I Don't Know

"Do you have any idea what you've done?!"

Peridot was pacing again, her shoulders heaving sporadically and her eyes twitching beneath the razing glare of her visor.
Admittedly, the green gem had done a more than admirable job repairing the ship, particularly considering that she had been working alone.

However, truth be told, Kimberlite was only basing this observation on the fact that the ship's control deck looked almost as pristine as it had when they had first, (covertly), boarded. Honestly speaking, the metamorphic gem had never seen a team of engineers or mechanics work on anything much bigger than a communications desk.

"It did not harm me, Peridot. It was only an epidermal piece of diamond. It wasn't fully formed and it did not do any damage to my-…"

"I told you to stay in the ship! I thought the Kimberlite was supposed to be ever-obedient! HAH!" Peridot suddenly barked with near hysterical laughter. "Instead of simply following my very easily comprehended instructions, you see fit to not only venture into dangerous, unknown territory but also to interact with a human being!"

The green gem's mechanical fingers suddenly became entangled in her hair, her pupils turning to pinpricks as the weight of her unwitting charge's actions seemed to finally dawn on her. "And then you…y-you…gave…it...part of your gem."

"It was only a very small piece…"

"It was a diamond shard. A diamond shard as in property of the Diamond Authority! Your whole gem is property of the Diamond Authority! And you gave their property to a human! Do you know what Blue Diamond would say if she found out that you gave her property to a human being?!"

"...well, honestly speaking, I am not su-…"

"She'd say she's gonna smash herself a Peridot that's what she'd say! Gah!"

Peridot threw her arms upward, letting them haphazardly come down over her head- limb enhancers and all- as she let out a long groan of anxiety.
Kimberlite had always been taught not to make loud exclamations of emotion as this was considered a very uncouth habit to carry in Blue Diamond's court.
That didn't change the fact that the currently felt about as fearful as Peridot did.

Fearful and guilty to the very core of her being.

Peridots were always so cool and calculated; it was extremely difficult to watch one of them come completely undone.

"She will not know," Kimberlite assured Peridot, deciding the time for selfish ventures were long over. "We can return to Homeworld immediately. With the time difference, no one will have even noticed that we were gone and no one will be around to watch us dock the ship back in the hangar."

Slowly and with a greater deal of control than before, the green gem eventually responded: "That's just it. That's why I went looking for you originally. The ship's been artificially repaired but the main power gem is completely decimated…"

Kimberlite stared at her companion for a moment, feeling quite stupid as she responded: "So…how are we going to restore it. What must we do?"

Peridot 's hands slowly fell to her sides, her fingers following suit and her eyes growing increasingly hollow. "What I must do is find some means of replacing the ship's power gem." She heaved a sigh, bringing up her familiar screen. "What you must do is remain here and out of sight. Where it's safe."

"No…I…I want to help," Kimberlite insisted, admittedly wracking her brain for a solution to Peridot's despair, (that she had indirectly caused), moreso than trying to figure out a solution for their marooning. "There must be some way we can find a replacement gem."

"There might be one way," the engineer replied rather gravely after a slightly longer-than-normal silence. "It's no coincidence that we crashed here. The ship's navigation system was compromised by a high concentration of Gem technology in this area."

Gem tech?

Come to think of it, Sadie had mentioned something or other about the presence of other gems on Earth. Her words echoed distantly in the cloudier recesses of her mind. The, (quite admittedly enchanting), human seemed to have some level of acquaintance with Gemkind. True, this was not unusual for other species as Gems were a greatly travelled and proficiently space-faring race but…Earth was not a completed colony.
Gemkind hadn't existed on Earth for over a thousand years- as Peridot had seen fit to remind her multiple times during their trip.

The only other occupant of the ship suddenly didn't seem so sure of this anymore.

"It was bound to happen," Peridot was now muttering to herself as she paced the length of the flight deck. "Nothing to fear. Nothing to fret over. Just some leftover, primitive junk from the old Kindergarten that's somehow still receiving charge…" She drummed her mechanical fingers along the edge of the work counter. "We could possibly use some of that tech to give us a jump start. Gah! But without the ship's scanners to sync with mine, I have no idea how to locate the star-forsaken place!"

Kimberlite habitually fiddled with the belt of her chiton, trying desperately to recall what her human rescuer had said. She could vaguely recall the mention of some types of Gems, (and something called a Steven), but frustratingly nothing specific.
She wished she could remember the context for Sadie's remarks but embarrassingly, Kimberlite could not.

The metamorphic Gem then found herself revisiting the hazy, draped-in-warmth memory of her last conversation with the human.
She found something so enchanting about simply watching Sadie speak and hearing her voice. After only a few moments of studying her face during her monologue, Kimberlite had fallen quite deaf to what she was actually saying.
There was a beautifully bashful manner to the way that she talked. The words tumbled from her lips at an astonishing speed and the tiny slips of breath that she caught between sentences were done with a kind of unknowing skill.

She spoke remarkably fast and from time to time, her sweet soft voice would take on an anxious, breath-starved tremor. This gave the human's voice a beautiful, natural timbre; there was nothing artificial or learned-off about her speech. She was genuine.
Formed rather than created.
Acting on emotion rather than duty.

The trembling and slurring at the corners of her words faintly reminded Kimberlite of watching one of the newly trained dancers at Blue Diamond's court. There was a kind of uncertainty about her. At times, Kimberlite would want to reach out, take her hand and rescue her from her own anxiety though something inside the Gem told her that she wouldn't need or accept the help.
Watching Sadie speak was like watching one of these dancers perform: the audience was moved by fear, worried that she could slip and fall at any moment. Yet this was part of the intrigue that made her so exciting to watch.

Humans didn't speak like Gems either.
And certainly nothing like the serving Gems or aristocratic Gems that Kimberlite was used to overhearing.
Her idiosyncrasies and phrasings were another world of whimsy entirely.

Then there was the mental invasion that her appearance provided.
Her eyes glinted with each undulation of her brow, reminding her of the manner that her Blue Diamond's favourite Zircon's gem would under the lights of the Skyline Pavillion.
Her cheeks were constantly flushed with that delightful Quartz-like pinkish colour, misted over the delicate pallor of one of White Diamond's Pearls.

The inner chambers of her mouth were dry at the memory of Sadie's skin brushing against hers; though it bore the pristine pallor of any courtly Gem, her skin was soft and warm.

"…Sadie," Kimberlite dared to murmur her name aloud.

She thought that she had been quiet but Peridot's head immediately whipped around. "What did you say?"

"Uh…Sadie! Sadie, the human I was with," Kimberlite responded quickly. "She mentioned something about gems here on Earth…maybe she's been to the Kindergarten. Maybe she knows where it is?"

Peridot gave a bark of laughter. "Oh my stars, it's actually happening! You're succumbing to the insanity that this desperate planet's atmosphere practically breeds! You want to entrust both my fate and yours to a simple-minded, organic lifeform with no more probable experience with our technology than…well…you?"

Kimberlite folded her arms, a small vein of molten anger starting to trickle forth from beneath the frigid recesses of her usual, complacent tundra; she was starting to dislike being assumed to be incompetent.
"I am only suggesting this," she responded slowly and as coolly as she could manage. "If you have no better ideas."

Peridot did have quite a few ideas, incidently.
However, the more the two of them spoke and conferred and planned and blueprinted, the more they realised just how futile their situation seemed.

The green gem was forced to dissipate her visor in order to gain proper access to her tired eyes, rubbing them profusely and massaging the area around her gem with confusion with her mechanical fingers.
"I cannot believe I'm about to say this," Peridot exhaled, her voice ragged as her eyes looked upward. "May the Diamonds forgive me. If we were to seek out this human…this Sadie…could you manage to convince it to help us locate the Kindergarten?" Her teeth gritted slightly. "Making it clear that the only reason we are seeking assistance is because the external scanning units are offline?"

Kimberlite all but fell to the floor, her legs instantly weak at the notion of getting to see Sadie again.
"Yes…yes, I think I could."

"Very well," Peridot eventually conceded, attempting to maintain her cool exterior despite her obvious trepidation. "I will return to the area in which I happened upon you and the Sadie. Should I encounter any kind of-…"

"Actually, if you please, Peridot," Kimberlite interrupted, overtaken with a contradictory mixture of hesitation and urgency. "I think it would be more fitting if I were to be the one to retrieve Sadie."

"You what?" The smaller gem gawped at her with shameless disbelief. "Have you been listening to anything that I've been saying!? Oh stars, no. Not in all the galaxies! There is no way that I am letting you outside of this ship again!"

"We need to coax the Sadie to help us. She did not strike me as the type of individual who would benefit from forceful coercion and the last time you encountered her, you were pointing a blaster at her head!"

"In your protection, might I remind you!"

Their clumsy, quasi-aggressive back-and-forth began again, becoming increasingly heated and derailed from the original disagreement. It all eventually cumulated in Peridot finally breaking.

"Fine! Fine! But if you get hurt in any way, shape or form, I want there to be evidence that I had no willing part in this!"

Peridot was only willing to let her leave when she had successfully implanted a surveillance device in Kimberlite's aural cavity, effectively allowing her to detect if the transfusion gem found herself in any kind of, (what the engineer would perceive as), danger.

Kimberlite pressed the small, metallic receiver against her pinna, pinching it down and wincing at the sensation. It didn't feel particularly comfortable or secure but as always, if it meant another chance to explore she was willing to put up with the most disagreeable of stimuli.

"A demi-cycle," she murmured to herself as she made her way to the release hatch. "That's five Earth rotations…" She stopped in her tracks, her fingers lingering on the smooth, Celestine-forged walls that kept the unwitting crew safe from the alien world that surrounded them. "Peridot?"

"Yes…my Kimberlite."
Her tone was starched with politeness, stiff and cold.
Perhaps she was trying to instil some normality in their situation by reminding them both of their caste division; despite the gentility of her voice, Kimberlite didn't imagine the small quaking at the point where her projected knees met her limb-enhancers.

"I…" She hesitated before finally answering the question that burned behind her lips. "What will become of us if Sadie cannot help us? We have no way to contact Homeworld to send a tracker or receiver…but perhaps they could track the ship?"

"I disabled the tracking tech before we left Homeworld." Peridot's back was turned to Kimberlite but the courtly gem could just about hear the faintest ghost of a sardonic smile. "It was to ensure that we wouldn't be found out…"

"So…what will happen if the Sadie cannot help us?"

At this point, she heard the words that she never thought she'd hear a Peridot say.
And it scared her to the core.

"I don't know."

The Strawberry

Steven's flip-flops slapped rhythmically against his heels as he jogged up the grassy path, the familiar, gritty spray of sand flicking up against the soles of his feet.

"Hey Garnet!" he called out, quasi-breathlessly as he scrambled over to where the mystifying gem was sitting. He had been doing a lot of running today.
He plopped himself down beside her, habitually resting his head against one of her long, strong arms as he unzipped his hot-dog duffle bag. "Amethyst said you wanted to talk to me."

"Mhmm," Garnet murmured, her unseen, tri-coloured gaze slowly sliding sideways to survey the little half-human. "I was finished telling her about the Kimberlite. I thought it was about time I told you too. Pearl disagrees- she thinks it's unnecessary- but as far as I'm concerned, there's no point in keeping you in the dark."

"How come Amethyst didn't know anything about Kimberlite?" the child quizzed her, rummaging around the bag and letting out a small whoop of triumph as he pulled forth his desired Tupperware box.

"It's kind of a Homeworld gem thing."

"Uh-huh. And why couldn't you just tell me and Amethyst about it together?"

Garnet smiled fondly, ruffling his curls and chuckling slightly. "Because you know as well as I do that you two together don't make the most attentive of combinations. Pearl told me about the time she tried to teach the two of you about Homeworld Congregation Balls…and the paper airplane incident."

Steven couldn't help but give a guilty chortle. "Uh…yeah…good point…" He started to busy himself with prising the plastic lid from the box. "So what is Kimberlite anyway? She's a gem like all of you, right?"

"She's a gem alright," Garnet confirmed, lightly coaxing the Tupperware from Steven and removing the lid herself. "But she's not like us. Or you. Most gems are specially created for a specific purpose in Homeworld society, like Ruby or naturally cultivated and later assigned a particular role based on their abilities, like Sapphire…"

"And some gems are really cool fusions of both, like Garnet…"
Steven smiled toothily up at his guardian, gratefully accepting the box in return.

Garnet's smile became wider and she nodded. "Yes, those really cool gems exist too." Her expression became a little more serious. "But Kimberlite wasn't made to serve Homeworld as a whole. She was made to serve the Diamond Authority specifically. There was only one of her ever made and some gems even consider her a Homeworld urban myth because she's always kept out of sight."

"Did you ever think she was a myth?"

"No. She was being kept in Blue Diamond's Temple. Sapphire met her once before."

"Yeah?"
Steven fished a strawberry out of the box, expertly tweezing away the green gristle with his fingers.

"Yes. But that story isn't important right now. What's important is that you understand that the Diamonds would never willingly let Kimberlite out of their sights. And they'd especially, especially never let her travel from Homeworld without their supervision. Meaning that if she's here…"

Steven gasped in realisation sitting bolt upright, strawberry pulp dribbling from the corners of his mouth. "The Diamonds must be here too!"

"Or just one Diamond," Garnet corrected him, taking the opportunity to wipe away the scarlet slivers from his chin. "Or they don't know that she's here at all. Either way, where the Kimberlite goes, the Diamonds are never far behind. Or Blue Diamond at the very least."

"Oh…so it can't be good that Kimberlite is here, huh?"
Steven sighed, shrugging slowly and looking downward as his strawberry bullion. His previously felt excitement surrounding the idea of meeting another gem, (especially one that Sadie had praised so highly), was quickly starting to dampen.

Garnet shook her head. "Pearl didn't want to scare you…but I think you need to understand that the longer Kimberlite stays on this planet, the more danger we're all in."

"…do you want a strawberry?"

"I'm good, thanks."

"Hey Garnet? Why is Kimberlite so important to the Diamonds anyway?"

"She's their personal transfusion gem," the tall gem explained, turning her gaze down to the boy at her side. "Kimberlite is a type of rock that can be used to grow other gems inside of it. Given the right minerals, she can grow specially fashioned pieces of diamond in her gem, so if one of the Diamonds ever became cracked beyond repair, she could grow replacement shards. These shards would be customised to fit the exact gemetic requirements of any of the Diamonds." Garnet heaved a gravelly sigh. "So she's the Diamonds failsafe; if any of them are ever damaged, they'll use her to repair themselves." She looked back out towards the ocean. "And in an extreme situation, if one of the Diamonds is smashed entirely…they'll use Kimberlite's gem to grow a clone of that Diamond."

Unseen by Steven, one of Garnet's hands clenched into a fist. "As long as Kimberlite exists, the Diamond Authority can never truly be defeated."

"So she's like a strawberry," Steven said slowly, lifting one of the soft little fruits between his fingers. The setting sun glazed its vermillion sides with a soft amber sheen. "This is her gem and the little seeds are the Diamonds that can grow inside her gem. And then if one of the Diamonds die, she'll take one of these little seeds and it can grow into a Diamond. Is that it?"

Garnet couldn't help but give a little snort of amusement at her youngest charge's simple and innocent illustration. "Yes. That's exactly it."

The two sat in silence for a moment.
Their silence was neither completely complacent nor completely uneasy.
It just simply was.

Steven had learned in his fairly short life-time that there was something invaluable about finding someone that you could simply sit in silence with.
Someone who wouldn't force you to talk.
Someone who wouldn't force you to listen.
They would simply and happily sit with you in complete, contemplative silence.

The half-human boy found himself prompted to speak by a sudden thought:
"So have we got to find Kimberlite now? Or…or would it be better to just wait and see? Maybe she really is here without the Diamonds' knowing…and maybe she's not all that bad?" Steven looked at the strawberry in his palm, licking it experimentally before adding: "Sadie seemed to think she was pretty cool."

"Sadie's judge of character or not," Garnet replied, unfolding her long legs and stretching out against the grass. "If they've found their way into Beach City, our best option is probably to find Kimberlite and this Peridot of hers before either of them can cause any trouble to any of the locals."

"Yeah, I guess…what are we going to do when we find them?"

"Something tells me," Garnet murmured vaguely as she stood up in the grass. "That she's going to somehow find us first."

His question unanswered, Steven was about to repeat it, only to be interrupted by the gem towering at his side.

"You'd better pack up. We should head inside. There's going to be a storm tonight."

Steven blinked in confusion, studying the skyline for a moment. "But there's no clouds."

"Trust me on this one," Garnet coaxed with an invisible wink, beckoning for him to follow her. "We'd better make sure Peridot comes inside with us too. We don't want her crawling up the walls again…"

"Yeah," Steven agreed with a smile, hurrying into step after her. He could feel that his lips were sticky with strawberry juice but his mouth was suddenly quite dry.

It wasn't like Garnet not to answer one of his questions.

Tempest

Her hands plunged back into the bucket, her knuckles burning from the slightly-too-hot temperature of the water that surrounded them. Maybe she should have added another dollop of cold water but that would mean lugging the bucket back to the employee wash room and completing the nigh impossible task of lifting the half-full bucket back under a faucet without dousing herself in water.
(Again).

The manager had noticed some coffee stains on the floor and practically flipped his lid. Lars, of course, had insisted that it had nothing to do with the two skittish Upper East Side beach-rabbits that had decided to traipse all over the restaurant with their overflowing cups of hot chocolate.
He also definitely hadn't given them a free refill.
Or two free refills.
At all.

Sadie had gotten tired of continually rolling her sleeves up so she'd switched back to her t-shirt polo. However as the wind had picked up outside, one of the loose windows had swung open and suddenly the curse of wet sleeves seemed a far lesser evil when compared to the plague of painful, purple goosebumps.

Lars had taken the opportunity to mention to their manager that Sadie had brought a rather odd visitor into the Big Doughnut that morning. He had taken special care to specifically comment on the coffee that she had accidentally knocked on to the floor but somehow had left out the part involving Sadie having saved this woman from drowning.

Sadie's fingertips were so pruny that the soft, puckering ridges of skin were starting to grow sore and her fingernails were so whittled and waned, she wouldn't have been surprised if one of them peeled off entirely. Her actual fingers were reddish and swollen from the constant scrubbing; coffee stains were one of the worst things in existence, she had long decided.
She plunged her hands into the bucket once again, shuddering at the brief relief from the cold that the hot water provided.

Of course, the manager had chosen to interview them separately so Lars had the perfect opportunity to swear to her that he hadn't mentioned the stranger at all. But the CCTV system in the shop had been busted for weeks and there were only two employees for crying out loud. If he hadn't snitched on her, then who had?
Honestly, sometimes Sadie would swear that Lars thought she was stupid or at least worryingly gullible.

The sky was dark outside, early even February.
Despite the weather having been nothing short of tranquil, was now serving as a prologue to an impending storm.
Every now and then, a gust of frigid wind would shoot through the open slit in the loose window. She didn't look upon it as tortuously as she had just a few minutes ago.

First of all, scrubbing a floor was a more appealing fate than a pay-cut.
Secondly, the wind was consistent.
It would be there. It would be gone. It would come again. It would go again.
Regardless of what happened, it would always come back.
She just didn't want to think about walking home in it.

"Call me if you need a ride home," her mom had said, but her mom had endured a rough day of deliveries and would be waking up in just a few hours to another one. Sadie didn't have the heart to call her now, foolish as that might have been.

Finishing up her penalty task and making her way over to start turning off the lights, she noticed that there was a slight gap in the clouds through which you could see a small smattering of stars.
No shooting stars but Sadie still found herself making a wish.

Steven hadn't known anything about Kimberlite being in Beach City and he seemed pretty sure that the Peridot who had been with her wasn't the same Peridot who lived with them.
She sighed deeply, bracing herself for the elements as she made her way out the door- having to wrestle with the back-door in order to seal it shut.

That wind that had been so consistently reassuring was now trying its best to steal the breath from her lungs and swipe her legs right out from under her.
She was only beginning to regret her decision not to take her mother's offer when the rain had started seeping upward through the soles of her shoes but full-blown self-cursing didn't set in until the oblique droplets were making it near-impossible for her to see the barely-lamp-lit path ahead.

At one point, she had decided that this was becoming too much and reached into her knapsack in a clumsy, vain attempt to draw forth something to shield her vision.
This was when she fell.

Sadie met the slicked pavement with a painful thud, instantly greeted by a searing pain in her wrists and a burning sensation upon her chin.
Wet, cold and now in pain, the human woman had finally been pushed to being ready to scream her disdain into the howling gales.

However, just then, the rain stopped entirely.
Struggling to stand to her feet, Sadie looked around in confusion.
Rain still appeared to be falling on the street all around her.
Why not directly above her own head?

To her absolute confusion, there appeared to be some kind of pea-soup green gauze directly over her head.

"Hello, Sadie."

She turned around quickly, only to see a familiar face standing behind her.
There, shielding them both from the rain with long, grey hair stuck across her face and her hand apparently controlling the odd barrier that was keeping them both partially dry, was a very happy looking gem.

"K-Kimberlite?"

The gem smiled widely, elation in her eyes as she offered the human her hand. "I was hoping that I would find you again."

"Oh yeah?" Sadie managed, gratefully accepting the help as she steadied herself. "Me too, actually…"

She could feel her face getting a little hotter as Kimberlite, drew her further under the barrier and started to walk with her.
This time, she was a little less willing than she might have been to blame her suddenly feverish condition on the rain.

Thank you so much for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting.

I was so nervous about putting this one up but it's nice to know that people are actually enjoying it!