odd jobs, and so forth." Drakken glances around. "I know Mother doesn't have a computer, but I do!"

You look at Peridot, whose eyebrows have leapt upward. "Let's do it," you say for both of you.

Dr. Drakken's house, which you have only before glimpsed from the outside, turns out to be spacious and rumpled, smelling harshly of chemicals and softly of cocoa powder. His computer sits at a desk against one wall of the kitchen. Its bulk claims nearly an entire corner and reminds you of the observation hub the Diamonds built on the moon, antiquated in comparison to the devices Peridot possessed, grafted directly onto her body. Drakken pushes a button with "START" written in large silver letters on the central processing unit, and a trickle of light appears above it; the screen wavers from side to side several times before it focuses on an image of his flowers lifting their yellow centers to Earth's sun.

Healing began to flow from your gemstone at the same time it began to flow from the stature of Pink Diamond in disguise, but there is a difference to it this morning. It no longer seems a delicate thing that will scatter with a breath. It has made its way to the deepest trench, firmed, and begun to consolidate into rock, and you can no longer think of an enemy powerful enough to move it.

Dr. Drakken places a hand on a rounded device you know is called a mouse, though it bears little resemblance to the scurrying creatures that nested in the barn sometimes, and moves an arrowhead symbol around on the screen. The flowers vanish and a blank white screen, an untouched mineral field, takes their place. Drakken taps the keys on a detached command board reminiscent of Homeworld's prewar technology and bright, clear letters appear on the screen.

"Now then," he says, "first thing we should do is – let's see – ummm – ohhh, that would be terrific, but no, no – first things first. We ought to determine our price! Yes, that's a great first priority; so very professional. How much would you want to get paid for each job?"

"Is fifteen thousand dollars too much?" Peridot asks.

You put your hand over your mouth at the horrified expression that springs up on Drakken's face. It is all the answer you need.

"Very too much," Drakken says.

"Twelve thousand?" Peridot says.

"No, no. We're going to need to reduce that, too."

"How?" Peridot says.

Drakken stammers a moment, and then he grabs a piece of paper with scribblings on it and a pencil from atop his desk. He writes the number 12, followed by the multiplication sign, and finally the number 10 with a tiny 4 orbiting it. "Scientific notation! See this here?" He taps the rubberized end of the pencil against the 4. "The exponent? We need to make it a smaller number."

Peridot follows every movement of the graphite tip, moon-eyed. You watch with vague interest. It is a mathematical concept, this you can tell, and you could probably even understand it if you cared enough.

Once Drakken gets Peridot to agree to no more than twenty dollars for each job, she has another question: "How are we going to know when they need us? Will they send a distress beacon?"

"No," you say, rolling your eyes. You glance at Dr. Drakken's pocket. "We'll have to…give them a phone number, I think. Probably Drakken's phone number."

"Right-a-rooney!" Drakken clicks his finger and thumb at you this time. "Let me get that down." He adds Please contact, followed by a string of digits, under the price. "All right, now you ladies can go nuts!"

Peridot pounces at the computer and cackles as she begins to type. Her fingers dash across the keys with the same swiftness she once used to navigate the holographic screen her artificial hands formed. The first key she hits is the one that capitalizes every letter that appears, screaming out from the white screen, and she cries "Yes!" as she ends every sentence with the excited punctuation.

HONEST ALIENS SEEK HONEST WORK!

GREETINGS, EARTH RESIDENTS! WE FIND OURSELVES, AFTER PERFORMING A HEROIC SACRIFICE IN THE LINE OF DUTY, IN NEED OF A NEW DWELLING ESTABLISHMENT! TO FUND THIS EFFORT, PLEASE LET US DO ODD THINGS TO YOUR YARDS!

Drakken laughingly recommends changing that to "please give us odd jobs to do around your yards."

LOVE FROM LAPIS AND PERIDOT! is followed by the price and Drakken's phone number.

"Now, you can also insert Clipart pictures," Drakken says, "to add some color. Make the flyer really pop! Figuratively speaking, of course," he adds when you and Peridot blink at him.

As far as you are concerned, Peridot's flyers are popping well enough on their own, begging for attention in the middle of a white plane. You wonder if she has ever known how it feels to be shy.

To Peridot's amusement, the only pictures that surface when she types in "alien" are cartoonish drawings of bog-skinned beings with protruding eyes and wobbling antennae that are far from the reach of Homeworld's empire; she adds one nevertheless, along with a picture of green paper money in stacks. She chooses to finish with a photograph of two humans hugging. Her reasoning there you could not explain, and yet somehow you understand.

Drakken thunders his approval as the paper slowly emerges from the printer. Peridot bounces in the computer chair.

It is not how you would have said it, you realize now. For one thing, you still do not like calling yourself an alien; the word sounds belligerent and foreign, two qualities Earth hasn't brought out in you for quite some time. This paper is not wrong, but it is covered with Peridot's fingerprints alone.

You take a step forward. "Could I make a different one, too?"

"Absolutely you may!" Drakken says and turns the page blank again. Peridot hops down from the chair to allow you to take a seat, while you reassure your roiling gem that this is not a mission, you are not in charge, and you and Peridot have done nothing to harm anyone. You reach for the mouse, which divides into two small indented panels at the top. Perhaps they reminded its human inventors of mouse ears and inspired the name.

It takes you much longer to complete your flyer than it did Peridot. You sort through the words, teasing them apart as you have seen Mama Lipsky do to Drakken's misbehaving hair. Above all, you search for honesty, something you tend by nature to reject in favor of others' acceptance. But honesty is a stormless, calm sea, unconcerned with defending itself, and you have been wrong about your nature before.

Need help with your yard? Please call Lapis and Peridot.

We are immigrants from another planet. Money didn't exist there, but now that we live here, we're going to need some. If you give us a chance, we can pull weeds, mow lawns, wash windows, and pick up litter. Thank you for your consideration.

You select of a picture of a healthful, verdant lawn with a human on a lawn mower shaped like a tractor and place it between your words and the price. You stare at it, this meepmorp you have created, and you feel the edges of your lips nudge upward the way they seem to do so often now.

"Beautiful!" Drakken declares as your page slides from the printer and lands at his feet. "Okay, ladies. I need to go clone these – err, I mean. Heh." He rubs the top of his ear. "I mean, make copies of them. Still get a little stuck in mad scientist lingo sometimes."

You smile.

Drakken carries both papers over to a long flattened box and opens it to reveal translucent brown lines that mark off the shape of a slightly smaller box. He positions Peridot's flyer inside the second box and makes certain its top corner aligns with the box's, careful intent marking his hurried, clumsy movements. A moment later, he pushes buttons around the rim of the bigger box and closes the lid, and in that moment you recognize a scanning processor that you remember from the Homeworld museum, already an artifact at the time of your Emergence.

Like most of the other things you remembered about your home, that museum had fallen into disrepair and become unrecognizable by the time of your return. You wonder if they will rebuild it now as the old ways are repealed; the newly made Gems will need to know the truth of their heritage.

A copied piece of paper tumbles out of the processor. You reach for it, and Peridot's arm stops you. "The ink will still be wet on a machine this primitive," she says. The joy of correcting someone else simmers in her voice. It is the basis for scorn, as shale is the basis for Earth bricks, but it requires a conversion process that Peridot no longer completes.

Drakken retrieves each sheet after it falls and arranges the sheets into three narrow piles. "All right! We've got a couple of winners here!" he says. "Actually, we've got several dozen winners here! Time to go spread the word!"

He lifts one pile with a muffled grunt, motioning for you to take another. Peridot grabs the last without being asked, and together you walk out to his driveway. He takes to his hovercraft, you to your wings, and Peridot to her trash can lid. Middleton bobs beneath you, a colorful display.

Dr. Drakken makes frequent stops, using adhesive strips to affix your flyers to sidewalk lamps, newspaper stands, and eating-place windows. When Peridot drops one onto the roof of a house, Drakken's eyes bulge and his teeth seem to jut forward as well. "In public places, Peridot!" he calls to her. "We're not desperate yet!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Peridot draws herself upright.

Several minutes later, a beige building tall enough to house a Diamond comes into view beneath you. On its front face someone has painted what appears to be a hunk of pink coral, though it stares with humanoid eyes, stands on humanoid legs, and points with humanoid arms. Next to it, in zigzagged lettering, are the words Smarty Mart.

"Is that where we're going to go to buy our new stuff? Smarty Mart?" you call to Drakken.

"Smarty Mart, the one and only!" he says. "Lovely place. Especially since they revoked their restraining order against me."

"What's a restraining order?" Peridot asks.

"A piece of paper telling you to stay away or you'll go to jail," Drakken explains in a happy voice right before he shudders.

You change the subject as quickly as you can. "What's the pink thing wearing glasses?"

"That's their logo," Drakken says. "It's a brain. You know, Smarty Mart."

"A brain?" You squint at the coral-like object once more. "But…why is it walking?"

"Oh, they gave it a face and limbs to personify it. Artistic license." Drakken flashes his brilliant smile. "That's a fancy way of saying they can do whatever they want as long as it looks cool."

"Oh." You think back to the haunting, dark woman on the cover of Greg's album, the ocean rising in a column behind her, etched with the words Water Witch, and the sun feels warmer on your back.

"We don't have to limit ourselves to Middleton, either!" Drakken calls on the breeze after scattering a few more flyers. "We can cover Upperton and Lowerton, too! I mean, not cover them completely, but we can raise awareness for our services!"

You have heard the names of those two towns before; it only makes sense that Middleton sits between them.

When the three of you pass a glimmering sign that reads "Welcome to Upperton" in curled letters, you expect the change to be drastic, like the point on any land mass that divides east-flowing rivers from west-flowing rivers. Rather, the houses gradually grow larger and farther apart until you fly over homes nearly the size of Smarty Mart and far more ornate, settled on wide tracts of land. Many of the houses feature tall pale columns that wind upward to support a carved, overhanging porch roof, some barricaded further by black iron gates that Bismuth could have forged herself. The grounds, which could hold an array of modest houses, are instead decorated with small human-created ponds the exaggerated color of Aquamarine's eyes; stone fountains; and trees with perfectly aligned branches.

You cannot imagine, as you lower a flyer onto someone's doorstep, that anyone here would need your help with their lawns. Cut short, they have a sheen to them as does everything else on the premises, including the sleek cars parked on the driveways; you would not have been surprised to see palanquins instead.

It is beautiful in an eerie, untouched way, as though Steven has bubbled it to keep it from harm. You are glad to leave it.

You travel back over Middleton, over Dr. Drakken's house and the incomplete house when Kim's family will soon live, and continue past Mama Lipsky's house in the opposite direction to Lowerton. This time, the change is drastic.

The first thing you see is a scrubby forest, its dense, dark leaves creating a canopy where sunrays get lost, probably very little making it to the ground. Sunlight does fall on the rest of Lowerton only to bathe everything else in dull, haggard colors: the crooked signposts, the cracks and dents spotting the road, and the plants growing from them without aim. Houses crowd together, all looking as old as Mama Lipsky's and most not as well-maintained. Some stand proudly in an attempt to retain their dignity, while others have long since given up trying to be brave; you relate to all of them.

Fenceposts that resemble stacks of driftwood mark their backyards. Some yards hold playground equipment and the songs of playing children, and others hold pieces of machinery as though the owner is creating a laboratory in her yard. You think of the dark, lifeless places on Homeworld that you saw only from a distance, as a Gem of your status would never need to venture there, and where Lars undoubtedly met the Off-Colors.

You can scarcely remember to drop the flyers.

The next several streets are much the same as you fly up and down them, some buildings optimistic and some gloomy, yet all drawn and needing. The gray house with the grass in the front lawn that has grown scruffy and wild like Dr. Drakken's hair and the paint scraping from its corners would not stand out to you were it not for the object in the center of its backyard.

Long, skinny, and black, it pierces the ground, its other end jutting forward into the sky, far above the roof of the house itself. You recognize the insectile leg of a Lorwardian ground-battler, torn at its hinges, the brutality evident even as it lies broken. Moss and vines wander atop it and the grass beneath it has turned to straw, yellow and sharpened.

Something clenches in your gem, trying to close out the sight. It doesn't work. Your wings pull you up short.

"Lapis? What is it?" Peridot's trash can lid spins over to you and stops as she follows your eyes with her own. "Oh."

"Eww," Drakken agrees. He presses his foot down, and the hovercraft too comes to a stop. "That's a bit of an eyesore, isn't it?"

You nod; it does sting your eyes to look at it. "Why is it still here? All the Lorwardian junk I remember from last year is gone in your neighborhood."

"Heh," Drakken says, although he does not look as though anything is funny. "See, this is Lowerton. Different city, different rules. And its upkeep budget is significantly lower than ours."

You remember hearing the word budget before: the amount of money set aside for a particular purpose at a given time, though you don't see what money has to do with clearing wreckage. You stare at this house that never had a chance to recover and feel somehow that you should apologize to it in spite of the fact that you were for once not involved.

"It makes me…sad," you say, testing the words. They acclimate to Earth's atmosphere with very little difficulty. "Can't we help them?"

Peridot and Drakken exchange looks. The freshness of their faces strikes you as it always has, but in a different place; rather than coveting it, you find yourself turning toward it to let your old soul bask in it.

"I don't see why not," Drakken says.

Peridot shoves her hands to her hips. "Of course we can! Du-uh – this is the whole reason why we're here!"

You smile. You will never tire of Peridot's tinny voice warbling Earth slang.

Dr. Drakken parks the hovercraft on the road and leads your party up the uneven driveway to a thin wooden porch that sways when the breeze hits it. His finger trembles as he pokes the welcome-chime, from excitement or perhaps nerves.

There is a long pause before a man taller than Drakken opens the door, squinting into the sunlight as though it is unfamiliar to him. He is wide at the shoulders, chest, and stomach, and he wears the sort of cap that appears to have a duck bill attached to the front and cheers on a team, usually named after an animal; his reads GO LEMURS! A bitter smell, woodsmoke hybridized with acid water, looms in the door with him. For some reason you know not to wrinkle your nose.

"Can I help you with somethin'?" the man says. His eyes travel from Drakken to Peridot to you. You think of the sword that Rose once wore at her waist and Connie now wears at hers, hoping not to be needed but ready to be unsheathed if it is. It was not fear that kept you from wrinkling your nose, however, and it is not fear that keeps your feet solidly in place now.

"Hello-oo," Dr. Drakken coos with a flourish. "I'm Dr. Drakken. You may know me as the man who saved the world."

"Oh, yeah. Congrats on that." You search the man's eyes for insincerity yet find none. "What are you doing here, handing out Bibles?"

Drakken shakes his head. "We were just – admiring that fascinating example of Lorwardian technology in your backyard."

His eyes too are sincere, and you know he loves all machinery as you love all water: in a way that goes far beyond its capacity to defend you.

The man's face tightens. "You want it? You can have it. The city commissioner came out a few days after the invasion and looked it over. Decided it wasn't a threat all by itself and he couldn't classify it as top priority. Haven't seen him since."

You remember then, with a start, that he is human; a Gem his size would be able to, if not dispose of the debris, push it aside.

"I rented a truck and tried to get rid of it myself," the man continues. "Tore a disk doin' it." For a moment, you are confused – in your experience, disks are no more organic than you are, and they hold music or movies – but then you notice his posture, weary and suffering, and understand that he must have somehow hurt his fragile human body. "Old football injury."

You have seen footage of football before, two groups of armored men rushing forward trying to keep their hold on a ball that does not look like a ball and is not kicked by their feet. Loud and violent, it did not seem a sport to you, any more than arena fighting on a colonized planet.

"Ohhh, I feel you there," Drakken says. When the man gazes at him in disbelief, pink blotches overtake Drakken's cheeks, his words as bumbling as the movement of his limbs. "Well, yes, ggh, in my case it wasn't football. It was a mis-programmed robot – and honestly, given that I was but a college sophomore, I really think I deserve a little more credit for her working as well as she did!"

"Right," the man says. "So you understand – I had to go get that taken care of, and I'm still paying for the procedure out my –" The man's hand passes across his mouth, wiping away the words he was planning to say. "So I don't exactly have any extra money to get a crew out here with a wench or anything."

Peridot's body quivers in its enthusiasm. "We can help you with that!" she says and presses one of her flyers into the man's hand.

He glances down at it and reads aloud. "Honest Aliens Seek Honest Work." When he looks up again, his expression seems to stiffen, like cloth soaked and left to dry in a tousled knot. "Look, I don't wanna be some kind of bigot or anything. But wasn't it aliens that got us into this mess to begin with?"

His voice does not have an edge to it, but it cuts you anyway.

To your surprise, Peridot nods and leans forward, suddenly seeming wise. "We didn't love Earth at first, either. But that was before we got to know it and became acquainted with its lifeforms. Organic life should be simpler, but it's extraordinarily complicated and fascinating!"

The man squints at her. So far, the humans have seemed to find Peridot's strangeness winsome. Hopefully that will continue.

You address the man for the first time. "Earth gave us a home when our planet couldn't." Drakken rests one hand on your shoulder and the other on Peridot's head, attesting for you. "We want to pay it back."

For a moment long by Earth's stands, you hold the man's gaze and watch kindness dance with suspicion in his eyes, locking into an unlikely fusion.

He lets his arms relax at his sides. "Like I said, you're welcome to it. If you can move it." The man frowns at your skinny frame and Peridot's short stature.

"Oh, don't worry," she tells him. "We have powers."

The man's frown turns into a smile faded as the unpainted wooden boards. "No kiddin'?" he says. "What kind?"

"I manipulate metal," Peridot replies.

"Water," you say when the man glances to you.

"Amazing," he says quietly.

You return his smile, for he needs it more than you do. "Oh, plus I have wings, too." You pull them forth to demonstrate and then fly Peridot and Drakken around to the backyard, over the twiglike fence, landing on ground that squelches beneath your shoes. Drakken cringes, but you only feel yourself smiling even more widely; the soil is moist enough to offer its help.

"Holy smokes. This is so much larger than anything else I've ever moved," Peridot says. She speaks as though she has the highest regard for the Lorwardian instrument in front of her. "This might take a while."

"Why don't you just concentrate on getting this –" you stamp a foot next to the end buried in the dirt – "pulled out, and I can lift it from there?"

Peridot's face brightens. "Excellent plan, Lapis."

She turns and faces the machine leg and crushes her eyes shut in concentration, the skin around her gemstone working. You have never seen a Gem have to strain to reach her powers the way Peridot does, but then, in your day every Gem knew about her powers soon after Emergence. For Peridot, her powers must seem as odd and Earthbound as lions and pumpkins.

After several minutes, the wet earth beneath the instrument begins to break apart and its pointed tip surfaces, a slithering tunnel left behind. Peridot beams anew when you give her a thumb's-up and take to the sky again.

You take a minute to connect with the water in the ground, asking it in the inner language you share with it how much it can spare without compromising the soil; you will take no more. Its answer washes through your back, and you float one pace backward and call that precise amount to yourself. It rises readily from the ground. You fold your arms in front of you, crossing your wrists at your chest, and the liquid divides in two as though it were solid, half flanking you on the right and half on the left.

"I'm down here with my powers, fully prepared to do my part!" Dr. Drakken calls. "You know, just in case you need any help!"

You would reply to him and reassure him, but you don't want to interrupt your conversation with the water. The core of your gem pulses as it aligns its essence with that of the small ponds on either side of you, centering and strengthening you. You raise your hands and spread your fingers, and the water instantly shapes itself into a pair of transparent hands, its fingers pointed toward the earth. They rush to the location you give them and fasten beneath the Lorwardian device, propping between it and the ground.

"….Okay. Never mind," Drakken says, and there is nothing short of awe in his voice.

With a gentle tug, you lift the device until it hovers beside you in the air. You pull both it and yourself to a greater height, from which you can assess the whole of the town, most of which consists of scraggy fields and weathered houses with the same element of sadness about them. At the farthest corner of your vision, though, you glimpse a gate built from neither wood nor iron but rather a rusted gray metal topped by curls of wire with metallic burrs standing out.

Behind the gate rests a machine, a blade at one end stilled in its descent above a rotating steel line that delivers to it scraps warped beyond recognition. This is, you recognize from television shows, a dump, where Earth garbage is culled to be destroyed. You try not to notice the resemblance it bears to the scattered piles of outdated items on Homeworld.

With fingers furled, you hold your palms level with your chest and then ease them downward. The water hands imitate yours, lowering the device into the mound of garbage. It settles into place with a soft creaking, meek and mild, and you imagine something that has never visited your mind before: the Lorwardian High Princess and Prince with their heads inclined in defeat.

From the building near the bladed machine, a door clicks open, and you turn and flit away, eager to remain undiscovered.

The sky is every bit as blue and vibrant in Lowerton as in Middleton or Upperton, nothing like the white shroud pulled over Homeworld. At this height, you could almost not notice the discrepancy. The thought substantiates your wispy insides, filling you, and you hold it close as you fly over dilapidated houses and poles of light that have burned out.

You return to the man's home. The chunk of Lorwardian refuse that Drakken called an eyesore took up the majority of the constricted backyard, and your removing it has exposed a charred, brittle area beneath. It is no Kindergarten, though; trees, undersized yet steadfast, poke from opposite corners of the yard, reminding you that Earth has a history of recovery. Below you, Peridot smooths and pats into place the dirt she dislodged tearing the eyesore's metallic tip loose.

You think of the man inside and the many pieces of his life you do not understand, and you want to make at least one of those pieces beautiful. You hear Dr. Drakken in your head, saying, Water can be used to heal, too.

Keeping your hands raised, you drop to the ground, and the water remains suspended in the air, awaiting instructions. It is unsalted water and handles differently than the ocean, quicker and sharper as though restless, but it will follow your lead as it always does. Its energy, its willingness, and its steadiness flow through you, more natural than any heartbeat you could manifest. With its gentle touch on you, you redistribute the water from corners already sopping to the driest portions of dirt. Without words you give it an assignment that can best be translated as Do whatever you can to help this yard.

The water agrees, thickening and gelling as it becomes part of the soil.

Your surroundings don't seem so broken and vacant now, though you can see plainly that they still are. For an instant, you picture them full of plant life: Dr. Drakken's flowers, Peridot's corn, or the meadow's wild grass. You fly Drakken and Peridot around to the front yard before the reflection in your mind can be tarnished.

"Great job, ladies!" Drakken pants. Two lopsided petals splay across his neck.

"You can say that again," the tall man says. He steps back onto his porch, a large wall of a human being, and leaves the front door's latch hanging just shy of the doorframe. Even through such a tiny gap, the acrid scent of his house seeps out, and you have to choose not to breathe it. "Geez, you two just did the work of an entire construction company in…what, twenty minutes flat?"

Even on Earth, that must not qualify as a long time.

"What can I say?" Peridot flashes a silly grin. "We're awesome."

You are not sure if the man chuckles or coughs, the sound like a saw against tree bark. He reaches into the pocket of his faded denim pants and produces a wrinkled square object that opens into compartments you recognize from Drakken's money-carrier, this one brown and sagging where Drakken's is blue and puckered.

"Let's see," he says. "How much do I owe you?"

You look at this man. His jawline is studded with the beginnings of hair, like the remnants left in a field after harvest, and the circles under his eyes are nearly as deep as Drakken's. You shake your head. "No, it's okay," you say, placing your foot over Peridot's before she can name some outrageous sum. "You don't need to pay us."

"The –" the man wipes his mouth again – "heck I don't! You probably got no idea how much time and money you just saved me." His words churn, treading water. "And I ain't no moocher, even if I look like one.

"Now – is five dollars okay? Apiece?" he asks in a voice that allows no argument.

You step harder on Peridot's foot. "Five dollars is great," you say.

Peridot has the sense to nod.

The man gives you a green paper that bears the image of a man even wearier looking, with sorrowful eyes and a pelt of hair on his chin. You do not recognize him. There is still so much you don't know about Earth.

"Wow thanks," Peridot says as the man hands her another paper that appears to be identical. "We're going to use this to furnish our new house! We can buy more trucks and more brooms and more toilets!"

The man's forehead furrows. "Not even gonna ask."

"That's wise," Drakken says.

The man turns and pushes the door with his elbow, giving himself enough space to enter. "Seriously, though…thanks." His eyes smile. "Take care of yourselves."

"Yes, sir," you say.

The door closes behind the man. You realize then that you do not know his name, nor does he know yours.

Perhaps that doesn't matter.

You fly back the way you came, finally landing on Mama Lipsky's own front lawn, which now appears majestic in comparison. Even then, you still cannot shake the sensation that you stand in the long shadow of Lowerton's water tower, rusted as the gate around the dump.

Peridot drops backward onto the lawn and gazes at the piece of Earth currency she holds above her face. "That was fun!"

"I'm not sure fun is the right word," you say carefully. "But…I'm glad we did it."

You glance down at the green paper in your hands, the first money you have ever earned; it is warm and wrinkled from the man's big hands. Something weights your shoulders, and while no harder to move, they feel pendulous, like branches overwhelmed with leaves. You sigh, and the weight lightens yet doesn't disappear.

Later that night, after the sun has slipped away to light the other half of the planet, you pad out to drink of the dark on Mama Lipsky's back deck, which is aged in the way of Earth objects over fifty years old. You imagine it as the deck of a ship, warm in the sun and steady, the ocean playing beneath it, as you tuck your legs up to your chest. Above you, the ever-changing stars glimmer, Homeworld's galaxy visible through their layers, no longer unreachable and no longer sacred; it strangely comforts you just to know it is still there.

Freed from Peridot's endless chattering, your thoughts float to the man with the injured disk. Does he have a teddy bear to cuddle up with while he sleeps or when he is afraid? You hope so.

The wave building inside of you is not guilt, though it feels very much like it. Guilt, however, is fresh water, and this feeling is salt water, similar in construction yet easier in tone, compelling you forward in a way guilt never has. Had this wave swept over Homeworld, and had your people heeded it, their guilt would be so much less right now.

You do not take the time to weigh and measure it, though. It will not reveal anything of use. If what you have heard about Dr. Drakken's life before his changing is accurate he could never make up for his crimes, yet he does good anyway because it is his job.

It is the job of everyone aware.

Around you, insects click their mouths and legs in the night. You tip your head back and stare again at the sky that has so long been a part of your journey. You wonder if it recognizes the small blue Gem crouched on this deck, with her warrior's clothing and her decisive heart.

For a moment, the light of your body flickers at the edges before solidifying again, becoming not rigid but firm. You will not forget. You will not reminisce, either.

The decisions of the naïve are no longer yours to make.

You stand up, let the wind skim through your bob, turn, and walk back into the house. The quiet has gone on long enough for now.

Peridot and Pumpkin greet you inside, Peridot with scurrying lips and Pumpkin with wiggling tail. You spend another hour or two on the couch with them, whispering and giggling and looking at the five-dollar bills you received for your very odd job before you lie down and close your eyes. Pumpkin's warm breath on your hand is the last thing you feel as you turn off for the night.

You dream of Little Homeworld being built and of yourself in the air, helping Bismuth place a roof on top of a house for Watermelon Tourmaline or Biggs Jasper. You dream of everything you once loved about your home planet transposed to Earth and bettered, common soldiers living among former Elites, fusion permitted between any who are willing, although you doubt that will ever include you. When you awaken, the happiness is still there even as the ore of the dream disappears.

The next morning begins, as did the morning before, with Dr. Drakken showing up on his mother's front porch. Today, his grin seems to spread all the way from one comical ear to the other as he tells you that a woman has contacted him on his cell phone to request your help with her house.

Her house is in Middleton, not Lowerton, only a few streets over. Descending on the neighborhood, you see it as if through newly regenerated eyes: the uniform spacing between the houses; the lack of fences, one lawn running smoothly into the next; the crisp square corners of the grass as they join with the sidewalk. Your gem feels cool and clear, empty of ripples, as you walk up to her porch. Peridot presses the door-chime with an important flair that sets Drakken to chuckling.

A woman comes to stand on the porch with you, tugging the door firmly shut behind her. Though she is much younger than you or Peridot, she has passed the time when Earth organisms begin to fade and sag. Her hair has lost its color, though not its shine, and she wears a shirt of Raspberry Quartz hue buttoned all the way up to her neck and a pair of pants that continue from the shirt without a pause.

"Good morning, ma'am!" Dr. Drakken says, almost singing the words.

"Good morning," the woman replies. Her voice is sharp, not faded at all, and she glances from Peridot to you three times before peering back down at the flyer she holds. "Are you two…Peridot and Lapis Laz-ul-i?" She mispronounces your second name, placing her emphasis on the middle syllable rather than the last.

"We are," you say, "but it's Lapis Lazuli."

"Oh, of course," the woman says. "Forgive me."

That is probably the easiest thing you have ever had to forgive, so you nod at her.

"Two remarkably talented and kindhearted ladies ready to use their – their unique skills for the benefit of Earth citizens!" Drakken adds from behind you. You imagine him smiling, redirecting the sun off his teeth.

"How lovely," the woman says. "So what are your specialties?"

"Well." Peridot appears to consider this for a moment. "I am good at everything."

You roll your eyes.

"But especially working with machinery! And metal instruments! I can – I can – I can slice apart your tiny trees!" Peridot points to seven small bushes that line the porch.

"'Trim her hedges,' Peridot," Drakken murmurs to her.

"Yes! That! And Lapis here excels at anything even remotely water-related! Plus, she can do terrafo –"

"Landscaping!" You nearly shout the term you learned from television before Peridot can complete the familiar word. "I can do landscaping. You know, like putting in ponds and…stuff," you finish with a shrug, flustered.

"Well, I don't need any ponds put in for the time being," the woman says. "But tell you what. Those hedges are very far overdue for a trim. Almost as much as this boy is overdue for a haircut." She directs her gaze to Drakken, who turns bright pink and bites his lip.

Long stalks grow from the shorter brush of the hedges without pattern or logic, their ends arching high and then curving over themselves like organic fishing poles. There is something charming and natural about them just as they are, yet you would rather see them trimmed than Drakken's hair.

"And my windows are just a mess. You could wash them," she says, pointing to you. "Although – they might be a little high for you to reach –"

You slide your wings out. "I think I can manage."

The woman's brown eyes widen and her hands go white as she clutches them in front of her, yet she tilts her face upward and nods stoutly. "Well, then," she says with a gasp. "Seems like that shouldn't be a problem, yes? And when you're done with that, one of you can pull those nasty weeds that keep springing up all over the place around here. A body can hardly keep up with them."

At least a human body hardly can.

"Yes," you say.

"Affirmative!" Peridot cries.

"Ugh," Drakken says.

When you turn to look at him, he cradles Pumpkin in tight arms, and his expression has all at once grown uneasy. "If you're going to destroy plants, I'm going to have to be elsewhere." He claps one hand to the side of his neck, but you see the tip of a green vine peeking between his fingers. "I – ghh – empathize with them a little too much.

"Toodles, ladies!" he calls as he backs down the lawn. One foot misses the sidewalk and he staggers in place for a minute, his arms two graceless flails, before he falls on his backside and yelps. "I'm okay!" he adds, waving at you as Pumpkin nuzzles his neck.

The woman laughs, a clear sound like new glass, and opens the door again. "I'll go get the supplies for you." She points at Drakken, now too far away to hear her. "Isn't that the nice young man who saved the world?"

You nod. Everything she has said is true. "He's also my boyfriend."

The woman clasps a hand to her chest the way some humans do when they see a small animal.

"And my friend-who-is-a-boy," Peridot adds. "I don't have too many of those. You see, our species –"

"Hey, how about we don't completely weird her out just yet?" you say.

The woman ducks into her house and returns a moment later with an object that she must have had waiting just inside the front door. It resembles a humungous pair of scissors, although its blades are serrated, and she seems a bit too quick to hand it to Peridot. To you she brings a plastic bucket; a shimmering and an acceptance glide down your back, and you don't need to look to know the bucket contains water. A synthetic sponge floats on top amidst frothing bubbles.

You glance up at the windows. They are long and slender like Pearl's fingers, dulled in places by grayish streaks. No doubt those are what this woman wants you to remove.

"We'll get that cleaned up for you in a jiffy, ma'am," you say in the way you have heard Greg speak to the customers at his car wash.

With a light deep in her eyes, the woman takes Peridot aside and speaks to her in a hush, pointing a finger at her lawn, most likely describing which plants are weeds and which are wanted. Peridot nods, and the woman walks back into her house, letting the door fall shut behind her.

You raise a hand, and the water creeps up to find it. The soap added to it has turned its demeanor slow and lazy, with nothing of the weapon about it. This makes it easy to lift the water and push it toward the window in light, gossamer movements, taking care not to blast the windows and break them as hurricanes can do.

Like a flint edge, a realization sparks in your gem: You do not feel removed from this moment. You are open and as alive to the light inside you as you ever were to the darkness. Below you, Peridot hums to herself while she clips the hedges, operating the scissors first with her hands and then with her mind.

You sit cross-legged on the porch and hold the water in a paneled wave, guiding it to the window. The implacable bond between you and the water requires neither words nor motions. It is music heard, felt, and understood all at once.

Soap lathers up the window and you give it a vigorous scrubbing. This glass possesses a front and back, like the cover flaps on some storybooks, and it poses no more of a threat to you than the books themselves. The water droplets between the clumps of foam awaken and change, assuming forms you did not realize you were contemplating.

Tiny, opaque figures race back and forth across the glass, reenacting what you soon recognize as the Gem war. You see Pearl with a sword in each hand, Bismuth with her fists doubled and ready to be transformed into mallets, and Jasper with her thick, cold shoulders. You see the Corruption Bomb hit. You see Pink Diamond take refuge in Rose Quartz and Rose Quartz take refuge in Steven. You see yourself, driven by anger and fear to a ferocity that frightened you all the more.

Each event washes down the window, softening back into a droplet when it meets the windowsill. You whisk it aside before the wood can warp.

Your reflection smiles back at you from the clean glass.

You move on to the next window, the water moving with you, and repeat the process, crafting brief scurrying meepmorps of everything that once terrified you and running them across the stains until they disappear. When you are finished, your arms dangle at your sides and your chest takes in breaths unneeded but wanted.

Only then do you notice the silence: welcome but discordant with Peridot's presence. You glance from one side of the lawn to the other and don't see her anywhere. The plant-scissors lie abandoned on the grass.

Unlike Dr. Drakken's flat lawn, this woman's lawn slopes downward at a steep pitch. The ground has been cut open in places, raw soil overturned and unsightly green plants flung in all directions like the discarded satellites that surround Homeworld. You follow the trail to the end of the slope, finding more of the same, scratches in the earth and scatterings of what must be weeds, until you spot a yellow triangle bobbing against the green. She is still humming.

"Hey, Peri!" you call down to her. Your voice has to work twice as hard as her does to be heard, and she misses it entirely.

You scoop a splash of water from the bucket and drop it on Peridot's head. She shrieks and shakes, the water hitting the ground. You hope that the soap in it doesn't hurt the Earth.

"Lapis!" Peridot cries. "What was that for?"

"Did you do all this?" you ask, although you already know the answer.

Peridot looks at you, unconcerned.

"Why, yes, I did. Quite easily, as a matter of fact." Peridot grins, a smug little slant of her mouth. "Those weeds were no match for the might of Peridot!"

"Of course not. But, look –" You take Peridot's shoulders and turn her around to face the lawn she has ripped apart. "You can't just leave it like this."

Clouds pass over Peridot's eyes, golden where the sunbeams stream through the tint of her visor. "Oh. Yes. That's rather…hmmm. How shall I put this? Very, very, very ugly!"

You don't let yourself laugh.

"I'll fix it, though!" Peridot grabs a handful of mud and runs to the top of the hill. On her knees, she attempts to smash the mud into the earth's cracks with the flat of her hand. The mud makes a wet smacking sound before pulling loose and tumbling to the sidewalk, where it breaks into pieces.

Peridot gazes at you in horror, horror that quickly chips away in slate sheets to reveal a face on the brink of inspiration. "Phooey. Even I cannot perform the maintenance necessary for this upgrade of 'lawn.' But you, Lapis! You can! Can't you? Can you at least try to ter –"

"You better believe I can!" Your words leap out at a pace much faster than usual, and your thoughts quiver, but you nod. Anything to keep her from saying that word.

You fly back to the porch and squeeze the soap from the water in the bucket. Its lumpen slowness smoothed out, it floats at your side, alert and awaiting instructions. You don't need to measure or calculate as Peridot and Dr. Drakken both love to do; you need only to center and picture the scene before you as it should be, how the mud should be distributed and how thick it should lie. For a job this small, it should only take one try.

The vision jumps from your gem into the water. With a flick of your hand, it hits the mud and rolls with it to the bottom of the hill. You squint, and the mud is parceled out among the patches of broken earth. You bend your wrist, and the mud finds every opening Peridot cut into the lawn and clings to it, curving to become part of the smallest furrows. You flatten your hand and brush it through the air, and the mud layers, filling sunken spaces and smoothing until the ground is even once again. It will grow back together like the bones in Greg's leg.

You stand there for a minute, longer than it took to repair the ground, and look at your work. You have just used the skills you wish you had never been Taught, and the planet is still inhabitable.

If there is guilt within you, it quickly evaporates in the summer heat.

Peridot throws her arms around you, babbling her gratitude in words that stream together. You don't pull away.

The front door opens again, and the woman steps out of her house. Her brows snap together. She appears upset, almost angered, and your back stiffens; a lifetime working under Blue Diamond has Taught you that kind faces are the scariest ones when they become angry.

You follow the point of the woman's gaze to her row of hedges, the ones that Peridot was supposed to be tending. They are level now, the long antennas snipped away, but they are level with Peridot's knees, worn almost to the ground. You try to imagine Drakken's hair cut that short and you flinch inside.

"My hedges!" the woman says. She glances from the hedges to the dark-brown line where you repaired the earth. "My lawn! What happened here?"

Beside you, Peridot whimpers.

At the sound, a vent of hot water opens in your gem. Words ripple through you: Yep. I guess that's what you get for hiring someone from another planet and not explaining yourself to them. You cannot close them out of your mind, but you can close your lips to them.

It's a good thing Dr. Drakken is not here, you decide. He would only become upset as well, throwing everything he had into defending you and Peridot, and nothing good ever comes when anger touches anger. It's a good thing he is not here, and a facet of you wishes you were not here either. Yet Peridot has never left you alone with your mistakes.

You step between Peridot and the woman, placing yourself precipitously close to her anger. "Peridot did exactly as she was told," you say in your most respectful voice. "But it looks like that wasn't what you needed her to do, and we're very sorry about that. We're new at this. Sometimes we mess up. If you don't want to pay us, we'll understand. We won't like it, but we'll understand." Your eyes never leave the woman's.

Her eyes are several shades lighter than the soil and steeped in conflict. Without speaking, she bends down and picks up a handful of dirt as though collecting a sample to send back to Homeworld, and you remember in a detached fashion that the ground is not where humans grow to maturity. She lets it fall between her fingers and then reaches up to catch hold of one of the hedges. A pinched sound comes out of her mouth as she rolls the shortened end back and forth, lifting it to examine the underside. You feel Peridot's quick nervous breaths against the strip of skin above your pants.

When the woman looks back to you, her scowl has dimmed, the glare of a comet many lightyears away. She glances at the windows as they dry, spotless, above her.

"Well," the woman says. She knocks her hands together, dirt sliding off of them. "Well. I suppose you were following instructions as best as you knew how. And there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage done. So, yes, I will pay you, so long as you take this lesson to heart for any future lawns you treat."

"You mean, like…get the hedges all one length but not super-short?" you venture. "And try to be more gentle with the weeds?"

The woman almost smiles, but then she doesn't. "Exactly."

Peridot rushes forward as though to hug the woman, stopping right before she reaches her.

The woman digs around in her money-holder and with fingers fine and knobbed as tree branches passes you a green paper. The man in the center of this paper has wilder hair and no hair on his chin at all, and the numerals in the corners read 20, not 5. From Peridot's gasp, she must have been given the same thing.

You push back the urge to duck your head. "Thank you, ma'am," you say.

A few minutes later, Dr. Drakken comes down the sidewalk at a run, his small legs pulling like they are straining to keep up with the rest of him, Pumpkin romping happily by his side. "Well," he pants when he reaches the driveway. "How did it go?" He holds his hands behind his back as though calm, but you see his eyebrow nearly leaping from his forehead.

"Amazing! We each received twenty credits! We did run into a few difficulties." Peridot pauses and her cheeks flush a richer shade of green, a sight you have seen only two or three times since meeting her. "But it all worked out in the end!" She glances back at the woman. "Is that accurate?"

The woman nods.

"Wonderful!" Drakken says, hands marking the air in frenzied swipes. He nods toward the woman. "Pleasure doing business with you."

Now the woman does laugh, a sound that reminds you of footsteps crunching across fallen leaves. Her eyes, which have been lingering for too long a time on Drakken's ponytail, glide up to his face and she squeezes his shoulder. Drakken politely holds still for a moment before squirming away from it. His body is sensitive, even more so than most humans', and does not accept every embrace it receives.

It accepts yours, though. Your wings feel gilded with sunlight all the way back to Mama Lipsky's.

Later that night, Peridot receives a video call on her tablet. She pushes the buttons with the same alacrity with which she once operated her limb enhancers and Steven appears, his image – just his image, you remind yourself – boxed in by the screen.

"Steven!" Peridot cries as if it has been eons since she has seen him last. Looking at the vivacious black curls and the tender eyes that have gained so much wisdom since the day you fled Earth, you can hardly blame her.

"Hi, Steven," you say. "Great to see you again."

"Hi, Lapis! Hi, Peridot!" Steven lies on his stomach on his bed, his feet curved behind him. "How's life in Middleton?"

"Amazing!" Peridot says again. "We've been doing 'odd jobs' to earn 'money' to buy – things!" She waves the paper in front of the screen. "This may look like a single unit, but it's actually worth twenty! We're rich!"

Steven giggles. His giggle has always been husky and sturdy, and yet for an odd second it vibrates differently, a sound still lovely but too strong to belong to him.

"I got one, too," you say, unfolding your paper with the wild-haired man who represents twenty dollars. "This has been a really, really fun trip so far." You begin to tuck your next words back inside yourself but stop and allow them to drift out: "It's really been the first one where I haven't had this terror or guilt or anything following me around.

"But enough about me." You wave your hand. "How have you been, Steven?"

"I've been amazing, too!" Steven says. "I warp to Homeworld every day and talk to the Diamonds about how all life forms are equal."

If it were anyone but bright-eyed Steven, you would tell him that cause is hopeless. If it were anyone else but Steven, it would be hopeless.

"Really?" you say, careful to keep the skepticism out of your voice. "Do they…listen?"

Steven turns his smile on you. "Blue does. She's been my biggest supporter so far. I think she really wants things to be different up there now."

Even from this distance, you could swear you feel the ocean sigh. You spent the majority of your life wanting to make Blue Diamond proud of you. You never anticipated how good it would feel to be proud of her.

"By the way," Steven says, "Bismuth's here. She wanted to ask you guys a few questions about your new house." His eyes ask you a question of their own.

You nod at him, and he turns and beckons to someone just outside the screen. Bismuth treads into view, glancing around her in confusion. Steven catches her hand and points her toward his computer, and she bends toward the screen and shifts her powerful muscles to fit into the frame. Your physical form does not tense, yet the glass screen between the two of you offers you reassurance for once.

"Hey, guys," Bismuth says. "I think I heard you tell Steven you were having a great time?"

"Yep," you say.

"Absolutely!" Peridot says, still waving her money-paper in the air. "How are things back at the site of what will soon become Little Homeworld?"

"Oh, you know," Bismuth replies with an amiable smirk. "Bismuth as usual."

You go to fix a smile on your face and find there is one already there.

"Just got a couple of things to clear up," she continues. "I'm guessing you're gonna want this house to be as much like the barn as possible, right? Same size, same shape?"

You glance at her, surprised by the depth in her eyes. "I'd like that," you say, turning toward Peridot. "Would you, Peridot?"

"Absolutely!" Peridot says again. "By recreating the dimensional likeness of the barn, don't we stand less risk of forgetting all the great times we had there and all the life lessons learned? Because I was reading an Internet article where they researched the human three-pound brain and its capacity…"

She digresses, babbling about the suppression and retrieval of memory, and Bismuth speaks over her without shoving Peridot's voice to a halt. "Do you want it to be one big open area like the barn? Or should it have rooms?"

Peridot says something else, but you do not hear her. You think of the closeness of the barn; you think of the many times you sought solitude on its roof because its insides were overflowing with Peridot's presence. You peer down at your fingerprints and remind yourself that on Earth you do not need permission to present a request.

"I'd like my own bedroom," you say. "With a door. That I can close."

Peridot's shoulders sag, a look that brushes against you like a stray strand of kelp. It is too soon after your abandonment of her to remind her how obnoxious she can be. You shrug instead. "You know, for naps and stuff," you say.

Steven sticks his head in under Bismuth's arm. "Plus Drakken might come over. Sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends need to talk to each other in private."

You thank him with your eyes and then lift them to the ceiling. "So, what do you think? Should we have a little living room like this one?"

Peridot's pout disappears and she surveys the room, assessing as only Peridot can, with a somber interest that you know will soon give way to a flood of excitement.

No sooner have you predicted it than it happens, Peridot leaping to her feet and nearly overturning her tablet. "No, I've got a better idea!" she cries. "Let's have a great big massive living room large enough for all of our friends! With tons of different types of 'chairs'!"

"Where we can watch TV," you add.

"And we can have wood floors, like the barn?" Peridot's knees fold inward; she bounces without ever leaving the ground.

"Well, duh," you say. "Then maybe we could put down a rug?"

"And one of those pretty little tables humans store in their living rooms? I have yet to figure out their function, but I have come to appreciate them!" Peridot says.

She turns to you, her eyes victoriously wild, and you giggle aloud. When you look at her, you can no longer see the Gem with detachable limbs who brought you back to Earth under her duress. Forgiveness has rebuilt her. It makes you want to offer the same to Bismuth.

The thought bears down on your gem, and then you remember Steven the night before you left for Middleton, trying to shake one more dollop of ketchup free from its near empty bottle. He smacked at the underside a few times, then turned it upside-down and left it there, and eventually the last of the amorphous red liquid peeled away so he could squirt it onto his hot dog.

You look at Bismuth again, focusing on the buttons on her chest where her new clothing fastens, the buttons that were not there when she poofed you, and you let your face relax. You are not sure how long it will take, but you are ready to turn the bottle upside-down.

Bismuth shakes her head. "I tell ya. You got big ideas for a couple of pipsqueaks."

It should sound like an insult, and yet it doesn't.

Peridot falls to her stomach and wriggles closer to the screen. "Can we put in a bathroom? Just for old times' sake?"

"Plus, if humans are gonna visit Little Homeworld, we should probably have a toilet somewhere," you say.

"Toilet," Bismuth repeats.

Her chin slack, she turns to Steven, who pats her hand and whispers loudly, "I'll explain later." This seems to be good enough for Bismuth.

You remember the small rooms at Global Justice's underground headquarters, the night important for how Shego stood between you and the mirror and for how you took her advice and left your sarcasm behind for a few hours. Pumpkin crawls into your lap and nestles down into the fold of your arms as though you have warmth to give her.

"Yeah, sounds doable," Bismuth says. Her hand swings forward and begins to glow, and she quickly wraps her other hand around it until the light subsides, drawn back into her. "G'night, guys." She has adopted the manner of a builder, confident in her own strength yet conscious of the repercussions of each mislaid brick.

You know how that feels.

"Sweet dreams, Lapis," Steven says, yawning. "You, too, Peridot, in case tonight's the night you try sleeping."

You give him a thumbs-up. "Good night, Steven. Good night, Bismuth."

Peridot squawks her own good wishes, and both her tablet and the slot of light under Mama Lipsky's door go dark.

Odd jobs take up the rest of your week. There is the man who hires Peridot to mow his lawn. The machine he gives her is too small and too big at the same time: a box of faded crimson without a seat for her to use as a perch, its operation bar shooting from the back far out of the reach of her tiny arms. Peridot instead sits on the rotating dome in the center of the mowing machine, steering it by shouting commands to her powers. The lawn is a ragged scrap after her first few trips up and down its length, yet she somehow manages to even it out by sunset.

There is Drakken's next-door neighbor, who insists you use your "natural talents" to help her fill her artificially crafted swimming pond – you suspect she has heard a great deal about you from Dr. Drakken, perhaps more than she wished to hear. You untie her hose from its spout and call the water to you, keeping it collected in a lake above your head before dropping it in the pond's cement walls. The woman blinks as though her eyes are filled with sand while she pays you.

There is the family that hires both of you to wash and wax their car, tasks you and Peridot have watched Greg perform at his own car wash. Peridot writes the word CLODS in the dust across the doors and roof again and again. You wash, sweeping away the evidence of her peculiarity, and then she waxes with a sponge in each hand, cackling to herself.

Drakken walks Pumpkin around the block during each of your jobs. "Otherwise, I might be tempted to jump in and try to do it all myself," he explains. "I do that. Shego calls it 'micromanaging.'" He frowns. "When she's in a good mood." He always returns at the end, grinning as you have seen people do on game shows when they have won far more dollars than twenty.

Peridot counts the money she has earned every night and hides it inside a rip in the sofa after clandestine glances in every direction. Your money you have folded and placed inside a pocket you have managed to phase onto your pants. Its weight against your leg feels not uncomfortable but foreign, growing heavier each day with more papers and the promise of something yet to come.

The crumpled paper with the sad-eyed man in its center and the fives at its corners remains your favorite.