~Well, this has been a rough couple of weeks. Let's just say when I started this chapter, I had three pets - and now I'm down to one. They had good lives and are now free from pain, but still not a fun experience for me. :( So I may have fallen down a little on correspondence, and I apologize. I love and appreciate you all, and I hope you love and appreciate this chapter!~

40. Shopping

Your days begin to settle into a new routine.

You awaken soon after dawn, watching the sunlight trickle through the windows and come over your fingerprints. You rise to make sure Peridot has not done too much damage in the night. Dr. Drakken shows up on the front porch, his arms waving and his enthusiasm surging forward like a great rush of water, carrying you and Peridot along. He tells you who has called you for help today. You wash windows and vehicles, water flowers, and clean out the gutters that prevent Earth houses from flooding: good, solid work that does not tire you with its demands.

In the evenings, Steven calls Peridot's tablet and checks in, reporting his latest victories on Homeworld – "White Diamond called me Steven today!" "Yesterday, Blue Diamond asked me what she could do to help her Gems be happier, and when I told her about the whole equality thing, she didn't laugh in my face!" He and Mama Lipsky bid you good night at around the same time, and you and Peridot whisper and giggle for a while longer before you lower your head and let yourself slip into sleep. Once you wake when it is still dark and glance up to see Peridot crouched at your feet, her face illuminated by her tablet, her thumbs moving across the screen.

A sense of belonging sweeps over you, and rather than turn away from it, you nestle down and trust it.

The night comes when Peridot's collection of money-paper will no longer fit in the tear in the couch. Mama Lipsky lends her an old jewelry box instead, a hearty thing with drawers that open and panels that swing away, where Peridot takes great glee in stashing the papers.

"That's great!" Drakken says when you tell him about it. "That must mean you've got more than enough money saved up to go on what we call a 'shopping spree'! We'll go to Smarty Mart tomorrow!" He pauses, and you see him trying to reel back in like a fishing lure his penchant for giving orders. "Erm…if that's all right with everyone."

You nod while Peridot bounces up and down and squeals.

The next day, the three of you fly to the palace-sized building you remember passing over when you distributed your flyers. Along a black expanse of asphalt larger than the barn, cars rest in the spaces between two smears of white paint. Dr. Drakken lands the hovercraft in an empty space, Peridot places her trash can lid on its seat, and Drakken presses a button on his control panel so a translucent field of energy appears around the hovercraft – to keep it in place, you assume.

The brain drawn on the front of the store smiles down at you with a mouth it should not have, and the pair of sliding doors open automatically for your group without even needing to know your identities. It occurs to you that you might have found either of those things frightening back when Earth was an alien planet to you.

Inside the doors, light as artificial as a Gem's body blares down from fixtures mounted into the ceiling, spilling over flooring the color of Pyrite and the texture of a garden hose that reaches so far back that from this angle you cannot see where it ends. A scent lingers in the air that tries very hard to imitate fresh air. Before you and to the side stand three crooked rows of what appear to be metal cages on wheels, albeit with their tops removed.

"O-wow-o! What are these?" Peridot's voice is awestruck.

"These, my friends," Drakken says, "are shopping carts."

You frown. "Like a go-kart?" you ask, stepping closer to one and appraising the side that faces you. A long bar similar to the one on Steven's bike stretches across its front and behind that, a compact shelf folds out, hanging into the cage.

"Same basic idea!" Drakken snaps his fingers as though you have made an important discovery. "People use these to hold the things they're planning to buy! You know, so in case you need to buy a lot of things, or really big things, or a lot of really big things, you don't have to walk around carrying it all in your arms, because that would get quite –"

Peridot interrupts him by throwing herself onto the cart's shelf; she lands on her knees with her back to the bar, her feet sticking through two slim openings beneath. "Onward, noble steed!" she cries, thrusting her finger forward.

The metal shopping cart lurches forward and careens past the payment counter you remember from your trip to the mall, past the humans waiting to use it, and past the magazine display with its covers glossed and colorful.

Drakken chases after the cart, calling, "Peridot! Peridot! Peridot – wait just a darn minute, will you?"

You take to your wings and follow. You hardly ever fly indoors, yet this store is so large and its ceilings so lofted that you can almost forget you are indoors until you nearly collide with an array of transporter tubes shooting downward from the ceiling, technology you would have thought too advanced for Earth. You dodge the tubes and glance below you at the construction of the building.

Wide corridors, each topped with a hanging sign that displays a number and words like "toilet paper" or "school supplies," stretch from the front of the enormous room to its midpoint. A second set of corridors runs parallel to it, reaching toward the back, with a peninsula of open floor in between. Peridot's cart shoots down this peninsula, her cheers mixing with Drakken's shouts as he sprints past groups of humans whose expressions of surprise are milder than you would have anticipated.

You pull your wings back so far they almost flatten against your back and manage to get ahead of the cart. You drop to the floor and place yourself in the cart's path. As it rolls toward you, you grab it by both front corners and hold, the heels of your new shoes gripping the floor.

The cart rocks to a startled halt just long enough for Drakken to race up and seize the bar, his chest heaving in and out as he waits for his breath to catch up with him. He nevertheless tries to talk, gasping, grunting sounds that eventually take a shape you can recognize: "Peridot…you…little…stinker."

"What?" Peridot blinks at Drakken and then at you, her eyes as innocent as those of a newly Emerged. "Did I do something incorrect?"

You bury your laughter in your arm.

Weighty footsteps sound behind you, and an unfamiliar human's body heat approaches, backing you up against the cart. The cough seems to come from an angry throat rather than a sore one.

"Is there a problem here?"

The voice is smaller than Drakken's, but the man who owns it is bigger; even his shadow feels heavy across you. His skin is the shade of moist sand and he wears a snug blue uniform as you have seen police officers do on TV, no hair peeking out from under his jaunted cap. Items dangle from his black belt, items you don't recognize but could easily imagine Bismuth forging.

You glance over your shoulder to see Dr. Drakken's face turn white and his grip tighten on the cart's bar as though it is a life buoy. "No, no, no. No trouble, sir. It's just that this – this is their first time here, and the little one here" – he pats Peridot's head – "tends to get rather…um…excited."

The man nods rigidly. You glance up at his eyes, expecting to watch them twinkle as human eyes so often do around Peridot. They don't.

"All right," he says at last. One hand scratches the back of his neck. "But another production like that, and you're outta here."

Your feet go numb. You believe him.

The man turns and strides away, and Dr. Drakken slumps over the cart, licking lips gone more gray than blue. "That was a close one," he pants. "That guy arrested me once. I tend to not like people who have arrested me. Which is unfortunate, because I'm sure he's a lovely chap."

You nod, though you fail to see how someone unmoved by Peridot can be "lovely."

The man disappears from view, and Drakken's thin ankles begin to shake with relief and his words to babble. "I was hoping not to encounter security guards this time. Especially since I went out of my way to make sure Frugal Lucre wasn't going to be on shift today!"

"Frugal who?" you ask. It does not seem like a name by either human or Gem criteria.

"Frugal Lucre. Works as a clerk here. Obnoxious. Much too chatty. I can't stand him." Drakken's words are short and sharp, and considering he has never objected to Peridot's company, his accusations carry weight.

Peridot twists around on the cart's shelf to look at Drakken. "Is he…mean?"

Drakken shakes his head. "Fortunately, no. Adores me, actually. But, unfortunately for us, we met in pr-pr-pris – "He swallows. "In prison. We shared a cell."

You think of the cells in Yellow Diamond's ship, remembering how you had to tuck your long legs in so they wouldn't hit the opposite wall. At the thought of two men Drakken's size being crowded inside one, elbows in each other's armpits and knees in each other's sides, your gemstone shivers. "Did you have to, like, sit on top of each other?"

"What? Oh, no, nothing like that. The cells were relatively roomy, as such horrible things go. We each had our own bunk and everything. But the cell hasn't been built yet that's big enough to contain Lucre's big blabby mouth!" The smile Drakken gives you reminds you of the store's fresh-air scent, but when he reaches over and pats your hand, his touch is gentle in its sincerity.

To your surprise, a short mound of a robot scuttles by on rotating treads. To your greater surprise, Drakken cringes away from it as though he expects it to fire Nova Blasters at him. It ignores him and cruises partway down the corridor before coming to a stop. Thick cables sprout from its sides, and it uses the metallic cusped hooks at the ends as hands to pick up and restack a group of cans Peridot must have knocked over.

Eyes aglow, Peridot jolts toward the robot, nearly falling from the cart. "What are those?"

"Those, my friend, are Smarty Mart's Stockbots. They patrol the store and help keep the shelves stocked, hence the name." Dr. Drakken's back goes rigid the way you have seen sailors' do when they heft cargo ashore. "I once stole their Universal Remote, hijacked their programming, and attempted to turn them into my army of drones so I could rule the world."

"Awesome," Peridot says, her eyes shinier than ever.

"It was a rather brilliant plan, if I must say so myself. Terrible and evil, but brilliant." Drakken stares down at his hands and shakes his head fiercely, and you know what he is seeing: the schism between his old life and his new one.

You edge in closer and slip your fingers around his to help guide him back to the present.

Drakken gives his head another shake. "Right. Where was I? Oh, yes! You generally steer the cart by keeping your hands here." He unfolds his hands from yours and eases them onto the bar on the front of the cart. "And that there –" he snickers as he points to the shelf where Peridot sits – "is the child safety seat. Although the children ride in it the other way around so that they don't fall out."

Something flickers across Peridot's face, the urge to scowl tempered by the odd sweetness that has become part of her since her instatement as a Crystal Gem.

You tip your head back to study the nearest sign and read the word aloud: "Home." You giggle, remembering the first time you saw that printed on a store sign, how you took it as a notice that you were near another creature's dwelling place and believed to go any further would be to trespass. "Looks like we're right where we need to be."

"Well, of course." Peridot slides out of the safety seat and drops to the floor. "I had that planned all along."

You roll your eyes.

The three of you walk past a corridor filled with chairs tightly fitted onto the shelves and another whose shelves are draped with doorknobs and nothing else. The third corridor appears to be devoted to bathroom furnishings: the rods where humans hang wet cloths up to dry, fuzzy coverings for toilet lids, and mirrors – mirrors of all sizes, round, square, and oblong, framed in wood and darker glass, in authentic copper and imitation silver.

Your chin hikes, and numbness spreads through you from your gem outward. That is nothing new. Once you have moved to the next corridor and the mirrors are out of sight, your body relaxes and feeling seeps back into it; that is something new.

Now you stare at statues of animals you have come to know since your arrival on Earth: the rangy-legged frogs, the soft snails with their hard crablike shells and long antennae, and the slim-tailed mice with their gentle black eyes that remind you of Mama Lipsky's. You are not sure how you feel about their stone likenesses. They are still, peaceful, and predictable, which is comforting but quite unnatural for animals. In the world from where you hail, such stillness is unnatural even for stone.

You hear a sound, a sound more intimate than the beating of your heart when you shapeshift one – the sound of water flowing.

You turn toward another stone sculpture and stare at a landscape recreated in such keen detail, individual leaves and the spaces between them on branches rendered in miniscule strokes of green and black, that for a moment you believe someone has captured it from nature and shrunken it. Water slides, unhurried, from a tunnel cut into the top of the sculpture and down a set of slight ridges in the rocks, where it disappears into a chasm and returns through the top. It gurgles and laps, speaking to you in your private language. Its song fills you and forms an instant link, not one of power and obedience this time but of serenity and familiarity.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" comes Dr. Drakken's voice; effervescent as a bubbling brook, it will never be soft, and yet you can tell he has tried to lessen it.

You nod, transfixed, gazing upon a place where your water can only be used for good, a place that supersedes even him, however briefly. "Is this – is this something humans put in their houses?" you whisper. Warmth trickles down your back like raindrops down a window.

"Indeed it is!" Drakken says, and you can imagine the large endearing smile. "These are decorative fountains.

"You can buy one, if you like." His warm hand comes to rest on your bare shoulder.

You watch the stream for another minute. Your first instinct is to refuse it as you refuse any luxury, not wanting to be reacquainted with a life of comfort and ease. But you close your eyes and see an Earth river, swift and sure, not hesitating to accept the new water given to it because it also passes water along at a constant rate to whatever else needs it. The only reason you stagnated on Homeworld was that no current set you in motion. Earth is so different.

"Yeah. I would like one." The words are quiet, even by your standards.

You reach toward the fountain, but Drakken intercepts your hand and gestures to the sign propped against the fountain's side that reads FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY. "You've got to take one that's already packed up in a box," he says.

Below the fountain, boxes stack atop one another, each one a shade of blue topaz with a photograph on the side showing the fountain sitting on a small table in someone's home. You pick one up, recognizing the flimsy wood of cardboard; it feels dry and dull in your hands.

"Why isn't the box wet?" you say.

"Probably because the fountain isn't turned on yet," Drakken says. "There's a little switch – usually on the bottom – that people flick to activate it."

You will not need that switch.

Peridot's eyes are vibrant moons as she watches you place the box in the cart. You know where you will put the fountain in your new home: in your bedroom, right next to where you sleep so you can hear it as you leave consciousness and you are grateful, suddenly, to be Lapis Lazuli. The weapons of other Gems cannot also function as soothing sounds in the night.

"Look, Lapis!" Peridot says, craning her neck around the end of the corridor's shelf. "A 'bed'!"

Sure enough, one corridor space over sits a wide bed with brass poles, bedecked in white frippery, its upper half covered in pillows and its lower half a curtain of lace that falls to the floor.

Peridot launches herself onto the bed, bobs up and down on her backside, and then lies down, spreading out her arms and legs, plenty of room left over. "Ohhhh," she gasps. "You have got to try this!"

You make your way toward the bed and consider it. While you have seen beds before, and you have even perched on the edge of Steven's bed while talking to him, there is no denying it is something from another world to you. You hike yourself up one leg at a time and tilt backward until you too are lying down.

The bed is tender and barely gives way beneath you; it feels light as air and yet its puffed layers seem substantial enough to support you. You think of clouds, stacks of fluff drifting across the Earth's sky, of the gentle rainfall Peridot loves so, and of the multicolored arches that form after rain dries away. You think of freedom and peace and home, thoughts that pull you toward something else, but you don't need to go yet.

You hear the bed creak as Drakken lies down. Something on him creaks, too, and he sighs. You roll over and bury your face in one of the full white pillows behind you, immersing yourself in its quiet miraculous world, breathing in its cleansed scent. Peridot is above you and Drakken beside you, neither of them keeping completely still. You hold the scene in your mind an instant longer, and then you rise.

"It's nice," you admit. "But I think I'd rather have another hammock."

The bed's softness does not frighten you this time, nor tell you that you do not deserve it. It simply feels nothing like Mama Lipsky's couch or the hammock in the barn, the first places where you lowered your protective shield and stopped wearing your flimsy skirt like armor. You cannot even begin to measure the worth of those memories.

The next corridor is lined with pillows, shorter and stouter than the ones on Steven's bed, with sealed, tufted ends. You press your hand to one as you walk past; it leaves an imprint behind, remembering you.

"These are amazing!" Peridot grabs two pillows nearly as big as she is from the shelves. "What are they?"

"Throw pillows," Dr. Drakken says.

The words have barely left his mouth when Peridot winds up her arms and flings a pillow in each direction. You step away from one and watch it smack into the shelf beside you. The other hits Drakken in the stomach and knocks him to the floor. He lets out a staccato grunt, a sound more cross than pained, and you hide a smile behind your hand before you glare at Peridot.

"Oh." She blinks. "Was that not an imperative?"

Drakken stands up and shakes his finger at Peridot as though to chastise her. "You know, you're really lucky I like you."

Peridot sticks her hands on her hips and stares boldly back at Drakken. "Maybe you're really lucky I like you!"

"Come on, guys, calm down," you say. "We don't need to get that security guard's attention again." You roll your eyes and then allow them to scout the area for any sign of a reproachful human coming to put the fear back in Drakken's eyes.

"Quite," Drakken agrees. "Oh, and by the way, Peridot, 'throw pillows' is just what humans call these things. They're not actually meant to be used as projectiles…although –" he gingerly pats his midsection – "you've demonstrated they work rather well. No, I think they're just called 'throw pillows' because you throw them onto your couch for decoration."

"Ohhhhh," Peridot says. She retrieves the pillows, hugging them to herself and then resting one beneath each arm. "Then we need to throw them onto our couch for decoration! Right, Lapis?"

The pillow under one of her arms is the shade of Amethyst's hair, the other the shade of Garnet's skin. Behind her on the shelf you glimpse a third pillow striped in as many colors as the rain-arches. On Homeworld, they would denounce it as "garish," and what remains from your time in Blue Diamond's court reaches for your thoughts.

You frown. "But we don't even know what color our new couch is gonna be. What if they don't match? That'll look…weird."

Some of that is still in you, needing to be expelled.

Peridot marches over and takes you by the wrists, angling her face up to yours. "Lapis, don't you understand?" she says, her little tinny voice surprisingly fierce. "This is our meepmorp now! Yours. Mine. Ours. And nobody can tell us what it's supposed to look like!"

Her words sink into you, displacing the hesitation. You blink and when you look again at the mismatched pillows she holds, they no longer seem to represent opposing sides in a clash; you are able to see them for what they are – pretty. There is no right and no wrong in decorating your home, and that means it is safe to consult only your own judgment.

"Well," you say, "if that's the case, we should get this one." You walk over to the shelf and lift the multicolored pillow. "Because this'll match everything, right?"

Drakken shrugs, his eyes bright. "Sounds legit to me."

You drop your pillow inside the cart, and Peridot lays her two on either side, grinning and nodding as she arranges them.

On display at the end of this corridor sits a lumpen object that appears somehow familiar. You recognize it only seconds before Peridot exclaims, "A bagged-bean chair!" with enthusiasm that greatly outsizes her reaction to the bed. She leaps into it facedown and nearly disappears. It is the same variety of chair she had in the barn, though it is a deep, rich purple where her chair was dingy gray, firm where hers was slack and sagging.

"I love it!" Peridot says, her words muffled, submerged. "And it loves me, too – I can tell! Yes, I accept you, squishy Earth chair. You are indeed a worthy successor."

You turn to Drakken. "I guess we're buying this, too."

"How could we not?" Drakken grins, his shoulders wiggling as though he finds the sight before him as delightful as you do.

"Oh-h-h," Peridot says again as Drakken lifts the bean-filled chair and places it in the cart. "What is that?"

You follow her pointing finger to a red object that reminds you somewhat of a stool, though soft material pads its every surface, not just the top, ruffles bowing politely around its legs. It looks like a throne for a ruler who does not concern herself with harshness and perfection, perhaps the kind of ruler Blue Diamond will become now. Peridot hoists herself onto the seat, her small feet hanging several centimeters above the floor.

"That, my friend, is an ottoman," Drakken says. "And – yes, since I know your next question is going to be, 'What's it for?', I shall go ahead and answer! It goes right on the end of a chair. The foot-end. People prop their feet up on it."

"Hmmm, yes." Peridot turns upside-down on the ottoman and rests her legs on its seat. "I can see the appeal. All right. So I will need an 'ottoman' to go with my bagged-bean chair."

Drakken's lips part and then freeze there, as though encased in ice by Sapphire. You know that once he finds his voice again, he will attempt to talk her out of it, and you don't want to watch the silly generous smile leave her pointed face, a face so cold and callous when you first encountered it.

You touch Drakken's arm, pulling his gaze to yours. "It's her meepmorp," you say.

Drakken's eyebrow draws low over his eyes, and he nods.

Five more corridors make up the remainder of the "home" section, its boundaries marked by another sign overhead, and only in the last of these corridors do you find the object of your search. The box is longer than your body and so thin as to appear hollow, and it would mean nothing to you were it not for the picture printed on it: two rods secured on the ground, a pouch of fabric swishing between them. You close your eyes and you feel the fabric, smooth as new grass on your bare legs; you feel the middling heat of a summer's night and Pumpkin crawling under your arm to make herself comfortable with you.

You feel home.

You hear Dr. Drakken chuckling, and you open your eyes to take a closer look at the picture on the box. The hammock depicted isn't white but a vibrant yellow, like Peridot's hair, with green waves at the ends where they join with the rods. It reminds of you something, but you can't think of what until you read the words at the top of the box:

"Banana hammock." You grin. "Duh. It'll look just like one when you climb in and zip it all the way up."

Drakken's laughter turns nervous. "Nggh! You're…not…supposed to zip it all the way up! Really, really not!"

"Oh, that's just if you want to breathe," you say with a snort.

"Ah. Yes." Drakken drags a hand back through his hair-spikes and leaves them standing on end, stilled black rapids. "I keep forgetting that…"

"And just think what it'll look like in the morning when you unzip it!" Peridot dances in place before you. "You'll be – peeling!"

For a moment, her giggles recede and your mind is quiet. The future, always represented by a blank unknowable space in your gemstone, now contains images of you peeling out of bed at sunrise; hearing Peridot bid you good morning; looking out the window to see neighboring Gems wandering by, Gems who you allow yourself to believe will become your friends.

"Oh my gosh, I want this," you say. Even you are surprised by your own clarity.

"Really?" Peridot says. "Even though it's not the same as it was in the barn?"

You shrug. No ribbon brushes your neck. "That's okay. I'm not the same as I was in the barn." Something rushes your throat, something thick and sweet like ice cream; swallowing does not send it away. "I'm really glad my life in the barn happened, and I always want to remember it. But it's not happening anymore, and I shouldn't pretend that it still is."

"Well, that makes sense," Drakken says. All at once, he sniffles and you hear him drag a hand under his nose, the movement sounding bewildered.

You put your arm around his waist in case he needs your comfort, and he clings to it as though he thinks you need his.

The sign that marks the new section of the store reads "Seasonal," which either means that it helps humans change the Earth's climate or that it helps them adapt to Earth's changing climate. You suspect the latter; if weather-altering technology is so dangerous that Dr. Drakken had to steal what he needed for his schemes, surely it would not be available for purchase at a store open to anyone.

Sure enough, the first seasonal corridor carries objects designed for summer, which you recognize from the first few days you and Drakken spent together on the beach: tall bulky umbrellas, so unlike the compact ones made to deflect rain; striped plastic balls waiting to be inflated; cream meant to stand between a human's skin and the sun's potent rays; and curving tubes that will bring oxygen to them even when they stick their heads below the ocean's surface.

"This is beautiful!" Peridot grabs a cloth from a shelf nearly out of her reach and shakes it out, placing it on the floor. Against the sallow yellow tiles, its rich Aquamarine color is an oasis, patterned with what you can't determine are stars or sea stars; either is a comfort, despite your broken histories. It feels coarse and wiry yet pleasant beneath your palm. You agree with Peridot's assessment. "Behold: the perfect rug for our new home!"

"Actually, Peridot, that's a beach towel," Drakken says.

Peridot's mouth collapses into a frown – not her contemplative frown but her dispirited one, an expression you cannot bear to see.

You nudge Drakken in the spindle of his ribs. "Nope. Now it's a rug."

He doesn't catch on. "Seriously. It's a beach towel."

You nudge him more sharply, relieved when he does not yelp in pain. "No, it's a rug," you say, nodding at Peridot's saddened face.

Drakken's eyes go wide when he sees her, and his voice bumps around for several seconds before he is able to say, "Err, yes, it can also double as a rug. Quite a charming one, too!"

Peridot throws the towel into the cart, where it drapes over the box with your fountain in it. You picture that towel spread in the center of your living room, perhaps in front of a television as Dr. Drakken's living room rug is, and you picture that television screen filled with familiar faces. You have missed the characters of Camp Pining Hearts and their frivolous problems.

A moment later, your attention is caught by a structure at the base of the corridor's shelf. Two poles thinner than your legs parallel each other, and winding between them are metallic objects that appear to be flowers bubbled in mid-bloom, one Ruby-red and one Sapphire-blue, with a Pearl-white in the middle to prevent them from flirting with one another. Looking further down the corridor, you see many other items – curling ribbons, flags that flap in the store's artificial breeze, and even strapped shoes like yours – all in the same three colors.

"What's with the red, white, and blue?" you say.

Dr. Drakken responds with typical importance. "Those are decorations for the Fourth of July."

"Oh," you say, yet in truth this clarifies very little, even though you know July to be a class-facet of summer. "July's a nice month, but what's so special about the Fourth?"

"It is the anniversary of the day the country we're living in right now – it's called the United States of America – USA for short – anyway, it's the anniversary of the day it declared its independence from another country!" Drakken says.

"Oh," you repeat, this time with more understanding, and as you look at the items again, you're sure you are watching them with brighter eyes. Although you still have a great deal to learn about Earth history and government, you do know independence and individuality are to be celebrated.

You point to a flag; red and white bars stretch across it and up in the top left corner is a square area, like a text box in a Pretty Hairstylist book, deep blue and spattered with more stars than you care to count. "Is that the USA's flag?" Drakken nods. "Then I guess that explains why everything else is the same color."

Drakken beams with pride.

"Well, of course." Peridot adjusts her visor. "They're loyalty colors!"

You try to imagine pledging loyalty to a country rather than a planet. The thought feels like fog in your mind, blotting away the sky and limiting the number of stars you can see.

The other side of the corridor is reserved for items on clearance – which, Dr. Drakken explains to you, means they too were crafted for a particular season, a season which has already passed, and now they are being offered at prices far lower than usual so that the store can be rid of them. From those items, Peridot picks out a shirt that hangs below her knees and reads SAVE THE EARTH above a cartoon image of the globe. A shadow of the Lapis you used to be almost wonders what type of species has to be reminded to take care of their own planet, but then you remember the state Homeworld was in when you arrived to save Steven.

You push the cart out of the corridor to turn beneath the next hanging sign. This one reads TOYS.

Peridot squints at it for a moment before a comet-trail grin brightens her face. "Toys? As in animals stuffed for the purpose of cuddling? And flying disks? And dolls of paper?"

"Yup," Drakken says, not bothering to hide the shimmer in his eyes. "All of those things and more!"

The words brush against your spine. You still have Plastic Lazuli Hope, but all of Peridot's pretend animals were destroyed with the barn, a fate they did not deserve.

"Lead the way, then," you say.

Peridot makes gurgling, awestruck sounds when she sees the toy corridor. You, however, have visited a store in Beach City dedicated entirely to toys, and the selection here is sparse by comparison. It makes you smile nevertheless, especially when Dr. Drakken bounces a tiny ball against the floor and recoils when it shoots upward and nearly strikes his cheek.

You choose a single pretend animal, a dolphin with laughing eyes, and watch as Peridot pulls down one plush form after another, each one plump like an animal that a human has cared for well. The skin beneath her visor tautens in thought with each animal she drops into the cart, and she begins to mutter to herself. Before you can figure out what she's pondering, she is distracted by a miniature keyboard with every key a different color. Its box says TRY ME, and you know she will not hesitate to obey.

Peridot lunges for the keyboard, and Drakken makes a nervous dive for both of them, hands chopping at the air, hissing, "Leave it in the box, Peridot! You can still try when it's in the box! See how the front is open here?"

"Affirmative. The storage container will remain intact, Toy Master." Peridot begins to tap out a tune you don't recognize.

You turn away from the blinking lights and loud jarring notes with the dolphin tucked beneath your arm, and you find yourself looking at another type of toy altogether, one made not from gentle plush but from a hard mold.

This particular mold is cast in the shape of a barn. Next to it stands a silo with a silvern top.

You cross the corridor and approach the toy barn, not entirely certain whether you are walking or flying. Your fingers roam across a red surface, familiar but brighter, this barn's paint not yet faded by time or sun, and travel, trembling, to open the windows just below its roof, revealing the open perch where you and Peridot once forced a truck.

Your hand drops to the latch on the barn's side and unhooks it. With one shy, slight tug, it swings open, and the rest of the store grows formless behind you.

It is not an exact match to your barn; small compartments inside are separated by doors, reminding you of the toilet-rooms in Global Justice's bathroom, and marked with the silhouettes of various animals you know from television. Yet you recognize the strong proud rafters and even the gnarls painted into the wood, with their solid rocky cores surrounded by hollow, outspread layers. In the space between the hinges that hold the toy open rests a thick flat ledge which your imagination immediately covers with a sleeping bag. A point of heat smaller than a pencil's tip rises in your gemstone, and you close your eyes.

"Looks just like yours, doesn't it?" a large voice booms from behind you, as clumsy and caring as the hand he lays on your shoulder.

You open your eyes; they are dry, your vision clear. "I want to buy it," you say with conviction. "It'll be a reminder."

"Indeed it will," Drakken says, nodding. "A great reminder of the house you sacrificed to save your home." A blast of air gushes from him, and a moment later he pulls it all back in. "Ooh, that was brilliant! Somebody needs to write that down!"

You laugh, and the sound rings through the silent corridor. The tapping of the keyboard has stopped.

Drakken's head jerks around at the same instant yours does, the movement so exaggerated on him that it appears almost painful. You groan. Peridot has vanished.

"Oh, snap!" Drakken drives his fingers through his hair-spikes. "I forgot you can't take your eyes off her for ten seconds!"

So did you, and you know this better than he does.

You rise to the ceiling and fly over the remaining corridors in the toy sector. You pass by the bikes with their metal frameworks and rubber tires and try not to picture Peridot pedaling one through the store, running over shoppers' toes. You pass by the black-and-white-checked balls used for kicking sports and try not to picture Peridot kicking one into the next corridor, hitting the security guard in the leg. You try not to picture Peridot doing anything that will get the three of you tossed from Smarty Mart.

"Peridot!" Drakken tries to call her name quietly. "Peri-d-o-o-o-t!"

Before you can join him, you catch a flash of green at the end of one corridor. Holding back relief, you land and find yourself facing a teddy bear easily taller than Dr. Drakken, its arms bulging with plumpness. Peridot is curled in its lap.

"It's okay, Drakken," you say. "I found her."

Drakken comes huffing down another corridor, the beginnings of sweat beaded on his forehead. His mouth opens as though planning to say something stern, and then it closes into a smile when he sees Peridot nestled in the bear's arms like she is its Pumpkin.

Peridot lifts her head just long enough for you to see the bliss pooled on her face and then drops it again. "Just come back for me in a few weeks," she says.

You try to roll your eyes, but they won't move from the bear. It may well be the largest innocuous object you have ever seen. The white lights that seem too bright on everything else paint a burnish on its brown fur, turning it almost Topaz in color, and its face is kindly, its snout inching outward.

"Oh, right! I better go get our cart!" Drakken says, and he scurries off down the corridor again.

Peridot rolls up tighter, leaving a space just wide enough for your body. Her eyes have slipped shut.

You don't glance around to see if anyone is watching. You turn around and lower yourself into the bear's lap. It gives beneath you, every bit as soft as the silk curtains on Blue Diamond's palanquin but with more substance. Some intangible current draws your head back to rest against the bear's wide, fluffed chest, and you sigh.

Peridot twitches, and her small foot falls onto your lap. You let it stay.

An energy stirs in your gem, fainter than your wings, one you have felt before only in bits: when playing with Peridot in the barn, when licking ice cream with Drakken, and when hearing Mama Lipsky call you "child."

You are not a child; you have never been a child, and you never will be a child. You are a being of light and sea and stone put together in the form of a woman, yet thousands of years of experience do not weigh on you now. There is something on this planet as precious as its wild meadows, something that the Crystal Gems receive in return for defending Earth, and a part of it has waited here for you.

"Isn't this glorious?" Peridot murmurs at your side.

You shift slightly so that your cheek can rest against the bear's stomach. "It's…pretty awesome," you agree.

The squeak of wheels on the tiles tells you Dr. Drakken has returned with the cart. He hunches over it, his elbows resting on the bar and his eyes, usually so jumpy, still and brimming with joy. He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, and you see a quick burst of light as he takes a picture. The toy barn has been added to the pile inside the cart.

Peridot pats one of the bear's enormous paws. "I don't suppose this would fit in our new home," she says.

"It definitely won't fit in our cart." You squeeze the bear's Topaz-brown arm one more time and then rise.

The green lips gather into their familiar fold. Peridot stands up and wraps her short arms around as much as of the bear's bulk as they can reach, whispering something that sounds to you like, "Goodbye, beautiful creature." Even as she trails along behind you, her hand joined with yours so you do not lose her again, she turns to give the bear one final look of longing.

"All right, ladies, one last stop. This cart is getting heavy." Drakken grunts as he shoves the cart forward, and the thin muscles in his arms tense. You place your left hand next to his on the bar and give it a casual push. "And this stop is primarily for Lapis.

"Errr…" He shuffles his fingers around on the bar. "That is to say, you're more than welcome to purchase anything you want here, Peridot. But I think the – uh – the – the merchandise might be of more interest to Lapis, shall we say?"

You frown as you follow next to him. Peridot gets excited about more things than you do, and she gets excited about them to greater levels, so you have no idea where he might be leading you.

Once he stops the cart under a sign that simply reads BOOKS, however, it all becomes fairly clear.

How Peridot reacts, you don't hear. A noise, quiet and bright, comes from the front of your throat. A menagerie of books stares back at you: books longer than they are tall with their shining, slippery covers; books nearly as thick as the reference works back on Homeworld in ancient times, the authors' names blazing on the covers; books in groups of three or four bundled in a package with one end open showing their titles; small thin books that run deep, hundred of pages crowded between paper covers that seem as though they need something more to protect them, like the humans' sun-cream. The words and the colors and the images on their fronts are warp pads, giving you the promise of other worlds, worlds which you will let keep their shapes and textures.

"She likes it! Hey, Mikey!" Drakken says.

You would ask him what he is referencing, but you are already somewhere else, wading toward the spread, eyes fixed on a group of books with gold crests on their fronts declaring a human named Newberry has deemed them worthy of an award.

The one nearest to your hand shows a young girl climbing onto a bike, one awkward leg reaching for the pedals. You run your fingers over the cover and then flip through the book, its scent fresh and clean, its pages crisped together, rustling like breeze-blown leaves when you separate them.

"Is this some kind of library or something? In the store?" you say.

"Yes!" Drakken says, energy vibrating from his folded fists. "Only even better! Well…" He pauses. "I don't know if you'd call it 'better,' because it's a completely different experience. You have to pay to take these books home, but then they're yours – for good!"

Your mouth falls open. "You mean, I don't have to bring them back?"

"Never, ever, ever!" Drakken replies.

You return your attention to the book you hold and continue turning the pages, seeing sketched illustrations of humans with loose, free faces. A picture of another sort appears in your head: Peridot perched like a bird next to you on a sofa, her chin digging into your shoulder while she begs you to do the voices, and it almost surprises you how much you look forward to this. You rise and hold the book in place with your arm.

"Now it'll be your turn to come back for me in a few weeks," you call back to your friends.

It does not take weeks, however, for you to select a wide plank of a storybook about a family of pigs at the beach, a slippery-covered book about a girl with fantastic powers who has had to do terrible things to survive, and the latest volume of Pretty Hairstylist, sleek and as light as seafoam. You hold them close to your chest for a second before laying them in the cart and turning a smiling face to Drakken.

"So – is that it, then?" you ask.

"Basically, yes." Drakken holds up a hand before either you or Peridot can interrupt. "I realize there's a whole lot more store, but most of the rest sells food – which I figured you're not too interested in. Or live lemurs." It is the same word you saw on the hat of the man with the alien device in his backyard, and as he says it Drakken's eyes jerk from side to side. "And, yes, I would draw the line at you buying those."

"Aww, nuts," Peridot mutters, though she can't be any more familiar with lemurs than you are.

You remember the scene at the Middleton Mall, where Drakken exchanged his papers for a shampoo bottle. "Then it's time for us to go pay for this, right?" you say.

"Brilliant deduction, Lapis!" Drakken says. "To the checkout line we go!" His back hunches forward, making no noise this time, and he shoves the cart toward the shorter corridors you saw at the front of the store, each with a row of humans extending from it. Drakken selects the row with the fewest humans.

There is only one rack in this corridor, and it is stocked with candies, the sight of which makes Drakken lick his lips and place one in the cart. You also spy packages of the type of candy humans will chew up and never swallow, only to spit it out when it loses its flavor. You have never seen the point of this, and each package's smell varies from saccharine to overly sharp. Across from this rack is a counter with a rotating strip of rubber on top, like the one Steven uses to operate his mother's ship, leading past a red suspended light that seems to be basic scanning technology. A woman wearing an orange vest similar to the kind given to Padparadschas before the war sits behind the booth on the other side of the light.

When the last human has paid with a faceless, plastic card that Drakken has told you are to be used with caution, you take a step toward the rubber strip and pause, unsure of how to proceed.

That does not stop Peridot. She stalks to the front of the strip and drops her hands on the counter. "We demand to purchase these items." Her voice, though empty of entitlement, is so straightforward that you see Dr. Drakken cringe.

"Be polite, Peridot," he hisses.

Peridot's pointed head bobs. "We politely demand to purchase these items."

The woman wears glass lenses to aid her vision. Behind them, her eyes struggle not to stare, and you appreciate her for that. "Well, you've come to the right place, then. Load them on up," she says.

You pick up your books and glance at the rubber strip. "Um – we put them on top of that, right?" you say.

The woman nods. Her expression grows more mystified still, her lips parting and the space between her eyes crinkling. You find a smile not entirely timid to give her.

"Sorry. We're new at this," you say.

The items roll down the strip and stop before the red light, which shoots a ray of the same color around each object, and the number of dollars shown on the screen in front of the woman increases. Cents, which you know to be Pebbles to dollars' Gems, are also tallied on the other side of a sentence-ending mark.

"That is so incredible!" Peridot blurts out. "They have a ray that can assess the value of any object just by scanning it?"

While Dr. Drakken chuckles and explains that, no, every item comes with a coded stamp that lists its price and that the scanner merely deciphers it, you watch the items pass under the light. You wish you could imagine what they will look like together in your new home, but the combination of elements into a greater whole is rarely predictable, as you learned when you got your first glimpse of Garnet on the base.

Peridot dumps her money on the counter and metes out each paper with precision that is just short of painful. You count your money before you hand it to the woman and are surprised when you have a few of the weaker dollars left over.

The woman sets the ottoman box at the far end of the cart; the smaller items she loads into sacks of tough plastic. Drakken piles these two at a time into the cart – except for the sack of stuffed animals, which Peridot insists on carrying, its two stringlike handles spread far apart so that she can gaze inside. She doesn't look where she is going and walks straight into the magazine display, which you jump forward and catch before it can fall on top of her, and then bounces off a StockBot.

Peridot doesn't give the startled squawk you would expect from her. She still peers into the bag, poking and prodding at the bushy-tailed pretend squirrel as she would a piece of uncooperative machinery, her eyes rigid on the stuffed animal's every seam. At last she says, "They're all so…perfect."

She pronounces the word the way proud Homeworld Gems are Taught to pronounce the exact opposite.

You blink at Drakken, and he blinks back at you. "Is that a…bad thing?" Drakken ventures.

"No! Maybe! I don't know!" Peridot's growl is thin and confused. "The ones in the barn were such an assortment. They had different deformities, and in most cases their structural integrity was compromised, some more so than others."

"Yeah," you say with a shrug. "They were beat-up."

"Technically, that's correct," Peridot says, "but that gave them character. They were survivors! Like us!" She quiets a moment, and when she speaks again, her voice shivers. "Except now they're gone."

You think of the stuffed animals strewn throughout the barn: their filling piling into their cores, leaving the limbs flaccid and impossible to move; their heads crooking to the sides to loll on squeezed necks; their eyes attached by nothing more than a few threads. You miss them for what they meant and not what they are. But you see your best friend attempting to stand against the irrepressible movement of time, needing a textile reminder of a time no longer happening, and you wish you had something to give her besides a quip.

Light from the ceiling pours over Drakken, projecting his slim shadow against the closest wall. His forehead puckers, approaching sadness, and the bony hands begin to orbit each other once more. "Hmmm," he says. "It feels like there should be something we could do about that…"

The security guard passes by then. Drakken giggles nervously and urges you and Peridot toward the pair of doors, fluttering the backs of his wrists and grumbling unintelligible thoughts under his breath. The doors pull apart and allows the three of you to leave the world of StockBots, ceiling tubes, and objects arrayed for your choosing. You are suddenly glad you had to pay for them.

Outside, the sun greets you, its rays sinking into Drakken's hair, which does not give back any light. You help Drakken push the cart in the direction of the hovercraft, thankful for your shoes. The asphalt is just as dark as Drakken's hair and just as greedy for light; walking across it barefoot would require you to shapeshift the pain receptors from the soles of your feet.

The boxes and bags are loaded into the hovercraft, the stern of which pulls back to allot ample room when Dr. Drakken pushes a button, and the three of you take off. Drakken flies the hovercraft closer to the ground than he did on the way here, letting it meander from side to side as if his mind, too, sways. His eyes move restlessly, and vague grunts issue from his lips, although they seem to be aimed backward at himself more than forward to you or Peridot.

You don't know what he is searching for, but his face brightens when you come upon a sign, a sign that is merely a post stuck in the ground and halfway covered by a sleek, sharp-edged piece of paper with heavy words inked across it: YARD SALE AT 522 MCCORKLE ROAD.

"Yard sale?" Peridot says. Her trash can lid spins to a stop beside you. "What's that?"

"Someone's selling their yard?" you say, and then you immediately shake your head. "No, that doesn't make any sense," you add before Peridot can remind you that the yards are attached to the houses.

"Exactly right!" Drakken says. The straining grunt is gone from his voice; he sounds proud. "In this case, 'yard' doesn't describe what's being sold, but where it's being sold. It's when humans set up a lot of odds and ends they don't want anymore and let you buy them at quite a bargain price – that is to say, not very much money. Also known as 'garage sales,' though the most accurate term would probably be 'driveway sales.' But we don't use that one for some reason…"

You nod. Peridot continues to watch Drakken with eyes like telescopes. "Why do we care about this 'yard sale'?" she says, although her voice is thoughtful and considering, without the sullen tone you have heard accompany similar questions.

"Oh, no reason. Just – who knows? We might stumble across something." Drakken shrugs, but you do not miss the smile he attempts to smooth from his face.

You wave an arm at the sign. "So – what does the rest of this mean?"

"That, my dear Lapis, is an address. The words are the name of a street. The numbers are – well, have you noticed those numbers on the fronts of houses?" Drakken says.

"And those are used as identifying marks?" Peridot says. By now she is on her hands and knees atop the trash can lid. "And if we find the corresponding house, we win?"

"Something like that, yes," Drakken says.

He glances up toward the pole that sits at the corner of the road, as one does at every corner, and the green slats at the top that crisscross one another; each bears the name of its section of road. The one pointing inward reads McCorkle.

"So, this way, then," you say, gesturing down the street, although it does not seem long enough to hold five hundred and twenty-two houses. The counting must not begin at one.

You are correct. The first house, nearest the sign, has the numbers 518 hanging below its front window, the house next to it 520 – Drakken explains to you that the number progression alternates from houses on one side of the road to those on the other side, haphazard as Earth customs tend to be.

A group of humans in the same insecure place between boys and men as Lars spread up and down the road, riding short surfboards with wheels across the sidewalk. You wonder if Drakken was ever one of them at some point, and you grin as you try to picture him in bagging pants and a black helmet in addition to the thick vision-correctors you know he sported and the curious look in his eyes that has probably always been there.

522 McCorkle turns out to be a house approximately the same size and shape as Ron's, but where his house was the color of wet sand, this is a warm gray like the underside of a cloud. Drakken was right; the sale takes place primarily on the driveway. Tables of great length have been spread across it, supporting a chaos of items: food-chopping machines similar to Mama Lipsky's, worn clothes that appear to have been bleached by the sun, and jewelry studded with murky synthetic jewels. They are aged yet not decrepit, with neither the splendor of the Homeworld you left behind or the ruin of the Homeworld you found on your return.

Thin papers flap against the tables in the hot breeze, marked with numbers and strange symbols that look like letters with lines slashing down their centers. You search to see if they create some kind of message when fused, but you see only the letters c and s, which says nothing you can decipher. A woman perhaps Drakken's age hurries back and forth between tables, her nose pinched in a manner you recognize well from Pearl, disparaging the mess even as she adds to it.

You have no idea what you would buy here.

Dr. Drakken doesn't seem to have located whatever he was hoping to find, either. He runs his fingers absently over stacks of magazines and frowns.

Inside the dimly lit garage, a door that you assume leads to the house swings open, and a girl steps out. While the woman with the Pearl-like face is likely only in her fourth decade of existence, this one appears to be an entire generation younger, not quite grown, with the fresh eyes of the newly Emerged. Her hair is yellow, several shades lighter than Peridot's, and stops in a curve at her jawline as yours does, though hers is much more subdued. The wooden basket she carries in her arms holds toys you recognize from Steven's room: the miniaturized buoy that bobs up and down on its string, the box with two hundred fragments of a picture inside that children are supposed to reassemble, and a dull screen that reminds you of a bulkier prototype of Peridot's tablet.

"Okay, Mom," the girl sighs, "here's my stuff. Not like it matters." Her mouth curls up, an expression neither smile nor sneer. "Nobody's gonna want these ratty old things anyway."

You peer into the basket again. Nothing in there resembles a rat, which you know to be creatures related to mice and slightly larger, but somehow you gather what she is trying to say. A fine scattering of dust covers the toys, and cracks that you have to remind yourself are not painful to the tablet run down its screen.

There is a sparkle in Drakken's Obsidian eyes, and you think you understand.

"Hey, Peridot, look over there," you say, giving her a nudge.

Nothing more is needed. Peridot runs toward the girl, swooping for the basket before the girl can even place it on the ground. She jostles toys against one another, disentangles the ones that have become trapped in unnatural fusions, and examines handfuls of them with her tongue protruding, before you finally hear her gasp.

"This!" Peridot cries. "This, this, this, THIS! Oh, so much this!"

She holds up an object. While it takes you little time to recognize it as a stuffed animal, several seconds pass before you recognize it as a lion, its mane torn free in places, the fur on its tail roping downward in matted clumps. The stitches that hold it together are jagged and frail, and its patched drooping shoulders touch, the stuffing that would separate them absent. One of its eyes seems to reach farther forward than the other, and you realize it hangs on the end of a loose thread barely visible from where you stand. For a moment you worry it will come apart under the force of Peridot's touch.

Even in the dark garage, Peridot's eyes are bright with wonder. "I have found the one my heart desires!" she cries. She hugs the ragged-stitched lion closer, stuffing it against the star on her shirt, and gazes upward at the girl. "Are you really willing to part with him?"

The group of older children walk by, dragging their wheeled surfboards behind them. The tallest boy turns his head in Peridot's direction.

"Um, yeah! Gladly!" The girl's lip rises higher, until it is flush with her nostrils. "Do you have a dollar?"

"I do indeed!"

Peridot shapeshifts a pocket, draws from it one of the crumpled green papers, and passes it to the girl. When the girl hands her the lion, she tips her body forward a few centimeters and speaks; though her words reach you and Dr. Drakken, they are obviously meant for Peridot alone.

"Thanks for giving him a good home," she says.

"Does he have a name?" Peridot's voice moves at its usual brisk pace, yet its sharper edges are cushioned with respect.

"I used to call him Lyle," the girl whispers.

Lyle the Lion, you think. It seems good enough to you.

Peridot nods with grave acceptance, as though responding to an edict from Yellow Diamond, and pulls the lion to rest in the bend of her arm. The girl straightens up and stalks out to the driveway, rolling her hair upward with her fingers and letting it fall again, throwing glances over her shoulder the entire time. She could be any number of Homeworld's Lapises, including the one you used to be. You do not feel a connection to her, that previous incarnation of yourself, at least not one any stronger than Steven feels to Rose, but unlike Steven, you are forced to carry her memories.

You sigh and step out of the garage so that the sun can hit your gemstone again.

Outside, Dr. Drakken leaps from foot to foot, clapping his hands, seemingly unaware of the yellow petal sticking out below his left ear. You motion to him and tug at your own neck, and you watch as his hands reach up and feel around for the petal.

Moments later, Peridot joins you, the lion clutched to her side, bits of its tattered mane protruding every which way. You look at it and in that instant you are barefoot again, feeling the barn's boards beneath your feet, smelling its scent of warm wood and forgotten corners. In that instant, you watch a small Earth insect travel up and down a rafter and leave behind clear intricate threads in a pattern shaped like a drawing of a star, so fine that the sun seems to ignore it; you marvel that a creature this lowly is creating meepmorps of its own.

"It's perfect, Peridot," you say without thinking.

Peridot turns to you, her face flat. No amount of disgust can freeze and mar the round eyes. "Lapis," she says, "it is not perfect. It is far from perfect."

"Yeah, I know." You nudge the toe of Peridot's boot with the open end of your own shoe. "That's what makes it perfect."

Peridot seems to accept that. She wears the smile you remember from the first time Pumpkin let Peridot pat her head. Drakken walks back to the hovercraft, murmuring, "Another brilliant idea, courtesy of Dr. Drakken."

For the remainder of the ride home, Peridot steers her trash can lid with only one arm, the other wrapped around Lyle the Lion. Mama Lipsky's house seems to grow larger and larger as you approach it, and once her driveway comes into view, you pull your wings to a stop, hover in midair for a moment, and then allow yourself to drop to your feet. You and Peridot carry the bags and boxes inside after Drakken's attempt to lift the box with the ottoman in it causes him to gasp in pain. He watches you lift it with an embarrassed cast to his cheeks, which is cute but not in a way that gladdens you.

Mama Lipsky stands at the front door, shoring it open for the two of you, her head tilting as she instructs you to place your new belongings in the living room and try to fit them together so they take up as little space as possible. She frowns only once, when Peridot brings in the aqueous rug. "Isn't that a beach towel?" Mama Lipsky says.

"Maybe," you say before Peridot can respond. "But now it's a rug."

Peridot high-fives you.

Drakken begins a lengthy explanation of every item you and Peridot bring in, an explanation that, in time, fades to a murky outline of speech, only its buoyant rise-and-fall still registering. He and Mama Lipsky eat dinner while you politely try a few small bulbous fruits with sweet juices within their skins, some of which are green and others purple, and ask Mama Lipsky if you can borrow one of her pens. Peridot lies on the couch; Lyle the Lion does not leave her grip once.

After dinner, the four of you gather in front of the television in the basement, which is playing an old animated movie that Drakken appears to recognize about a pack of white wolves with black spots and the evil woman who abducts them, hoping to use their fur to make a coat for herself. At first, you are not quite sure what about this is so horrible – most human clothing was made from fur when you first visited Earth, and even then you saw it as a necessary cruelty. Several scenes later, you realize with horror that these are not wolves but dogs, treasured companions stolen from their humans, whose fur she is planning to take; she is carving up Pumpkin for decoration.

Your back feels cold, but you do not shiver. You sink more deeply into a sofa even thinner than the one in the living room, feeling Peridot and Drakken on either side of you, and you wait for the woman with her crazed eyes to be defeated. Drakken, you are certain, would never watch a movie without a happy ending.

Your suspicion proves correct: Before the end of the movie, the woman has crashed her car through a frozen pond, punished by cold water as though you had planned the event yourself. "Yeah! Take that!" you call, thrusting a fist forward. The water on the television, being only a series of pictures, does not move with you.

When Dr. Drakken tells you good night, you lean over and give him the long waxen sheet of paper that contains the proof of your purchases at Smarty Mart.

"Um, why are you giving me a receipt? I mean – many thanks, of course, Lapis, but – why?" His eyes are confused black ovals.

A giggle escapes you with an ease you don't recall it having before. "Because of what's on the back."

You turn the paper over and point to the words written there with Mama Lipsky's borrowed pen. The house you sacrificed to save your home, they read.

Drakken blinks at you.

"You said somebody should have written that down," you say with a shrug. "So – I wrote it down."

He ties his arms around you and laughs into your hair.