Chapter 2: No Longer Alone
post - Alone at Sea
Peridot twisted her foot, the metal gear clanking and turning in response.
"Ah ha! Gotcha!" Her tongue poking out between her lips, she turned her foot in a circle slowly. The gears responded, a complex series of ropes slowly tightening and lifting the prone form of the Earth silo into an upright position. "Carefully…just a little further…"
The familiar sound of water and wind rushing by alerted her to the presence of her roommate. Locking the gear in place, she rushed out of the barn.
At first she couldn't see her but then she heard a sigh from above her. Lapis Lazuli had just touched down on the roof of the barn, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. "Lapis!" Peridot called, waving. "You're back! I rigged up a simplistic leverage device so we can raise the silo into the hole without a repeat of the truck! If you could just…"
She paused, noticing the dark shadow cast over her roommate's eyes. Peridot frowned. After being on Earth for nearly a year, she had gotten very good at picking up on emotions. Lapis was one of the hardest Gems she'd ever tried to understand on this planet (apart from Garnet who still eluded her…) but Peridot liked to think she was getting better at the subtle shifts in the blue Gem's eyes and shoulders that often indicated her changing mood. The dark clouds in the sky overhead that hadn't been there a second ago was also a big tip off.
Peridot circled around to the back of the barn, where she'd set up a ladder to allow for better roof access. This wasn't the first time she'd had to chase the blue Gem down. Darn Lapis Lazulis and their need to be up high…Crawling carefully across the steep roof, she slid down a safe distance from her roommate, mirroring her position. "You okay?" Peridot asked quietly.
"Yeah."Lapis spoke into her knees, keeping her head down.
"How was hanging out with Steven?" Peridot asked, wondering how talkative she could encourage Lazuli to be tonight. Lapis was usually fine after spending time with Steven. Steven was the only one who could get her to smile most days. Not that Peridot hadn't been trying since the truck incident.
Lapis shifted slightly. "Fine." She mumbled.
"Where did he take you?"
"On a boat."
Peridot frowned in thought. "A boat? Oh! Right, a buoyant water-vessel. Why would he do that?"
Lapis pressed her eyes into her knees, her whole body tightening. "He wanted me to be comfortable with the ocean again."
"Oh. So did you…?"
Lapis raised her head. "She was there…"
"Who was…oh." Peridot mentally kicked herself for not realizing it sooner. Jasper was still a sensitive subject around the barn, so much so that Peridot had forsaken even uttering the name of the orange Gem in casual conversation. The last time she'd done that, Lapis had blasted the silo out of the ground with little warning. Thankfully, her ingenious engineering skills had figured out a simple way to attach it to the barn and that problem was solved.
But apparently the wound was still too fresh. Peridot couldn't imagine seeing Jasper again had done any good for Lapis.
She stretched out an uncertain hand to pat Lapis on the back. "You…wanna talk about it?"
Lapis turned to her, surprised. "Huh?"
Peridot shrugged. "Steven does it all the time. I…I know I'm not exactly Steven but I've gotten a lot better at listening…" Her hand hovered uncertainly over Lapis' back.
Lapis chuckled but there was no pleasure in it. "Peridot I…I don't know if I'll ever be ready to talk about it. Not even to Steven." She curled in on herself even further. "Especially not to Steven…he shouldn't have to know what that was like…Being fused liked that for so long was…incredible. And terrible. It's going to haunt me for the rest of my life…" She looked up, gazing out over the countryside that was slowly being painted the bright colors of fall. "I just wish…I wish I had some way to get it out without…talking about it. You know?"
The wind had picked up slightly and several drops of rain had started to fall. Peridot gazed out across the fields, thinking about a time when she had been struggling to express herself…and a small Earth device had helped.
"Lapis…can I…show you something?"
The blue Gem looked up. "Oookkay?"
Peridot smiled and stood. "It's in the barn…" She offered Lapis her hand.
To her surprise, Lapis took her under the arms without hesitation and gently flew them down.
"WHOA! errrr. Thanks." Peridot stuttered, head still spinning a bit from the act of flying. She led the way into the barn, poking around until she found the box she had been looking for. With a wave of her finger, she extracted a small Earth noise-maker (a harmonica Steven had called this) and let it hover near her mouth.
"What is this?" Lapis asked, completely lost.
"It's a kind of Earth noise-maker. Humans use it to make…music. Steven showed it to me back when we were working on the drill." She took the harmonica from the air.
Lapis seemed interested. "How does it work?"
"It's a fairly simple scale utilizing harmonic sounds to create something pleasurable sounding. Steven told me to write a song about whatever I was thinking and it helped me connect with the others."
Lapis was silent but she watched Peridot with interest.
Peridot raised the instrument to her lips and took a deep breath. She blew hard, producing a sour-sounding blast of noise.
Lapis covered her ears, wincing as Peridot tried to coax anything musical out of the harmonica. "I don't think 'music' is going to work for me…" She said as Peridot finally ran out of breath.
But Peridot wasn't going to give up. "Maybe we could try something else? Music…gah!" She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "Music without sounds!" She let the harmonic clatter to the ground and dove into the mess of boxes next to her silo-lifting rigging.
"A ha!" She extracted several sheets of the primitive data-recording material and the colored wax pens from a deeply-buried box. "Steven showed me this once! When we made you that card!"
Pinching the pen awkwardly between her touch-stumps, she moved it across the sheet. A line of green appeared. Grinning, she held it up for Lapis' inspection.
"Music…with things!" She declared.
Her roommated raised an eyebrow but her arms had come uncrossed slightly. "What do we call that?"
Peridot turned her sheet around to stare at the green blob she had etched on the paper. "Steven had a name for it…uh…" She grinned sheepishly. "I cant remember what it was…"
Lapis shrugged. "…meep morp?" She offered.
Peridot raised an eyebrow. "Yeah…sure." It wasn't what Steven had called it. But then again, this wasn't what Steven had shown her. This was theirs. "Why don't you try?"
She offered Lapis her choice of the colored wax pens, taking her green-marked data-recorder and marker aside. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she moved the pen around some more, trying to make an accurate rendering of herself. It was harder than Steven had made it look.
Sometime later, Peridot glanced over at Lapis. The blue gem was concentrating fiercely as she tried manipulating the "cray-on" across the fibrous data-recorder. But her tongue was poking out of the corner of her mouth and there was just a hint of light in her eyes.
Lapis glanced up, catching sight of Peridot peering at her work. They were both silent for a moment, an unspoken challenge hanging in the air. "What do you think?" The blue Gem finally asked, holding the sheet up for Peridot's inspection.
Peridot considered the mess of dark lines and incoherent colors on the data-recorder. It didn't look like anything functional. It was merely feelings splayed across a medium, captured by Lapis' motions. It was dark and foreboding and somewhat unpleasant to look at. Her chest glowed at the thought that Lapis was trusting her with this. Only her.
She offered Lapis her best gentle smile. "I think it's great meep morp."