~One more fluffy chapter. Next time we'll switch over to Drakken's POV for a few chapters, and. . . well, just fasten your seatbelts, kiddies.~

Music is another thing that has changed drastically since you were last here.

You step into the music shop – full of little disks inside covers, like the disks at the library that played stories on a screen – and are greeted with not a melody, but a throb, a Wailing Stone gone berserk. It vibrates in the limited space until the floor itself is difficult to stand on and the walls seem to slide closer together.

Dr. Drakken has his hands up over the flaps of his ears, and you are relieved to see this. Perhaps it means that, even on a relatively crude planet of the Crystal System, this type of ruckus is not usual. "This is what we call 'hard rock!'" he shouts.

Even then, you have to crane toward him to make out his voice, a problem you have never had before. You frown. "You mean…like a Diamond?" you ask.

The resonance of Drakken's laughter is indistinguishable from the thrum; only the shake of his shoulders alerts you to its presence. "Oopsie! My fault!" he says. "In this case 'rock' doesn't mean 'stone.'" You much prefer that word, stone – it sounds so much more elegant. "It's referring to a type of music – the one you're currently hearing – called 'rock and roll.'"

"Oh." You understand the roll, can hear it, like the echo of waves in a dense cavern. And rock is even more vivid in your mind, a human ship batted about in a storm.

"I think they call it that because it makes you want to rock your body." This doesn't look as dangerous as it sounds, not when Drakken lists his own body side to side as a demonstration. "If you like it, that is. Me, I'm not a huge fan of hard rock – that's what shakes the floors – my cousin likes it, though. Soft rock's just got a good strong beat. That's more my style." He grins for no apparent reason other than to end his sentence.

You still have yet to ask what a cousin is. You simply nod, forming a basic outline in your mind.

Drakken squeals suddenly and picks up what appears to be a communication headset, only puffy and purple – an indulgence Homeworld would never have permitted. He stretches the space between the cupping speakers until it is wide enough to fit a small head. "These are called headphones," he says. "They clamp onto the sides of your head."

You must flinch at the word clamp, because Drakken begins to emphatically shake his head. "They don't hurt, I promise," he says in his hurried way. "They're just what you wear to hear music – because it drowns all of this –" he gestures as though to the cloud of noise around you – "out. Also, this way no one else can hear it but you.

"Can I put them on you?" he finishes, almost shyly.

You nod again. You haven't heard of the band which excites him so greatly, but you would much prefer Dr. Drakken's music to the jarring thing you are hearing now, the one with an almost physical aggression.

Drakken advances a step, stops, hesitates, retreats. He casts helpless glances between you and the headphones in his hand. "Ummm…I don't really know how to say this politely. Never had to tell anyone this before – but – um – errr – you don't have any ears."

You are not offended. It is true, after all. Since most of the parts required for hearing are internal, the Gems have not bothered to shapeshift those lumpy, shell-like holes simply to flop at the bottoms and collect wax, as humans' do. Drakken's are especially large and cumbersome-looking, wiggling when his movements are too sudden – comical, though. You enjoy them.

"No," you say. "I don't." You lift your own shoulders; it appears to be some sort of apology to the citizens of Earth.

"But you can still hear, right?" Drakken jams his fingers into his eyebrow before you can respond. "Well, du-uh, of course you can! I've been talking to you for a week or something…" He toys with the headphones, winding his thumb in the cord connecting them to a flat-topped desk with a screen embedded. "Where should I put it, then? Where do you hear from?"

"Anywhere, really." The violent song has ended, and there is enough room to hear yourself again.

Drakken blinks. "O-oh. Okay." He tweaks the headphones' cords, once, twice, three times. "Can I just put them on over your head? Would that work? Because that's the way it's typically done…"

"Yes. That'd work."

You take an optional breath and hold it in when Dr. Drakken fits the headphones around your head, in the spot right where your hair ends. His lack of coordination sometimes makes the gentleness difficult for him. But his small fingers were designed for delicate tasks such as this, and he fits the headphones snugly with only a few pokes.

And then it is as if you disappear into a vacuum. You realize, strangely, how utterly silent a Gem without organs is when cut off. Dr. Drakken's blood is always roaring along its path in his veins, his stomach warbling with hunger, his joints making assorted odd noises.

You are relieved when his voice filters in, strained down to almost nothing yet with its excitement intact. "Okay, now I'm going to tap this screen," he says, "and it'll play a little of The Elements' music. Let me know what you think!"

"I will," you say, and it rings stark in the quiet.

"All righty then!" Drakken pokes at the screen – with some modern Earth technology, even the buttons are printed directly on the screen, no longer solid objects – and the faint stirrings of music creep through the padding into the walls of your head, growing louder and intensifying over time.

There are instruments you recognize in the background – the keyboard one, a sophisticated upgrade of the one you played in the toy store. The one with the lovely strings that you stroke with a bow. The sound raises tiny sections of your skin, chilled with bumps that lift your fine hairs.

Louder than those, however, is another instrument you are not familiar with. You can identify the sound of strings, but these are being strummed much faster so that all the notes bleed into one another – not unpleasantly, but oddly. It has an easier, stronger sound.

"What's that instrument?" you call to Drakken. "The main one – I haven't heard it before."

Drakken's face fills with light again. "A guitar!" he says. "There are a lot of different kinds. The Elements used them a lot because they have – well, scientifically speaking, the vibrations of the strings – aww, you know what? They just sound cool!"

He almost shouts, the air ruffling your bob on its way over your head and back through the room. You giggle, at the exaggerated volume and at how far his mouth manages to spread.

Over the instruments, in snatches, you pick out words. There is a gentleness to them that you did not expect; they speak of new awkward love and finding acceptance and the need to take care of one another.

"Do you like it?" Drakken asks.

You consider the question for a moment, and then you nod. You do not share the enthusiasm that flows from him for this music, but you can appreciate it: its beat, its message, its importance to your friend.

When Drakken lifts the headphones, your hearing is assaulted by a thumping, thick and metallic, as if someone is repeatedly striking the hull of one of Homeworld's sleek new battleships. You can feel it vibrating through the hollows of your body. You flinch, not just from the racket, but from the thoughts of war it carries with it.

Dr. Drakken places his hands over his ears again – though his hands are so small, his ears so large that sections of them are left unprotected. He tilts his head toward the door and then skitters for it. You follow, eager to be free of the pounding.

Once outside, Drakken wiggles as though to shake off any lingering bits of the sound. "Now, see, my cousin is into hard rock, with all the drums and such things."

Cousin. You slide the word back and forth in your brain a few times. There is still so much you have yet to learn.

Drakken flashes a grin as wide and as laden with possibilities as the galaxies above. "But it's a little too hard on my nervous system." You know this is the collection of cells that allows human beings to feel pain and other sensations, more mysterious to you, called by such names as tickles and itches. And you can understand how it could be rattled by such an enormous noise. "Like I said earlier, I prefer soft rock."

And you smile somewhere inside, because – if one has to use such an unsophisticated term – Lapis Lazuli is a soft "rock."

The group performing at the beach that night does not turn out to be the Elements, to Drakken's momentary disappointment. They are a small gathering, only five of them. One strums an instrument whose voice you recognize as a guitar, not as big as you would have imagined it and rather reminiscent of an upside-down Earth flower, with a long thin stalk blossoming into a bulb shape where strings lace across a shallow hole. Another stoops over a keyboard, one sings into what resembles the Diamonds' Voice-Enhancers, and two more play wind instruments, black straight rods with hooks at the end where lips can rest and a collection of tiny holes that they constantly cover and uncover to produce different keys.

They look like strange, sloppy humans, the lot of them – jeans torn at the knees, the sleeves of their shirts missing entirely, their hair jutting at odd angles – but together, they produce something beautiful.

The sound cascades over you and you raise your chin to catch it. It rings with sincerity and understanding and the harmony that once governed your people.

It is so good – and you are surprised to feel tiny dots of water in your eyes – it is so good to hear music again.

The ridged underside of Dr. Drakken's sandal leaves indents in the sand as he taps it in time to the song. You feel your limbs relaxing, feel your own body swaying side to side, and you glance upward toward your home.

Darkness is slipping in, the sun pivoting to warm the other side of the planet now. The last of its light erupts across the sky, staining it pink, with orange streaks the color of a Ruby's flames and muted lavender clouds that are surely no thicker than your own wings. The moon hangs low near the horizon, like a probe sent to keep watch.

You run sand between your fingers and you sigh – happily. Have this many wonders always existed on Earth?

How did you miss them the first time?

The liveliness of the first song dies down, into an unhurried tune whose notes are longer, farther apart, and pitched softer. It is made to slow down and savor, like the taste of ice cream.

Drakken suddenly appears to have something stuck to the roof of his mouth. He turns toward you, his fingers fidgeting at nothing – and then they straighten and extend to you. Eyes shy, he asks, "Do you want to dance?"

You blink. A darker shade of blue immediately rushes for your cheeks. Dragged along with it are the things you've observed over thousands of years – the respectful bow to one another, the entwining of hands, the careful choreography designed to make room for another's consciousness, the anticipation in tense legs, the moment of connection where you see nothing but light, and the resulting creature. Sometimes a flawless multiplication of strength and speed and cunning; other times…a monster.

And yet, at the center of it all, the closeness, the connection. What leads Gems into forbidden situations to seek it.

"Already?" you whisper. You duck your head forward, and yet you cannot help but peek at Dr. Drakken's face.

It is bewildered, almost contorted. His eyebrow has furrowed, pushing peaks into the skin above it. Below, his pupils drift in to meet each other, but they haven't lost their kindness in their confusion. "What did I do?" he asks, and he sounds even younger than forty-two.

He truly has no idea.

Of course. Of course he doesn't know. Humans can't fuse. You were repeatedly told that was one of the reasons they were inferior, that they were unfit to live…

The gem on your back suddenly feels cold and callous. You shiver, narrowing your focus on fusion instead: its naturalness to you, what an alien concept it is to Dr. Drakken. How can you make him understand what it is like to burst into a larger, stronger, more efficient version of yourself?

And how will you possibly explain what the rebel Gems who fuse outside of class experience – to occupy the same body as another Gem – and a third, wholly separate being who is both of you and neither of you at once?

You shut your eyes to be alone with the scattered images. "My people," you begin, "do something called fusion."

All is dark behind your eyelids, but you hear Dr. Drakken let out his deepened squeal, his "Ooh!" noise. "Which kind?" he asks excitedly. "Atomic? Molecular? Hydro-electric?"

The words fall, senseless, into your mind and roll away. "Gem fusion?" you venture, opening a slit of one eye to gauge his reaction.

"Oh." Drakken shrugs. "Never heard of it." It would seem a dismissal were his tone not so open and curious, as if he has a great desire to hear more.

You close the slit again. Now you must define it, for his sake, and you are no more certain you can than a dolphin can explain swimming to land creatures.

But Dr. Drakken has guided you through the mysteries of his planet; now you have a chance to repay that. A Diamond could defer the question to a Pearl, who would have a seamless answer already prepared.

Seamless and impersonal – Drakken deserves something warmer.

"Fusion is a process where Gems combine their strength and skills," you say. Though you cannot see Drakken's face, you can imagine him siphoning energy from your words, much as he does with his human food. "They merge into one bigger Gem, and she's called a fusion, too."

The silence remains wide and clean, so you decide to keep going. "We do a special dance before we fuse to get our bodies synchronized. And we fill our minds with thoughts of cooperation, because if we can't do that, the fusion won't stick. Fusing is the ultimate demonstration of trust. It's not to be used lightly."

You pause for the faded old reflection of the first cross-Gem fusion you ever saw, the permanent one who has come to take care of Steven now. The one whom Blue Diamond and her court later declared an "abomination."

She was taller than you, this combination of two tiny Gems, with skin of a purplish cast and clothes swirled with pink and blue like the sunset. She had three eyes – imagine! Three! – and they were as fresh and new and filled with wonder as a Kindergartener just emerged. Everything about her was gawky, striking, unnatural, and probably wrong. But abomination?

You didn't see it.

"It's only supposed to be used for battle tactics," you continue, "but…it's hard not to come out of it feeling closer to the other Gem." The admission flees your lips like treason. Your loyalty compels you to add, hastily, "The rebel Gems misuse this. They'll fuse all the time, just for fun."

Another, more recent, flash of the permanent fusion, reaching out to take you from Steven. She is now a Gem of grace and quiet strength who bears little resemblance to the gangly, frightened, carelessly combined creature who stood before Blue Diamond. Beneath your fear of her, you should have been overwhelmed by repulsion.

Instead, you were envious – envious that they could be that close when a thick sheaf of glass separated you from your nearest fellow Gem.

You allow your eyes to open and study Dr. Drakken, silhouetted against the fading brilliance of the sky. As you expected, he is bright-eyed and energetic with the newly absorbed information. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand.

"Well," he says, the buoys in his voice lifting on the wave of a nervous giggle, "I've never been accused of getting too fresh before."

You catch enough of his meaning for your cheeks to darken further. Drakken, too, breaks out in two pink patches, one on either side of his oddly curly nose. You stand there, the two of you, embarrassed and grinning together.

"Ahem!" Drakken coughs the way he does when the sea breezes carry sand into his mouth. "How's about this? We can dance for each other, but not with each other. Like, I'll just dance by myself and you'll just dance for yourself. No fusing. No drama. Just dancing." His hands pluck at the air. "Okay?"

He sounds as uncertain as the currents running through you, which soothes them somehow. And you would be lying if you claimed you aren't intrigued by the thought of watching him dance for you.

"Okay," you say.

Dr. Drakken's smile is illuminated from within, a safe, guiding lighthouse. "All righty then," he says, fingers wiggling. "Check this out."

He begins sliding backward, left foot rolling behind the right, right foot immediately picking up the pattern. There's a sort of oozing motion to them, supple and constant and limp, and somehow he also manages to bob his head back and forth in time to the keyboard. It is the first bit of grace you have seen in Dr. Drakken, and it is thoroughly amazing.

You clap for him; you clap for joy; you clap to maintain the beat you can feel coursing gently through the dune grass under you.

As soon as Drakken's feet stop moving, they bend over each other and he topples to the ground with a great shower of sand.

You lean over him and offer your hand in assistance. "What do you call that?" you ask.

Drakken accepts your hand gingerly, as if he is afraid he will pull you down rather than pull himself up. "Falling down," he says with a sheepish grin.

You giggle. "No, I mean the dance."

"Oh." Drakken merrily kicks off his sandals and plunges his toes into the specks of fine silt and fragmented seashells. "That's the Moonwalk. It's the only dance I've ever really mastered."

That's not at all what it looks like to walk on the moon, even for creatures who cannot reflexively adjust to any standard of gravity. But you don't say this; you only watch Dr. Drakken bring his toes back up, dusted with powder along their delicate nails.

"Your turn!" Drakken proclaims. He stands back up, fists wriggling with excitement. "To dance, I mean."

You shift, hesitant.

"You said Gems do a special dance," Drakken says, tilting his spikes of hair at you. "Is that the same dance for everyone?"

"No," you say. "We all do different ones."

"Can you show me yours?" Dr. Drakken is speaking at too much volume and too deep a pitch to qualify as a whisper, and yet you can hear the gentle current in which the buoys in his voice bob.

Can you – as effortlessly as the rising tide flattened your sandcastle, those words wash away five thousand years of imperatives, the rebel Pearl's as bladed and angular as everything else about her, the fusion's in flat solid layers as unyielding as her gauntlets:

Show me the Homeworld Warp.

Show us Blue Diamond right now.

Show me the Kindergarten – I want to make sure it's shut down.

You could refuse, but that would only result in sharper demands, hurled tightly through the teeth – the rebel Pearl could be unpredictable, and you did not know what would happen to you if she threw the mirror to the floor and shattered it. When you failed to show her the Galaxy Warp that last morning, it was not an act of defiance. Blocked on all sides from the energy of the universe, you simply could not afford to spend any of your fading strength on something a Pearl could just as easily project from her own gem.

And then you met Steven.

Kindness will not sustain a Gem in such a cracked, drained state. Yet when Steven spoke to you, addressing you as one Gem to another, he returned to you your will.

That is what Dr. Drakken has extended to you now.

It makes your decision obvious.

"Yes," you say. "I'll show you."

Drakken applauds at a frenetic pace, much faster than yours a few minutes ago, and with each clap comes a bounce backward up the beach, until he is standing at a respectful distance.

You close your eyes for a moment and gather your thoughts, your feelings. It has been so long, so very long, and your legs are unsteady, curved inward without someone with whom to synchronize. You hear the seabirds and you hear the waves, and you imagine Dr. Drakken's heartbeat.

With a bow to an unseen partner, you move forward and your dance begins.

You flick across the sand, lightly enough that particles don't even cling to your manifested skin. One leg rises in a soft split above your head, Earth air billowing into your skirt, and for a moment you think perhaps you have misjudged the rebel Gems: perhaps it is not the fusion they crave so much as the opportunity to dance.

It is freeing.

You bring your leg down, replace it with a hand aimed at the sky, grasping for accommodating fingers to complete them. None come – of course not – and your fingers curl around emptiness. Your body twirls in a circle; your back dips for the ground in an arc that suspends you with the inkling of support, less distant now than it has been since your last conversation with Steven.

As you straighten again you catch a glimpse, around the leg you have already uncoiled for another split, of Dr. Drakken's face. His mouth hangs ajar, the corners of it unsteadily tweaking upward. His eyes have rounded, and the darkness of them shines like a summoning gem. You recognize his awe.

You wonder what it is he's seeing.

When you finish, dipping backward and then floating back upright, your hair slaps your cheeks and life floods between your shoulder blades. You are revitalized, you are breathing, and it fills you. Is this how a human being feels after nourishing themselves?

You give one last bow, this one to Drakken, and sink to the sandy floor beneath you, legs tucked comfortably up to your chin.

Drakken still appears to be frozen in time and space, his only movements the patter of his eyelashes, the swelling and lowering of his chest. It is his fingertips that finally twitch, knocking against each other, and he loosens one hand to rub the back of his neck, where the shagginess kicks outward. The buoys you love to hear turn suddenly shy as he says, "You – um – wow – that was – I mean – you. . . you have a very beautiful dance."

You do?

"Thank you," you say. "I liked your moonwalk, too."

It suited him as if it were designed for him.

"Oh. Thanks." The corners of Dr. Drakken's mouth nudge upward, while the corners of his eyes angle down. "It might be best that we didn't dance with each other. I'm a little out of practice. Last girl I danced with was a robot."

"A robot?" you repeat.

"Yes," Drakken says. "Do you – do you have robots on Homeworld?"

You nod. You know very well of robots – mechanical, technology-loaded, capable of speech but apparently not of sufficient thought processes; disposable, even lower than Pearls. Certainly not capable of anything so elegant as dance. "Why did you dance with one, though?"

Drakken chuckles with a strange, conflicting quality of fondness and bitterness. "Because I didn't have a girlfriend."

"Girlfriend." You measure the word. "Does that have anything to do with the human concept of marriage?"

Drakken crows "Yes!" and throws his arm skyward, as if he is immensely proud of you. "A girlfriend is sort of like Phase One," he explains. His hands work the air, seeming to wad up what he wants to say and then lay it flat for you. "If you're lucky, under the right temperature and pressure, if you let it cook for a long time, it can turn into marriage."

You nod again to show he has explained himself very well. There is still one thing you do not understand, though. "Why didn't you have a girlfriend?"

Drakken blinks at you, several times, and then lets out a laugh, a surprised sort of spurt, like a stream of water blown by a dolphin. "Why didn't I – ? I mean, because I was scrawny and death-pale and a science geek and I wore these huge glasses –" He must see your frown, your attempt to envision how Desert Glass could be woven into the fabric humans wear, because he places his fingers in rings around his eyes, in bigger versions of the black circles that cup them. "Glasses are these big round lenses people wear to help them see better. I bet Gems all have perfect vision, though, huh?"

"Yes. But I've seen those before. I just didn't know what they were called." Steven's little friend – his girlfriend? – the one named Connie, wears them. They are charming on her, and all you can do is stare at Dr. Drakken's lips, which are molding a new crest of words, nice sensible words, and yet they don't seem relevant to your question at all:

"What does any of that have to do with having a girlfriend?"

Drakken's grin broadens. "You know, I really like you."

It is your turn to blink. "I like you, too," you say.

Drakken sighs, in perfect contentment it seems, and lowers himself to the ground. His short legs reach the sand while the long rest of him is still unfolding and refolding itself into a sit.

A quick glance at the sky, and your attention is captured by the star-patterns that have twisted, shrunk, and expanded since the days of your imprisonment. Humans will have made different patterns than the ones your people developed long before the war, and they will have invented different stories as to what they are and how they got there. So many stories yet to be told. Your head, heavy but not an in unpleasant way, tips slightly to the side and rests on the synthetic padding of Dr. Drakken's shoulder.

He grins, larger still, and flutters his left hand – only his left so as not to jostle you, you somehow instinctively guess.

As a sea breeze swoops in and ruffles your hair, kisses at your cheekbones, Drakken begins to tap his fingerprints together. "Well – I'm – I have to go back to Middleton tomorrow."

He pitches his voice low and gentle, as if he fears the news will shatter you. And while your appreciation for this and your memory that this was coming do absorb some of the sting, it still pierces in some distant fashion. "Why?" you say, even though you know it is a ridiculous question.

It apparently is such a ridiculous question that Drakken has not prepared an answer. "Well, because it's where my mother lives," he says after a silence heavy as Quartz. "It's where I was born. It's where I was raised. It's my home."

Regret leaps into his eyes almost before you even feel the pinch of it, quick and narrow down your back. "Oh! I'm sorry!" Drakken gasps. "I meant to say that more sensitively! Something like, 'You showed me how important it is not to take home for granted.'"

When you look at him, his face is as kind as ever, his eyebrow rumpled in worry over any distress he may have caused you. You cannot smile it away, but you can nod to acknowledge that you aren't choosing to take offense.

Drakken swallows – why, you aren't certain; he hasn't been chewing anything. His buoy-words tangle in their own strings as he says, "You would be welcome there. If you wanted to come."

It takes a moment for you to grasp the full meaning of his offer.

Everything. He extends to you everything.

Any place that could raise a man like Dr. Drakken, a man who has done lifelong battle with his hate and his pain and has emerged with clumsy compassion and the best of human decency – any such place must be lovely. But it is his world; these are his people.

And everyone else will have ears.

The Gems were once a proud, honorable species. Surely their nobility could not have vanished entirely in a meager five thousand years. Maybe it only lies hidden, a sea anemone retracting into itself, waiting for high tide to moisten it again.

Shaking your head is more tasking than such a simple move should be. "No," you say. "It's very nice, but I have a home, too. I have to try and help it." You gaze up at the vast distance, at the gulf you could not breach with even your ocean, and something tightens in you as though you are too small to hold it. "There's got to be something I can do to remind the Gems of how it used to be."

Drakken's chin falls down the length of his chest. "You're so loyal to them," he says, the buoys choppy and carrying over the softening beat of the music. "If they can't appreciate that, then they forgot to shapeshift brains!"

"That's not how intelligence works for Gems, Drakken," you tell him.

Drakken grunts. "I know, but it was such a good line!"

The stars play in his eyes, as if he is the mirror reflecting galaxies, demonstrating to everyone what a vast and wonderful place space is, its shine mixing with his natural, organic sparkle. That sparkle reminds you so much of Steven's, and yet it is older, deeper – old and deep enough to comprehend the hardest crevices and prisons you have found yourself wedged into. Dr. Drakken has been through so much in his fleeting lifetime, and it has only made him brighter in the darkness.

With any luck, you will carry some of that back home with you.

It is a thought that invigorates you, lifts you easily to your feet, and points you toward the sea. "Come on," you say. "I need to feel the ocean before I go."

"I'll feel it, too!" Drakken says. The skin on his forehead ridges. "Well, provided it's warm enough. Some days, it's just ice-cold, you know…"

And on and on he goes. It is happy chatter, not an incessant droning of missions and violations. You will miss it.

There is still so much to ask him – what dancing signifies to humans, why his throat has a knob pressing at its center where Gems' are flat, how exactly humans care for each other when one is damaged.

For now, however, you are more strongly pulled to the ocean than you are toward your curiosity. You rush into it, the hem of your skirt kissing the water until foam sparkles on it.

Dr. Drakken leaves the sandals behind as he follows you – the undersides of his feet are imprinted with tender folds in the flesh; you're unsure what they are, but you find them appealing. His largest toe dips tentatively into the water and then withdraws immediately with a bellow. "Oooh! It is too cold."

A contortion chases away his smile, and you don't want it to leave. You innately know what you must do.

As naturally as humans breathe, you bend over and submerge the tips of your fingers. You flood yourself with warm thoughts – reflections of early human fires crackling, of your galaxy's sun rolling over Homeworld, of the Crystal System's sun rolling over Drakken's planet. Though the temperature your body has adopted never changes, you can feel the power of heat seeping from the core of your gem to zing down your arms and travel out through the patterns on your fingertips.

Drakken's face eases, and he sighs out a long, bobbing, "Ahhhh. Much better, thank you." He suddenly squints in your direction. "Wait – did you do that?"

"Yes," you say – modestly. The victory you felt when your ocean bested the small purple Gem and injured the human named Greg could have been a seabird, cawing in your head; this is settled and restful.

No sooner have you thought that than Dr. Drakken screams.

It is the shrillest sound you have ever heard him make, and it drives at you like a well-thrust weapon. "My legs!" he cries. "A giant squid just grabbed my ankle! Both my ankles! I'm going down!"

He's wrong. A giant squid would never enter water this shallow.

You squat and examine his feet anyway. They are ensnared, by a thick, oily strand of browned-green seaweed that loops them together and slithers upward to reach for his knobbed ankles. You imagine how that must feel, zigzagged between his legs like a restraint, and you understand where the fear comes from.

With small, delicate movements of your hands, you lean toward his leg – surprisingly short beneath his lengthy torso. You untangle the seaweed and lift it up to show Drakken there's no need to be afraid. "See? It's just kelp," you say.

"Oh. Right."

And because he appears embarrassed, you decide to give him, "You're really smart to know what giant squid are, though. Last time I was here, humans thought they were mystical sea monsters."

Drakken's laugh is thin, almost a sniffle. "I bet you're very well acquainted with giant squid, aren't you?"

You shake your head. "I've seen a few, but I don't like going to the bottom of the ocean. It's so dark and cold and competitive." Drakken's eyebrow puckers, so you explain – "There's not much food, so everyone fights over whatever falls down there."

And you have never liked fighting.

"Now, where I do like to go," you say, determined not to let the pleasantness of this evening be washed away, "is the Kelp Forest." You skim between your fingers the strand you're still holding. "Huge stalks of these just sprout from the ocean bed, and they can grow fast. It gives so many animals food and shelter."

Dr. Drakken is watching you, his eyes as round and shiny as a Pearl's gem.

"It's so peaceful down there," you continue. "When the sun hits the water just right, it shines right through the leaves and makes everything so beautiful. It's not too hot. Not too cold, either. There are little animals –" you struggle to find the word for the playful brown creatures – "otters, is that it?"

"Sea otters, yes," Drakken says.

"They'll wrap up in kelp before they go to sleep so they won't drift away. It's where they feel safe – it has plenty of places to hide," you say. "Nothing ever followed me down there. I liked to just go and sit by the kelp and close my eyes."

You close them now and picture your hideaway – the sun's rays filtering through the kelp leaves, casting everything in a soak of greenish gold; the shimmery ribbon of an eel threading its way through the plants; the carefree cries of the otters at play. How many times you took refuge down there when skirmishes broke out, when the Diamonds gave increasingly foreboding orders.

The Gems had never yet in your lifetime converted a planet this covered by water before. Never had you seen such prolific sea life, and part of you couldn't help hoping that they, at least, might survive the conversion process. The Kindergartens were concentrated on dry land, ignoring the potential under the ocean's crust. You were planning to bring this up – if and only if the land mantle didn't yield a sufficient harvest.

"Sounds like my science lab." Dr. Drakken's deep voice intrudes on your imagination, but you don't mind; he is good company. "Only without the sea otters." He grunts. "If I see one of those, I know it's time to go to sleep."

It's your turn to squint at him. This is a human custom you know nothing about. "Is that how all humans know when to go to bed? An otter comes and tells them?"

A chuckle bursts from Drakken like the roar of a launching rocket. He doubles over as if in pain, clutching his side with one hand and pounding on his knee with the other. "Sea otters. . . tell people it's time to go to bed!" he gasps.

There's a hint of derision in it – affectionate derision, but it still rubs abrasively between your shoulder blades, and you'd like it to stop. When it doesn't, when it keeps making you feel small and alien, you call, "Stop it!" and your hands, all on their own, scoop a clump of moist sand and throw it his way.

It collides with Drakken's leg, right below where his bathing garment ends.

Drakken freezes in place. So, it seems, does time itself. Your hands go to your mouth, and it is no longer Dr. Drakken you are seeing – it is Steven's father, his leg twisted at a crumpled angle to match the wreckage of his vehicle.

"Oh stars," you say into your fingers. "Did I hurt you?"

Drakken's eyes bulge a little beyond their boundaries as he says, "Huh?"; fall back into place when he says, "No;" and then gleam with mischief as he adds, "It doesn't hurt as long as you don't aim at the FACE!" and volleys his own sand handful at you.

It hits your elbow, breaks apart, and dribbles back down to the water. And Drakken is right – it doesn't hurt. You say, "Hey!" anyway, just because it's fun. You giggle and return his throw with another of your own.

Drakken takes aim back at you, the sand slapping in the exact spot between the end of your top and the beginning of your skirt. Blue Diamond's voice in your head, snapping at you about how inelegant you appear, how unlike a member of her court, dims along with the sky as the sun disappears from sight.

The sand game continues – you have never liked fighting, so this is only a game – until a wave of laughter finally overtakes Dr. Drakken and sends him to his back in the shallowest part of the water, howling and whooping.

You wade over to him and lie down beside him. Water washes into all the gaps your body forms stretched out like this.

A woman passing by gives you a look of what you think may be envy, her gaze fixed on how the water surges over your clothes without so much as dampening them. You have seen how the human women's light dresses drag when wet as though weighted down with anchors. There was a time when that would have kindled a hint of smugness in you.

Instead, you turn to your friend.

"I have a question now," you say. "And I think if anyone can answer it, it's you."

"Well, then –" Drakken's chest pokes out – "by all means, then, ask."

"What does it mean when someone's leg is broken?" The word is not easy for you to say, for any Gem to say. It signifies the end of everything. And while the human named Greg crawled out and was clearly not dead, it still sounds extremely serious.

"Oh, well," Dr. Drakken says, his eyes wide, shiny in their knowledge. "That means the bone inside breaks."

Bones, you remember, form the basic cut of human framework, enabling them to do such rudimentary things as stand up and walk. You survey Drakken's own, dimly visible against the outline of his thin legs. "It…shatters?" This word also stalls and stutters in your throat.

"No, no, not usually," Drakken says, filtering through the sand until he finds a twig. "It just – snaps apart." He splits the twig jaggedly in two.

Greg reflects back across your mind, his face a mold of pain. You put it there. "Does it hurt?" you say.

"Ohhhhhhh, yes," Drakken says. "Especially a leg."

"Oh," you say quietly.

Your powers roil inside you. Both hands retreat to the back of your neck as you say, "Does it stay broken…forever?"

Drakken begins to shake his head so fervently that the branched ends of his hair loosen from their cloth tie and smack off his skin. "No, they can fix it. Quite easily in fact." He tosses the fragments of twig aside, freeing his hands for the explanation. "First off, you go to a doctor and they kind of push the pieces of the bone back together so that they're touching again. Then they put plaster – that's this stuff that's really squishy when it's wet and then hardens as it dries – they shape that around the outside of the leg – and then when it hardens, it makes a cast to hold the bones in place. They leave the cast on for a few months, and the bones grow back together." His excited words taper off to some tender place as he tells you, "The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal."

Months are based on the phases of the moon. It's been several since you tossed Greg's vehicle through the air. His leg must work again. "Yes. That's good," you say.

There are still a thousand questions in Dr. Drakken's eyes. You will answer them, tomorrow, when you exchange your good-byes.

For now, though, there is the filling echo of the string instruments and the sparse push-pull of the tide slapping the shore and then flowing away. Like Sapphire and her Ruby protector, the sounds are vastly different, and yet what they form is not altogether unpleasant. You wish to hold it, keep it, the way you were once held and kept.

"How do humans know when they need to sleep?" you ask instead. "And what do sea otters have to do with it?"

Drakken chuckles, this time with a warmth that overshadows whatever else he may have. "Well, sometimes when you're super, super tired, you start seeing things that aren't there. Things that make no sense…like a sea otter in a landlocked laboratory." He winds a finger through the air, as though to wrap it all together. "That's a sign that you need to shut down for the night."

"Really?" You roll over onto your side, water whispering against your right cheek. "What else?"

"Well, as you may have deduced, your mind gets awfully fuzzy. Hard to think straight. Your head feels like it's stuffed full of cement so you can barely keep it upright, and your eyelids get really, really heavy, too. You have to keep shutting them. And you keep yawning" – that, you've learned, is what it's called when humans' lips draw back and a raspy noise comes from them – "and your limbs just drag whenever you try to move them. It's called fatigue."

"Sounds awful," you say. His description holds your attention rapt. You have been weary before, with battle sounds ringing in your head and your reserve stretched thinner than the screens that now shield your people's faces, but never have you experienced this 'fatigue.' Even when you were inside the mirror, cut off from your source of energy, you felt no dragging or yawning; you just felt the compression of yourself, diminishing and flickering.

"Oh, it's really not all that bad," Dr. Drakken says, though the edges of his smile flare into a grimace. "Granted, it's a real pain when you've got a really important project to work on, and then boom! You suddenly need to go to bed. I kind of envy you, really – who knows how much more we could get done if we didn't have to devote eight hours a night to lying unconscious?"

You spread your toes to allow a hermit crab to continue, uninterrupted, on its path. "Why do you? If we don't?"

Drakken gives you a quizzical look. His fingertips meet and then spring apart. "Well – do you know about plug-ins versus batteries?"

"Yes." Power grids, each sprouting innumerable thick cords, litter Homeworld's surface now, and ever-smaller, ever-sleeker power cells are manufactured every day to fuel the technology that needs to be taken along with you.

"Well, you Gems have your Cosmic Energy Supply."

That's not how you would have worded it, but you like how mighty it makes you and your people sound.

"But us humans, we run on batteries, and we need to recharge every now and then." Drakken hikes himself up onto one elbow and grins at you. "That's why we've got to eat – and sleep."

"Oh. That makes sense."

You study Dr. Drakken's face in the last faint sunbeams. It is gleeful as he unearths a sand dollar from the tangle of seaweed and shells; it is content as he lays it back down again to rest beside his new find; it is indignant when the next wave to wash ashore sneaks right into the little holes in his nose.

With a flick of your hands, you banish that wave and return your attention to your sputtering friend. He snorts and coughs, wiping at his nose with his wet sleeves. "I could take you down to the Kelp Forest," you offer, eager to return the peace to his expression. "It's so beautiful down there."

To your surprise, Dr. Drakken's head shakes again, and his next cough is awkward. "Well, errr, no. I mean, thank you, but we humans – we can't breathe underwater."

"Right," you say, embarrassment's press on your chest. As soon as he says it, you remember. Of course. That's why they can drown.

Lapis, I'm coming up to talk to you. So please don't drown me.

A thousand different sensations rush down your back.

"So you can't go underwater at all?" you say. Your pity for this species doubles.

"Well, we can," Drakken says. "But not without scuba gear or something."

You must frown, because he sits up jauntily and grabs his knees as he rocks forward. "SCUBA. It's an acronym, actually. Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It's a tank of oxygen that straps to a person's back. You breathe through a tube that connects it to your nose and mouth."

He taps each body part as he mentions it. It makes the unknown device easier to picture.

"Thank you. I like it when you explain things," you say, perhaps more timidly than intended.

"You do?" Drakken says. He is breakable; he cannot fuse; but that smile seems too wide and brilliant to belong to a simple human. "Nobody else does! They're just all like, 'Shut up, Drakken.' But I just love to explain things!" His mouth smacks, a sound like rustling paper. "Dries out my throat, though. I need to get some water."

"Water?" You lift your eyebrows at him.

"To drink," Drakken says. "I'm thirsty."

"Oh." You understand; this week you have seen humans take swallows from plastic bottles of water and cups made of a flimsy new material called Styrofoam. "Well, go ahead and take a drink. I'm sure the ocean won't mind." If it didn't protest when you stole it and tried to elongate it across the galaxies, it will undoubtedly forgive Drakken a few sips.

"Ooopp," Drakken says. "Sorry, that won't work. Salt water just dehydrates us further. We need fresh water to survive."

"Really?" you say. "I never knew that." You thought you knew everything about water.

Dr. Drakken can read your interest. He bounds to his feet and wrings his bramble-hair dry. "Well, you see, the human body is over seventy percent water" –

He is happy again. You close your eyes and you can hear the ocean in his voice, in the saving touch of Steven's hand against your gem, in both of their heartbeats.

You will take it back home with you, and not just for the sake of your memories. Your people need to understand exactly what lives on this backwater planet – its fragility, its brevity, and its value.