The Seventh Day
While Cherry Was Out
Heya hi there, ho there! Its me again Cherry Topaz. I kinda wanted to cut loose so I let those two kiddos party in my sub conscious. Now you may be wondering: Cherry you beautiful curvaceous honey of a fusion, how does this work? You may ask why no other fusions can take control in this particular way? Well that's a good question, but this party girl's gotta party. So enjoy this mandatory camping episode. Oh and don't forget to tune in next week to find out what I was up to.
Toodles!
When Spinel and Steven awoke they knew at once that something was not quite right. The sights and even the smells, the sound of the bubbling waters and fountains were much the same, but it was, for the two of them, like staring at a costume prop, a good one, but nothing more than a gilded lady.
There was also a nearly imperceptible fog of something surgery sweet in the air that left the two mildly intoxicated. Nothing about any of this was unpleasant to either. Both felt as though they had slept as soundly as any night in their garden.
Spinel didn't even feel the urge to pace, she was at total ease in Steven's arms. The thought simmered warmly in the back of her mind that an eternity of this would be wonderful.
A sort of warmth flooded over both of their bodies like the mildest of sunburns. The couples worries were far away. Ideas just sort of floated like clouds around them as they barely stirred.
Like the best dreams and the worst nightmares the idea of a world beyond the confines of the immediate senses never occurred. Hedonistic wasn't even the right word for it, hedonism would imply that there was some desire present, it was more like the Buddhist ideal of enlightenment without all the heartache of asceticism.
For Steven and Spinel, their garden, as opposed to what they would only casually refer to as her garden was grounded. That actual place which existed in concrete and stone, in plant life, and rendering, was a reflection of who they are. This was something else entirely. What that might be eluded all but Cherry Topaz, and she'd never tell.
At length a figure approached, Connie. She adjusted her glasses and said, "There you are, come on everyone's waiting for you at the park!"
The two only shrugged and followed her over a seemingly absurd number of biomes. Neither thought to actively comment on the pastel hills of purple and orange, or the lagoons of sparkling rainbow colored water where an occasional ripple could be seen of a fish with fine glossy fins that glowed in a feat of bioluminescence that had been a wonder of the galaxy in far ages past, but now only existed here.
Steven made nothing of it as anything but a memory from Spinel's past. For Spinel it stirred something far different and though both had been thoroughly purged of the unpleasant feelings of life for this dream of a vacation, something almost akin to melancholy. Far in the distance she saw a field of shooting stars, come to consume the planet like a festering disease from a beautiful, gleaming, broken world.
Connie if this was Connie seemed to nearly skip with glee and hardly seemed to take anything. At some point she had disposed of her glasses and now seemed a little older. Here stride seemed more confident and she now had a sword slung on her back that Steven recognized in the sweet sluggish way familiar to anyone awakening from a dream.
Finally dawning on Steven, he thought to ask, "Where are we going?"
"Like I said, the park. You really should pay more attention." She said. The landscape had changed in the twinkling of an eye to a dense jungle. She too had changed and now was Stevonnie, and hacking her way through the brush with a sword.
Spinel had regained enough consciousness to fidget, "I don't get it, who are you? Connie? Or someone else?"
She smiled as they trudged over the strewn rocks in an ancient river bed. "Would you believe that the answer is yes on all counts?"
Steven scratched his head, "Spinel I think maybe she's my Connie." He said it in a way that was confident, but in a way that left them both unable to dive further.
Connie, she was Connie again, turned and winked as they made their way through the large echoing chamber of a gem warship. Buzzing robots and staff stood at dozens of monitors which here was little more than window dressing.
"You got it Steven, though I guess I'm just as much a figment of Spinel's memory. I suppose you have my thanks that I haven't become some sort of Femme Fatale bent on wresting you from the clutches of a gem that held your entire planet hostage." She added a certain amount of melodrama that was good natured all the same.
"So whose waiting for us past this… erh…", she gestured to a ship an unfolding space battle that was one of the more harrowing ordeals of his long tenure as a tetrarch.
"Everyone else of course. I suppose we could go straight there but, well I suppose this place is no less a being than I am. In that sense I guess you could call me a thread in the labyrinth."
Spinel was dumbfounded, her first reaction was to cut through things, but it was like she'd forgotten some crucial word in a language. It left her emotionally amputated, only now did she realize that Steven was holding her hand. The positivity of the simple act cut to the heart of things.
When the room traveled hazily away to the miasma of the collective memory they realized that they were tramping snow in what appeared for all the world like a European town. Spinel changed almost at once into the fox of a woman she had been a few days prior.
"I guess even our stories are here." He said, though to no one in particular.
Connie, who was now dressed as a Princess said, "You two are the authors!"
"Steven?" Spinel asked.
"Yeah?" He returned.
"Is this real?" A good enough question.
If he'd been in touch with the more unpleasant elements of the lessons drilled into him by Pearl in his youth he might've said any number of old phrases as helpful as hot air. Very probably he would've noted some cliché such as Cogito ergo sum.
The truth was somewhat easier for gems. Not having the mortal coil to shuffle off in any real sense, not needing to breath air, drink water, or eat, and being much the same at the bottom of the ocean or the void of space. Steven did have all those human flaws. All of it boiled down to the big dumb truth, "I'm not sure it matters if you're here with me." He replied.
"Good answer." She said as they now walked into an altogether ordinary meadow park where old and new friends were engaged in all the traditional things against the backdrop of the sunshine.
Lars and the off colors were tossing a baseball off at one end while Greg was cooking hot dogs on a grill. In the creek all of the local kids were running toy ships down a creek, and a lapis was making the whole thing more exiting by lifting the creek wholesale off of its bed and letting the ships spiral and dance down the streams in an incredible display.
Peridot was having a less exciting go of it as she seemed fixated on a butterfly that seemed to flutter just out of reach. Others reclined on picnic blankets while a select few, friends of Steven from a far off world literally bloomed in the sunlight. A lone being seemed to barely be present at all, appearing more like a sentient shadow than the invisible being that he was. It was pleasant day, and they made the most of it.
So yeah, gave them a pleasant little vacation didn't I? Swell, just swell. And while they were out, I decided to give the performance of a lifetime. What can I say I'm tickled pink.