Topaz leaned down to mumble something into Peridot's ear. Peridot was sitting in her chair at her desk, so Topaz didn't have to bend over so far.
Peridot nodded. "Ok." She faced Topaz and they kissed. It was a small kiss, but Steven sunk in his seat a little further all the same. Luckily all he saw was Peridot's hair from where he was.
Then Topaz left. And Steven didn't see her again that day.
...
The next time Steven came to visit, Topaz was asleep. He prayed she wouldn't wake up while he was there, but she did. She sat up on her elbow and strained a look into the glow of Peridot's computer. Then she met Steven's gaze. He felt cornered, like his free pass to come and go had been a figment of Topaz's dream.
Out. Topaz rolled over and went back to sleep.
...
Topaz was not there during Steven's next visit.
...
On one blisteringly sunny evening, Peridot wanted to show Steven her cultivation of desert plants since, by now, some of them have borne ripened fruit. They rode her elevator that she had made from an automated pulley system and dumbwaiter from the pit of the canyon to the top; Peridot couldn't be expected to do any such pauper thing as climbing, and Topaz wasn't always around to carry her. Nor could she be expected to carry her own weight, hence the elevator being hands-free.
Topaz still preferred her mode of transportation: one jump and done. "'It's more practical,'" Peridot said in a dumb voice. "I didn't fail to mention how practical it was for her to shut her mouth-that she was wasting energy and made her face more asinine by saying anything at all." She laughed.
Past Peridot's transmitting and receiving tower was her bone-dry garden. There were rugged bushes and shrubs, a couple of spindly trees, a plethora of cacti, and even a few types of flowers that weren't growing on top of something that looked like it came straight from the movie Infernoraiser. The garden resembled a circuit board in organization, with every plant meticulously divided in rows by phylum, then branching off in more rows from class down to species. The garden had its own vitality despite being made of bones; it wasn't loud but it was strong and had color and was handsome to Steven.
Peridot was giving Steven the tour when, amid her small militia of standing cacti, she balked. "...What on Earth is this...?" She faced a hauntingly, familiarly shaped cactus with a bulbous upper story that was particularly triangular.
Steven looked back and forth from it to Peridot. "It looks like you."
She blinked. "Did Topaz find this?"
Steven walked around it, rubbing his chin. "I guess."
"Huh! And she thought it too gorgeous to pass up!" Peridot emphasized with her thoughts with her hands just in case Steven was deaf. "It does embody me quite metaphorically. The shape: my resplendence! The spines: my danger! The cactus as a symbol: succulent on the inside, deadly on the out! I understand completely how she couldn't let this image alone!"
Steven put a hand over his mouth. "You sure about that?"
Peridot, brows knitted, walked around to the other side of the cactus. "What are you...!" Her jaw dropped. A crude face had been carved into the cactus' "head." The expression was foul with its mouth hung open and resembled a child's rendition of a spazz, dumb Gem included on the dumb forehead.
Steven chuckled into his hand.
Peridot huffed. "Oh, she's going to pay for this..." She shoved a finger toward Steven. "Mark my words..."
...
On one occasion, Topaz entered the cave dirty and sweaty. She was roiled and there were headphones slung around her shoulders.
"You're back early," stated Peridot.
Topaz plodded to the back of the cave where her stacks of boxes were. "Broke."
"Another one?"
"Fragile like humans." She retrieved a thin black square from a box that could fit a hundred. She took it to Peridot's desk and plugged it into her computer. Peridot opened a file containing a long list of music (nothing like Sour Cream's list, but still)-2,825 items. Peridot clacked a couple keys that highlighted everything and dumped it onto Topaz's device. Steven recognized a few songs on the list. Rock and heavy metal. She paced while her songs downloaded.
"What've you been doing?" Steven dared to ask.
Topaz looked at him as if the gazelle just asked the lion about its day. Peridot answered for her. "She's been training."
"Like... fight moves?"
"Your download is done." Topaz unplugged her MP3 player.
"That's funny. I didn't know Gems needed to train."
"We don't," Topaz said bluntly. "Once learned, it's indefinite." She plugged her headphones into her new, out-of-box player. "There's more to learn. And sometimes..." She scrutinized him. "I get restless..." Topaz shoved her MP3 into her headband and shoved her headphones into her ears.
She left without a cause.
Peridot briefly took her eyes off her screens to flatly say this to Steven: "I like when she gets restless."
...
Topaz never showed during Steven's next visit.
...
Topaz, sitting on her bed, took up her guitar-the electric one (cause now she had more)-and started to pick at it. The melody was dreamy. Sad yet hopeful. The sound of it in the cave made it somewhat psychedelic.
"I know this song," reveled Steven. "My dad's listened to it before. Yeah!
There you are.
I will send you an angel.
There you are,
On the cusp of the evening star..."
Steven trailed off. Topaz had stopped playing. "...Sorry..."
Topaz sighed. She looked down at her guitar, as if trying to decide where her fingers should go for another song. But, instead, she set it down and left.
...
Steven had brought along one of his guitars this time because he had had the wonderful idea to play with Topaz.
"So, this is the one you started learning with, I think. I thought it'd be fun, y'know? I mean, if you wanted to..."
He waited for her to respond but he worked up a sweat from him and her just staring at each other. She just stood there looking him in the eye. Finally, she shook her head. Steven frowned.
"You should do it," said Peridot, who swivelled around in her chair and hadn't seen Topaz's answer. "Doing anything with Steven is fun."
Topaz shook her head again, but differently.
"At this rate, you'll never make friends."
"I said no," she barked.
Peridot swivelled back around. "Ok! Fine! You don't have to freaking do it! I just thought it would be nice!"
Topaz's chest puffed out. But, keeping the lid on her top, she shook her head repulsively at the back of Peridot's head. Topaz glanced at Steven and then spat air through her teeth. She left. Again.
Steven saw Peridot shake her head once Topaz was gone. He looked down at the guitar in his lap. He shook his head.
...
Steven saw Topaz walking away into the desert badlands when he came to see Peridot again. He didn't see her again that day.
...
Topaz had come into the den once and laid down in her bed with a sigh. She stared up at the ceiling, the sound of ballistic pecking echoing in the room from Peridot typing an extensive post for her blog. "Did you have to get such a loud touch-stump typer?" said she, finally. "It's ten automatic weapons firing off in my head..."
"It's called a mechanical keyboard and the sound is satisfying," answered Peridot casually.
"It's obnoxious."
"Then it's a perfect match for me, isn't it?"
"Like honesty and Abe," she said languidly.
"That's me. Always honest. Peridot the Pure. And now I'll purely say this: if you don't like the noise, then get rid of your sound wave funnels."
"Abe never surrendered."
"Abe wasn't a soldier. Yes, he did serve, but for less than three months, and he never saw combat."
Peridot kept hammering her keyboard. Topaz blinked. Wrinkles scrawled into her nose. Yet, her ears vanished and she rolled onto her side to go to sleep.
Steven ate his lips.
...
"So, today I was helping Peridot water her bone garden," Steven told the Gems, "which is done, like, once every hundred years she told me!"
"Oh, I'm sure she didn't exaggerate," Pearl remarked, washing the dishes from dinner.
"No, but she did say it was the first time in two weeks she's had to do any watering!
"Anyway, we got water from a pump she made that went into the ground. Topaz wasn't there, but it was ok because we didn't have to water everything, just the flowers and bushes and stuff. The cactuses were fine."
"Cacti," Pearl enunciated. "Mama didn't raise no fool."
Steven grinned. "Cacti. The cac-TI didn't need watering." Pearl was content as she placed another dish on the rack. "Anyway, when we were done and were rolling up the hose, I saw this thing there that looked like a lawnmower, so I looked at Peridot like this, and said: 'Got a lawn to mow?'
"And she looked at me like this, and was like, what? But, she told me it wasn't a lawnmower, but a... she said it was somethin', but it's a radar that you can use to see into the ground with. She said she used it to figure out where water was for her pump."
"Neat," said Amethyst, picking her nose. (Pearl had told her a million times before not to do that at the kitchen counter, or to do it period.)
"I just can't get over how pretty desert flowers are. I never expected it. They all seem like tiny explosions of the evening sky."
"How poetic," said Garnet.
"I did feel romantic as I said it," said Lord Byron. "And then I told Peridot what a green thumb she has for making stuff grow even in the desert!"
"Ugh! Her whole body's green! You can't keep makin' that joke!"
Steven was snickering. "But, it's so funny!"
"You're such a dork." Amethyst smiled.
Pearl finished the dishes and dried her hands and walked into the living room to straighten it. Steven twisted around on his stool. "It sounds like it was lovely," she said.
"After that," he continued, "we just hung out watching silly videos for a while until I left to come home."
With everything straightened, put away, and with Steven's bed clothes laid out for him, Pearl took her leave and hugged Steven goodnight. Amethyst ended up crashing on the couch, undoing Pearl's handiwork. Garnet told Steven she was glad he had fun and went into the Temple as well.
As Steven lay in his bed (Lion at its foot) and was looking out at the night sky, he whispered, "Amethyst! You awake?!" He concluded she wasn't after no response. He wanted to tell her that he recently learned that purple was the color of royalty and thought that she would get a kick out of being called majesty.
...