The world tasted wrong.
She should have expected it. The others had always said that each planet in the universe had its own flavor, but as she'd never known anything other than her own Earth she'd never understood.
The gems lived in a universe of energy; cosmic rays, solar winds, background radiation...the entire universe vibrated with power. Each gem sipped from that power; it sustained them and gave them the power to do practically anything.
Each of them experienced the power in a different way. For Rose it had been visual; she'd seen the entire universe as auras. It was part of what had first attracted her to humanity; she said their auras were beautiful; utterly unlike those of the non-sentient lifeforms below them.
For Pearl it was sound; the hum of the universe was part of what inspired her music.
For Sapphire and Ruby, and thus for Garnet, it was touch. They felt the world in a way that others couldn't comprehend.
Amethyst experienced the universe through taste.
At home, she'd never really noticed it as she'd never tasted anything else. Home had a familiar sort of taste.
This new world was...spicy. It had taken her a long time to learn to adjust to the new energies, and if she'd been in the habit of taking her time with her new form like the others it would have taken even longer.
As it was, she had no idea how long it had been. Steven was missing, and she wasn't sure if it was because something had happened to him, or just because of the passage of time. After all, she wasn't really all that clear about how fast humans aged. She hadn't spent much time around them until the last twenty years, and what she'd seen with Greg and Vidalia had showed her that humans aged at a frightening rate.
It had seemed like an eye blink since she and Vidalia had been spending time together, since Greg had been a young musician just out of Junior college. It seemed like only yesterday that Rose had vanished and Steven had taken her place.
The one thing she'd always envied about humans was their ability to forget. Although they didn't talk about it much, Pearl and Garnet still mourned for companions lost five hundred years before Amethyst emerged from her hole. For humans, it seemed like a year or maybe ten was all they needed.
Gems never forgot. Every memory was indelibly printed in their minds. Sometimes Amethyst wondered if that wasn't why corruption was the inevitable fate of every gem, if it wasn't simply the sheer weight of all the memories that didn't drive them insane.
The idea that Steven could have grown up, lived an entire human lifespan and died while waiting for them to reform horrified Amethyst. She couldn't even comfort herself with the idea that Rose had returned; if she had there was no way she'd have left them all in the hands of humans.
She looked around the quarry. It looked like it had been abandoned a long time ago, but she couldn't be sure. The humans back home had never flown on broomsticks. They hadn't shot beams of light out of small sticks and they certainly hadn't worn graduation gowns everywhere.
It would have horrified Pearl, but this place reminded Amethyst of the Kindergarten. She'd spent the first few hundred years of her life alone in one, and she felt safer in a place with good holes.
She sighed as she found a hole of the appropriate size. She slipped the others in the very back, where she could protect them.
Steven could be dead of old age or he could be trapped somewhere. Amethyst had no way of knowing, and it terrified her. She stared at the gems behind her, lying in the dirt and she wished they would hurry up.
Pearl would think of something, and Garnet would know how to do it. They worked best as a team. She wasn't much of a thinker; according to Peridot her kind had been created to be warriors. Point her at an enemy and she was happy to smash it.
This...this was too much.
She fidgeted as she waited for the others. Pearl always took a long time, but Ruby and Sapphire were somewhat quicker. They had to know that realigning their energies to this universe would take exponentially more time than they were used to.
It could be weeks before she saw anything from them.
She sighed and pretended to sleep. Eventually it turned into a real sleep. Even though her body didn't need sleep, mentally she felt exhausted.
A bird was pecking her on the nose.
Amethyst groggily opened her eyes and stared up at the owl standing in front of her.
"Go away," she said grumpily. She turned over.
It pecked her on the top of the head.
"Hey!" she said. Her eyes snapped open and she rolled over again. "I said stop!"
The bird stared at her balefully, then lifted its leg.
She scrambled back. She'd had bad experiences over the year involving birds and droppings. She was a bird a part of the time herself and she knew that pooping was something they had to do, but aiming was recreational.
"Go away!" she shouted irritably. She'd only been sleeping for three days. The others still hadn't woken up and soon she'd have to decide what to do on her own.
The bird stared at her and shook its foot impatiently.
"I don't speak bird!" she said irritably. Maybe the birds in this world were intelligent. For all she knew, this was some sort of police bird out to roust her out of her hole for being homeless.
If it was a police animal, she'd have expected a badge or something...
She looked and then blinked as she saw that there was a message tied around it's leg.
"Is that for me?"
The bird nodded.
Amethyst stared. She'd tried talking to birds for a thousand years back home and they'd never said anything to her. This one acted as though it knew what she was saying.
"Really?"
It scratched the ground impatiently, then shook the leg with the message at her.
Cautiously, she reached out and took the letter.
It was written on parchment. She hadn't seen that for a fair amount of time, even for her.
She froze as she saw the handwriting on the letter. It was from Steven!
"Hey Amethyst," the letter began. "It's been eight months since we came through the veil, and the people here have treated me well. They sent me to a school to learn how to do magic! I tried to get them to let me take you and the other gems with me, but they were worried about the other kids, since they haven't got to meet you yet. Anyway, the summer has just started, and I'd much rather spend it with you instead of back at the Ministry. The people there are a nice, but they aren't family. Write a reply on the back of this letter, and the bird can find me anywhere I am. I can't wait to see you."
It ended with a "Love, Steven."
There was a cartoon figure at the bottom of the page, presumably meant to represent Steven. It stared at her, then suddenly it smiled.
She dropped the paper.
He was alive and almost as young as he had been the last time she'd seen him!
Amethyst began gathering the others as she stared at the bird. It hooted inquisitively.
"Hold your horses," she said. She didn't have anything to write with, so she lengthened her finger into a pen.
In the movies they always forced a hostage to write a note at gunpoint, while the hostage tried to sneak a message inside to warn the people the message was to. Amethyst didn't see anything like that in the message from Steven, but then, she hadn't even learned to read until she was two thousand years old.
She wasn't the smartest of the gems, but she'd keep Steven safe or she'd die trying.
On the back of the note she wrote two words.
"I'm coming."
She handed the note to the owl who took it in one foot. It lifted its other foot with the palm out.
"I don't have any money," she said irritably. What did it want, a tip?
It shook its foot again.
She scowled, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a dead mouse she'd found in the back of the cave. "I was planning on eating this later," she said, scowling.
The bird grabbed the rodent and snapped it up in one gulp. It looked at her for a moment with a superior look, then turned and set off.
It heard a sound from behind it and it turned its head.
It's eyes bugged out. Behind it was a purple dog with a helicopter rotor coming out of its back.
The bird began flying double time, as Amethyst, laughing and carefree at last followed behind in the form of Dog Copter.
Whoever had Steven had better have treated him well. If they hadn't, she'd teach them to never underestimate any gem, even if she was undersized and flawed.
If they'd hurt him, she'd make them pay.