~Well, the last chapter was intense and the next chapter's gonna be intense, so. . . it's time for some fluff and awkwardness! XD Hope you've all had a great 2023 so far!~

You stare at the small square of paper in your hand, delivered by Butterfly a few minutes ago. Printed on a durable surface the color of the milk Steven pours on his morning meals and surrounded by edges sharp enough to cause pain if handled incorrectly, even black letters inform you that Kimberly Ann Possible-Stoppable is having a baby shower on an upcoming Saturday, and you are invited.

Baby shower. You sift the words around in your mind the way humans will sift water through wire holes, hoping something of value will be left behind. You cannot imagine what they mean together.

"Oooh, how nice," Peridot says, peering over your shoulder. She knows, of course, that a baby is growing inside Kim; you told her the same day you found out, yet from the glimmer in her eyes you would think this is all new to her. "Lapis, that's so sweet! You're being invited to come witness the baby's first shower!"

You frown at the square of paper. "Wait. No. They can't give the baby a shower yet. It's still inside her." Nine months, you remember hearing from Mama Lipsky, is the necessary amount of time to ready a baby for Emergence, and the moon and the sea have not gone through enough cycles for that yet; the baby will still be buried deep in Kim like a Gem beneath soil and strata.

"Oh. That does raise questions." The skin creases on either side of Peridot's gem. "Perhaps Kim is the one who showers, then, and the baby simply manages to absorb some of the water."

"Yeah, but why would a human invite someone over to see that? Drakken doesn't even want me to watch him shower," you say, although you know that Kim is confident in a way that Drakken, for all his bluster, has yet to master. Maybe what he considers private would not be something that bothers her.

"Hmm. Well, perhaps her plumbing is broken, and she needs you to deliver water to her for showering purposes," Peridot says.

"I guess that'd make a little more sense. But why wouldn't she just say that then?"

"I don't know," Peridot says, lower lip turning out with the admission. She crouches over the paper, suspicion pinching the angles of her face until they appear as sharp as the paper's corners. "Hmm. Most confusing. I shall have to investigate at once."

You roll your eyes as you free the paper from beneath the clenched green fingers. "Orrrr…I could just call her and ask her what she meant." The remainder of the invitation contains an address where the shower will take place, and the letters RSVP that you remember from the wedding invitation beside a string of numbers that you know are intended to be keyed into a phone.

Peridot blinks at you, as though surprised by how small and clear the situation becomes without the gravity she tries to assign to it. It is a look you know well. "Oh. Yes. That would also be an effective approach."

You stand up and tug at her column of hair, she sticks her tongue out at you, and you laugh as you open the door and step outside. Out of habit, your gaze travels to the sky. There is no sign of Aquamarine and Eyeball, either divided or fused. You have seen nothing of them since the day Greg cut his hair, and Drakken claims that the defeat they suffered that day was enough to "crush their spirits." You hope so. You want to believe that their desire to harm Steven ran out of them into the sand when Alexandrite pinned them beneath her foot; you like to imagine them on some distant planet cursing no one but each other, volleying insults off one another. Surely they would not have returned to Jasper, with her disparaging eyes and her angry fists that could encircle their tiny bodies, with the news of their failure.

Your feet touch down on Steven's porch, and you retire both wings and worry for today when you catch sight of him, looking younger at the moment with a smile on his face. Steven offers – or used to offer – a smile to everyone he greeted, and yet to you it seems there have always been variations to his smile, indescribably subtle differences in it that denotes whether he is looking at Garnet or Peridot or you. It is self-centered, probably, to think the smile is never sweeter than it is when he looks at you, so it is a thought you do not share.

When you ask him if you can use his phone to call Kim, he begins to nod before you have even finished speaking. The brightness in his eyes drives away everything strange you have seen there in the last several weeks.

You tap at the keys, the phone still warm from the curl of Steven's fingers, and drift toward the porch railing that overlooks the beach. In the distance, the ocean crashes as dull notes sound from the phone, and then someone says, "Hi, this is Kim."

The comfort of her voice fills your gem and reminds you of water itself: equally capable of forcing buildings apart and soothing raw wounds.

"Hi, Kim," you say. "This is Lapis. I got your invitation, and I wanted to RSVP. I also wanted to know if I'm being invited to come watch you take a shower, 'cause I'm not sure how I feel about that."

There is a small disordered silence, the kind you are accustomed to hearing from Dr. Drakken, not Kim. "Oh, gosh," she says at last. "Did I not explain on the invite what a baby shower is?"

"No."

"Of course not." Kim sighs. "I've been so stinking absent-minded lately. I think it's because…"

Her voice wanders away again, and you try to bring it back to her. "Because you're babyful?" you guess.

The pause is shorter this time, and then Kim's laugh hits the phone like rain, saturated with not scorn but glee. "Babyful – I love that! I am so never saying 'pregnant' again."

You hope she means it. The word pregnant is heavy and empty to you; it means nothing.

"So, to answer your question, Lapis, no, I'm not asking you to come watch me shower. Hello – awkward much?" Kim says after her laughter subsides. "A baby shower is just a big old party that people throw for a woman who's having a baby. We'll play games and eat snacks, and I'll open presents."

"Presents?"

"Yeah, most of the time the guests bring presents. It's usually something for the baby, something the parents are really gonna need after it's born. You know, diapers, bottles –"

You have heard those words but cannot recall their meanings, and you decide that for the moment they are unimportant. "So – you want me to come over to your house? With your friends? And play games?"

"Of course." Kim speaks casually and without hesitation. "It'd be really fun to have you there."

You lean against the railing and cross your legs, the front of one knee pressed against the back of the other. "Is Drakken invited, too?"

"Uh. No. It's kind of a girls-only thing, you know?"

"Because it's about having babies. And he can't," you say.

"Exactly. We're gonna be talking about stuff like that, and he would definitely NOT be comfortable being the only guy there." You can hear Kim smiling. "I really wouldn't want to embarrass him that much.

"And I understand it might be a little weird for you, too," she continues. "I don't think you'd know anywhere there, at least not all that well, so it's no big if you don't feel like coming. I did invite Shego, but she hasn't gotten back to me – she can still be a little sketch, you know?"

"Yeah," you say. You do not know the term, but you do know Shego.

You stand still for a minute, watching the surf tumble across the shore and pondering what she extends to you. This will be your first time seeing Kim without Dr. Drakken present, and strangely the idea does not make you nervous; if she can show such kindness to a man once considered an enemy, you are eager to see her among people whom she has no reason to distrust. You picture the Gems who live in nearby houses and who attend your meepmorp class, how every day it gets a little less difficult to interact with them. You try to imagine the kinds of humans Kim Possible would befriend, and your wings give a quick flutter in your gem, nervous and anticipating.

"Yeah. I'll come," you say. "It sounds like I might like it. I just have one question, though – why is it called a shower if no one is taking one?"

You expect Kim to laugh again, but she sounds thoughtful when she answers. "Huh. I don't actually know for sure. I want to say it's supposed to mean that you're showering someone with gifts, but I have no clue whether or not that's right. I'll have to look it up, or maybe just get Wade to – now it's going to bug me."

A giggle climbs the back of your throat. She and Peridot are alike in that regard: they cannot tolerate the unknown, viewing the things they cannot understand as tauntings from an opposer.

"Anyway – great to hear you can come," Kim says. "I was really hoping you would, but I so didn't want to pressure you. I guess I'll see you then."

"I guess I'll see you then, too," you say with a smile. "Good-bye."

You press the red button that you know will release both phones from the fusionscape linking them and thank Steven for the use of his phone, which earns you another of his brilliant smiles, and you fly back to your house, an explanation already waiting on your lips to satisfy Peridot's curiosity. She is indeed satisfied; she squeals and tosses the young plant she was holding into the air and catches it a second or two before its pot can hit the ground and break, then throws her arms around your bare waist, the plant still clutched in one hand.

Dr. Drakken is only slightly less enthused when you tell him about the party, though you ensure that his hands are empty first.

"Ooh, that's going to be such great fun!" he says. "The games! The cookies! The presents! The chit-chat!" His heavy eyebrow slashes downward like a bolt of lightning. "And of course I'm going to miss it. What a time to be a man."

Before you can reply, another look washes across his face and softens it, water over clay. "Then again," he amends himself, "I'm not the one who's going to have to go through childbirth, so I suppose I really don't have anything to complain about." There is a solemnity in the set of his protruding chin, a pledge to be stronger, kinder than the moods that swirl and eddy inside him.

"Childbirth?" you repeat.

"Yes. You remember that book my mother showed you? With – with the things and the parts?"

He lets go of each word as though it is painful, and you nod in hopes of relieving whatever clenches his voice.

"Well, it hurts. A lot. More than I can comprehend. As in, they say it's the absolute worst pain a human being can experience, bar none."

You are quiet for a moment, more than usual. From your talks with Mama Lipsky, you have gleaned that birth is an untidy and arduous process, so it should not surprise you that it would also hurt. The thought rolls down your back like a drop of cold water.

"But Kim will be okay," you say. It is not a question. If any human is equipped to endure this, it is Kim.

"Oh, of course, she will be," Drakken says with a wave of his wrist. "But I don't envy her any. Heh. There was a day when I absolutely would have wished the longest, most grueling labor and delivery process known to mankind upon her!

"But not anymore."

He grunts, softly by his standards, and his eyes get lost in a memory. Some facets of you wonder how he could have ever hated Kim, but the whole of you finds it too easy to remember what can make a person willingly sink to the bottom of the ocean. When he speaks of envy, you know this is one of the few times he has not experienced it watching her.

You step closer to him and wrap your fingers around his, guiding his eyes back to this time and to you.

"I'm supposed to get her a gift," you say. "Something that'll help with the baby after it's born. Not like I have any idea what babies need." You never were a baby, and aside from brief encounters with baby Uzo, who had can now crawl across the sidewalk in front of her dwelling on her hands and knees, you have never spent time with one. You were still nothing more than a soul locked behind glass when Steven was born.

It is your turn to speculate and be set adrift. You have seen pictures of Steven at that stage in his life: helpless yet unafraid. He would have been born with no sense of his Purpose, no way of identifying the man who rocked him in his arms or the three women who stared at him, all of them mourning his mother, and you wonder what it would be like to have a mind so immaculate, uncolonized by Homeworld. Did he absorb the words that were spoken around him, or were they all like Drakken's senseless sounds to him? Could his thoughts surface in pictures, or did he subsist entirely on the things he felt and his responses to them? Certainly he did not know he would grow up to save you or mend the rift between his planet and yours.

"Never fear, Lapis!" Drakken tugs his hand free to thrust a finger in the air. "Smarty Mart has an entire section just full of baby-related items! You're bound to find a gift there, yes?" He grins at you the way you have seen Steven grin before he heals someone, his eyes shining and even managing to hold steady.

His pride is well-founded, you realize once you have stepped through Smarty Mart's self-parting doors and woven around the humans milling about, all in various shades of brown. Middleton's people have grown accustomed to the two of you, though some of the less courteous still give you peculiar looks. You ignore one man's huge staring eyes as you walk past him, leading Drakken and letting him lead you.

He pulls to a stop in front of a large sign, as long as you are tall, that reads INFANT CARE. Beneath it, you can see a panorama of boxes and bundles, most of which have no meaning to you, sprawled and stacked among the corridors.

You almost stumble, your shoes surprisingly loud on the floor. "Wow," you say.

"Mmm-hmm, 'wow'." Drakken crosses his arms, wearing smugness in his posture. "If you don't find a suitable present here, I'll eat my hat!

"Not really," he rushes to add. "Unless it's one of those cheese hats they wear to football games in Wisconsin. Which I probably wouldn't have because I'm not incredibly welcome in Wisconsin anymore, not since the whole magma incident. I mean, officially the governor has rescinded the restraining order, yes, but people can still hold a grudge for a very long time –"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," you say cheerfully and turn your attention to the infant supplies.

Over the next several Earth hours, you pluck items off shelves and examine them as though harvesting corn: the toys with handles at one end and bulbous areas filled with varicolored pellets at the other, meant to be shaken around for the baby's enjoyment; the round objects with ridged textures to encourage sensory development; and the sets of devices programmed to transmit the baby's sounds and movements to the parents, which Drakken tells you would have made "supreme transmitters of mind-control frequencies, if a fellow were still into that kind of thing." There is nothing wrong with any of them, and yet to you they seem lacking, like the cards you considered buying for Kim's wedding. Making your own gift will not, however, be an option this time.

"I just want it to be something special," you tell Drakken, whose foot has begun to wriggle in frustration. You glance around the aisle. "What about the food? Will they need extra food when the baby is born?" If the baby is anything like Ron, they will be hungry almost constantly.

"Oh! No, actually, babies don't eat for the first several months," Drakken says.

"They don't eat?"

"Nope." He taps his mouth. "No teeth yet."

You try and fail to picture Drakken without teeth. "And somehow they just don't starve?"

"They get all the nutrients they need from milk."

"Oh." You peek over behind you at the corridors where Smarty Mart stores their food; you have been there many times with Drakken. "So – should I buy them a lot of extra milk, then?"

"Um. No," Drakken says. He draws in a long breath and you wait for a grandiloquent explanation, but his words are short and choppy as riptides. "The baby has to drink a special kind of milk. From their – their mother."

You frown. "How can the baby tell if it's their mom giving them the milk?"

"Because. It. Um." Drakken stares down at the tips of his boots, soft and black like his hair and eyes. "It's actually a special kind of milk because their – their mother pr-produces it. From herself. Nhhgh! From her own body!"

"Oh," you say again. "Can all humans make milk?"

"All the ones who have had babies recently, yes." Drakken's shoulders curve inward, as though they are trying to cocoon his pinking cheeks. "So it's a lovely thought, but it won't work, and can we talk about something else now?"

"Sure." You shrug. You do not know why Drakken is embarrassed by milk now of all things, but you want his gaze to feel safe meeting yours again.

You turn and your shoulder bumps against a box. A printed photograph covers each of the box's sides: a baby lying on their back atop a cushioned platform, grinning up at you from between their fat little feet. The only clothing they wear is a white cloudlike patch of fabric fastened below their waist.

"Diapers," you read aloud. You have heard of them; you know they are worn by children too young to learn how to use a toilet.

"Diapers are always a safe bet," Dr. Drakken says, bobbing his head around, his earnestness overriding his patience. "Not terribly original, though – everybody brings diapers –

"BUT – but – but that's not a bad thing," he adds before disappointment has time to reach your face. "Diapers are practical. They're thoughtful! You can never have too many diapers! Well, I mean, unless the house was completely stuffed full of boxes and no one could get inside, but given the rough volume of these boxes and the cubic measurements of Kim Possible's house –"

You give him a faint smile and gaze beyond him at the diaper boxes lining the corridor, sporting different names and different prices and pictures of different babies. The one at the end of the line catches your attention; it depicts a baby seated in a small, round, puffed hole filled with water.

With Drakken still reciting dimensions behind you, you walk over to the box and pull it from the shelf. The baby's eyes stare back at you, so pale they are almost silver, the way yours turn when you use your reflection power. Underneath a belly button even smaller than Drakken's, a diaper that looks stouter, glossier than the others hugs the chubby legs.

Kim and Ron's baby will have a mother, a father, many friends, and a pink hairless creature named Rufus to look out for them. But you can give them another friend, one whose touch is softer than any cloth on Earth.

"Hey, Drakken. I think I found something."

Irritation sprinkles Drakken's eyes for the briefest instant, and then he shoots to your side, craning his neck to find the words on the top of the box. "Swim diapers," he says.

"The waterproof kind, right?" You run your fingers down the smooth, slickened texture of your pants, which still feels alien at times after the delicacy of your skirt.

"Yes, that's why they're – ohhhh. Oh, oh! Oh, of course!"

You watch the moment he catches up with you; you watch his eyes become twin moons and a brilliant white grin, the one that first reminded you of Steven but is now thoroughly his, spread across his face until his lips lie nearly flush with his comical ears. "Now that," he says, "is a perfect Lapis-gift."

"I think so too."

He brushes your forehead with a kiss, and you feel its warmth the rest of the day.

You walk across Kim and Ron's lawn, which looks as green and as kindly as it usually does, the box Drakken helped you wrap tucked beneath one arm, balanced near your hip. From inside, you can hear laughter and conversations much like the type common to Little Homeworld, albeit without the loud rough input of Quartzes.

Kim answers the door as soon as you touch the bell chime. "Hi, Lapis! Come on in!" She does not rush to take the box from your hands. Unlike most humans, Kim never forgets that you are stronger than you look – likely because she is, too.

"Hi, Kim," you say. The last time you saw her she looked wan, but some of the light color has returned to her cheeks now. Her stomach presses forward, the way Drakken's does sometimes when he overfills it. You wait too long to move your eyes away from it.

Kim doesn't seem to mind. She laughs and pats her waist. "I know, I know. I look like a beached whale, right?"

You shake your head. "No. Beached whales are super sad. You just look like Kim with a big stomach."

Kim reaches out and takes your hand, her grip as wiry as ever; you realize with relief that no part of her has been faded or compromised. She pulls you through the doorway and into the crowded room.

The talking in the room slows, hesitates. Faces that are vague memories from the wedding look at you and contort, mouths trying not to drop open and brows attempting not to furrow. You feel the thrumming of your wings within you and have the urge to pull them forward and take shelter behind them, closing the ends of them around a body that differs from theirs, yet you are already too attached to this place and time to go numb.

"Hey, everybody!" Kim says. "This is Lapis."

One by one, as if in concordance with Kim, the women in the room stop staring. They offer you waves and calls of, "Hey, Lapis!"

"Pull up a seat, girl," adds a woman with deeper brown skin who sits in a chair near the fireplace. You recognize her as the woman who walked beside Wade at the wedding. There is music in her voice, though it is not the same as Pearl's music; the song she speaks has a thicker tempo, a lower melody, and a quicker, more modern beat. "I don't know if you remember me at all – my name's Monique. Kim's been my best friend since high school."

You have seen pictures of the school where Kim was snatched by the Lorwardians on her last day there, and while it is quite tall, you doubt this is what Monique means. "Yeah," you say, sinking into the chair next to hers. "I remembered you, just not your name."

"Totally fair."

She looks at you from beneath eyelashes dusted with sparks of gold and purple at their tips. You know by now they cannot be natural, but they look nice on her.

"So…how does Kim know you?" another voice says behind you.

You turn and look into the face of a woman who has yet to smile, her eyes held in sharp marks over her nose and her skin the color of the lightly warmed bread Steven likes to eat in the morning. She reminds you, at a glance, of the friendliest of the Lapises on Homeworld; her face is not unkind, but the firmness of her posture and the arrangement of her arms across her chest identify her as Elite. You do not move toward her or away from her.

You are unsure whether she meant the question as a gibe or not, and you have no answer for her. This is the closest you have been to meeting the eyes of another Lapis since you left Homeworld for good, and the bravest thing you can do is not drop your gaze to your toes.

"Who? Lapis?" Kim says. "She's been dating a friend of ours for a few years now." Her words are simple and without ceremony, and they wash your back clean of misgiving. "Bonnie, meet Lapis Lazuli. Lapis, this is Bonnie Rockwaller. We went to school together since kindergarten."

You hope you do not flinch at the word.

Either way, Bonnie Rockwaller does not appear impressed. Her expression is inscrutable as she flicks a strand of fluffed brown hair behind her shoulder. "Okay, but where are you from? The Lost Colony of Atlantis?"

You feel your eyes widen. "You humans managed to lose an entire continent?"

Bonnie turns toward Kim with a start. She looks at Kim differently than the other women in the room look at Kim, and you envision a crack between them that has been crookedly patched. They would be able to fuse to take down a common enemy, but not for any other purpose. "Us 'humans'?" she squeaks to Kim.

You steady your eyes on Bonnie's, which are at once blue and green, the shade of the sea when the sun is low in the sky. "Yeah. I'm an alien. Not a Lorwardian, though. I'm not here to destroy you or anything."

You don't add, Not anymore.

Bonnie's eyebrows creep together, but this doesn't bother you. These thin vapors of suspicion you have learned to bear.

From the hallway dashes another figure, short and round, though not as round as Steven used to be. She peers at you from behind black hair that swoops around her forehead in playful flight, and you recognize her as Hana, Ron's younger sister whose friendship with Dr. Drakken does not require forgiveness on her part; she has no memory of him as he once was. "Hi, Lapis!" she says.

"Hi, Hana," you say. "I didn't know you were going to be here."

"Of course I'm here," Hana says with a toss of her head. "I'm the aunt." That, you remember from Drakken's explanation of family so soon after you first met, is a title given to her as the sister of one of the baby's parents. "It'll be soooo great to have someone around littler than I am. I can be the boss for once!"

"What are you talking about?" Kim says. "Rufus already does everything you ask him to do. He is totally wrapped."

You glance at the packages piled in the corner of the room, hidden behind gleaming swatches of paper and elaborate curls of ribbon, and let the thought drain from your mind. Neither Kim nor Ron would ever allow such a thing to happen to Rufus.

"Okay, but – it'll still be nice." Hana bounces forward in excitement, only the ends of her toes touching the floor. "And we have cake! When are we gonna do the cake thing?"

"'The cake thing'?" you repeat. You know what cake is, but you thought the only thing to do with it was eat it.

"The cake's going to be our gender reveal," Kim says.

It takes you a moment to place the word gender; it had no meaning on Homeworld.

"Yeah!" Hana says. "Pink cake means a girl and blue cake means a boy."

You grin at her. "Would you rather have a boy or a girl baby, Hana?"

"Either one, as long as it's healthy," Hana says in the tone of a Gem delivering the report her Diamond wants to hear. Her face creases in thought. "And as long as it doesn't scream too much."

"Scream?" You frown.

"Some babies howl and cry all the time. And it gets to be really annoying," Hana says. She places her tiny hands over her ears and grimaces to illustrate the point. "I hope I wasn't like that."

"You were never much of a screamer," Kim tells her. "Mostly, you just squealed and laughed. And handled that whole fighting-ancient-evil-forces thing like a pro."

"Seriously?" Bonnie lifts her hands. "Am I the only normal one around here?"

Hana finds a reply before you can. "Yeah. Isn't it boring?"

You don't even try to hide your snort.

The corners of Bonnie's mouth attempt to press together, but a giggle escapes anyway. The tension in the room clears like it has blown away.

Kim clasps her hands in front of her. Her fingers have to reach farther than they did when you first met her, before she carried life inside her that will turn into a woman like her or a man like Ron. Either way, they will shine like the stars. "So – you got the picture taken?" you say. "And you found out if it was a boy or a girl?"

"Yeah," Kim says, voice careful.

"Okay," you say with a shrug. You are not like Peridot; there are things you don't mind not knowing.

Monique stands up and glances at the timepiece on her wrist. "That's everybody on the guest list, then, right?"

Kim nods.

"Perfect. All right, ladies!" Monique calls. A piece of smooth red paper undulates in her hands. "We're going to kick things off with a round of Pin the Bottle on the Baby!"

You study the pattern in the carpet, worn down by Ron's ungraceful tread. She can't actually be talking about sticking pins into babies.

Monique waves her hand again, toward the farthest wall. On it hangs a sheet of paper paler and longer than the one she holds, a Pearl to its Ruby, marked only in the center with a picture of a baby whose extended arms and open mouth you can tell were generated by a machine.

"I'm sure you all know how this works, but let's go over it just for fun," Monique says. "We give you a bottle. Blindfold you, spin you in a circle. Then you try to get the bottle as close to that baby's mouth as you can. Closest is the winner!"

You nod along with everyone else. You have seen children play this game on television, although they were given papers in the shape of tails and told to pin them to a creature that resembled a horse.

Monique points to a spot on the floor across from the long pale paper. "Get yourselves in line, girlfriends."

You slip into line more slowly than you need to and find yourself standing between two yellow-haired women. The one with longer, lighter hair and less color in her skin introduces herself as Tara, the other as Jessica. Both wear smiles nearly as bright as Kim's.

As you hoped, Hana is at the front of the line. She steps up to Monique, snatches the paper bottle that Monique hands to her, and allows Monique to tie a strip of dark cloth around her eyes. "Good luck, Hana!" you say as Monique puts her hands on the small wobbling shoulders and turns her in a complete orbit.

Monique lets go and Hana stumbles forward, though you know she should be used to walking by now. She smacks her hand against the wall for support and uses its leverage to drive her bottle into the paper. The depicted baby wears her bottle through the side of their neck.

"Oh, great try, Hana," Kim says.

Hana yanks the blindfold from her face, examines her work, and raises one shoulder. "Hey, at least the baby should be able to reach it."

A gentle sound ripples through the room. You can almost hear the ocean laughing with them; you can almost believe that everyone in this house is the same as you: an illusion of light and substance. Sunbeams streak through the windows and inch across the floor toward your shoes.

When it is your turn, you stand still when Monique pulls the cloth across your eyes and fastens the ends behind your head. You do not panic. You can feel everything but see nothing, the antithesis of being in the mirror.

Monique takes you by the shoulders, her long fingernails as sleek and unbroken as panes of ice, and begins to move you in a circle. Your body turns, your head spins, and your feet change directions, and yet through it all a bead in the center of your gem remains fixed in place, anchored by the pull of the Earth and the presence of the water in the glass Tara set on the table behind you.

The hands rise from your shoulders, and you stand there for a moment. No alterations jar the quiet darkness engulfing you. The water is at your left elbow now rather than your back, and you pivot to face the picture. You hear the soft murmurs of your shoes against the carpet and feel your fingers brush the paper. You push the bottle in your hand into the paper, twist the pin so it will hold, tug the cloth from your head, and walk to the back of the line.

When the last person, a young woman named Joss whom you don't need to be told is part of Kim's family, has gone, a quiet grips the room for an entire Earth-minute before Monique finally scatters it. "Uh…okay," she says. "No question here. Lapis wins."

You glance at the paper for the first time. Bottles, each with a guest's name printed across their fronts, riddle the depicted baby's outline and puncture their hands while still others lurk at the edges of the paper. A line of them beside the baby's foot scrawl upward like Drakken's handwriting yet still remain far out of the baby's reach.

The bottle that reads Lapis lies centimeters from the baby's mouth.

"How did you do that?" Hana says.

Every gaze in the room turns to you, and clouds sweep across your gem.

"The spinning – didn't it make you dizzy?" Monique says.

"No." You blink. "Was it supposed to?"

An instant later, it makes sense to you: human bodies are easily disoriented when denied sight or when their settings change, while Gem bodies automatically connect with the gravity and magnetism of whatever heavenly body they visit. The game was meant to tangle the senses, but yours would not allow that.

So much for feeling like we're all the same, you think. Now you stand out, singular in this group of organic beings.

Before another instant passes, however, Kim breaks into a smile. "Lapis – wow. That alien biology rocks in stereo," she says.

You feel a blush darken your cheeks, embarrassment mingling with something more pleasant. "It comes in handy," you say, louder than a whisper, and your eyes flit between gazes that you now realize hold the same shine so often directed at Kim, acknowledging her strength and capacity are far beyond theirs. A glow seeps to the edges of your gemstone at the image of yourself as unshakable.

For the moment, you do not even consider it ridiculous.

Monique claps her hands again. "All right. Biggest moment of the party coming up right here. That's right, ladies," she says even though no one has spoken up, "it's time for the gender reveal!"

"And for cake!" Hana pipes up, her body wiggling with excitement.

You search the room for Kim and find her coming back through the kitchen doorway. She carries a platter held just above the mound at her waist where her baby grows. An opaque half-dome secures to the platter on every side, hiding the shape of the cake and keeping its color a mystery.

"Kim!" Tara leaps from her seat, alarm in her blue-Topaz eyes. "At least let one of us get that for you!"

Kim waves her hand. "I feel fine, Tara. And – honestly, it would drive me absolutely insane to just sit around and have everybody else do everything for me."

This you know to be true. Kim is a creature of motion, as is Dr. Drakken; it is no wonder that their orbits collided so many times.

As Kim rests the platter on the glass table beside the sofa, you catch hold of Monique's flowing sleeve and lean close to her ear. "So…what are we supposed to say when she shows us?" you say.

"Just 'Congrats'!" Monique says.

"No matter which one it is?"

"No matter which one it is."

You blink. "Then why do they bother finding out?"

"Mostly to help them narrow down the name choices, AFAIK – as far as I know. No point in picking out boy names if you know the baby's gonna be a girl." Monique's lips turn up, pushing a small charming indent into each cheek. "Now hush up, girlfriend, so we don't miss the big moment."

You nod, though human naming conventions still perplex you. You have seen humans in books whom their authors have named "Jasper," all of them boys like Steven or men like Drakken, but you doubt you will ever read that name without seeing her sharp smile, poised to cut both you and herself.

"Drum roll, please," Kim says. You don't see any drums to roll, but Hana smacks her hands against the table in a steady beat, and Kim appears satisfied. She unlatches the half-dome and pulls it away from the plate.

The cake is blue, darker than your skin, lighter than your hair. You feel a smile spread across your face.

"It's a boy!" The cry seeps from several voices all at once and seems to curl when it hits the air, reaching higher and higher with each person who adds to it.

You glance at Hana, her face all but glowing as she bounces up and down and then touches her hands to Kim's stomach. She knows more now about the person whose aunt she will be, and her movements remind you of Drakken's words, buoyant and tumbling.

A crowd of giggling, chattering people folds around Kim, and you stand behind them until a gap wide enough for you opens. You wend your way through and rest your hand on Kim's shoulder. Beneath your fingers, her muscles shift, small and slight but densely packed, prepared for the moments when she will need to be fierce.

"Congratulations," you say, your voice rising, clear and bright, so it will not be lost among the noise. It still surprises you somewhat to hear it do that.

Kim finds your hand with hers and hugs it. "Thanks. Thank you so much, everyone!"

Monique slices the cake into triangular wedges and serves them to the guests on sturdy plates that you don't think will be thrown away after the shower is over; they look and feel like they are trying to be permanent. You free a section of it with your fork, place it between your teeth, and bite down.

The cake bursts and a sweet taste ricochets through your mouth, not unpleasant but also not as gentle as you would have liked the flavor to be, like flower petals rubbed across your tongue. You swallow, and the bite feels strange falling down your throat. The only way you can keep from cringing is to remember the wide grin on Dr. Drakken's mouth as he feasted on foods with this flavor or sweeter. He would love this cake.

He will love this cake, you decide, and you ease your hand under what remains of your slice and lift it over your shoulder, slipping the dimensions of your gemstone apart so the cake can slide in. It comes to a rest in the nook of you farthest apart from your wings, where they will not drip on it and spoil it.

A sound something between a gasp and a scoff hits the air near you, and you look up to see Bonnie Rockwaller, her lips slack and parted. "Uh…about that thing you just did?"

She speaks like someone who senses a threat somewhere close, and you let your arms hang at your sides, wrists raised, so she will see you are no bigger than her and you mean her no harm. "What about it?" you say, your tone casual, even friendly.

"The way you" – Bonnie points at her back – "yeah. Is that like a pocket you put stuff into it?"

"Pretty much." You shrug, and then because you are already abstract to her and because her eyes alone out of all the women challenge you to say more, you add, "And also the place that holds the inner essence of my being and projects my body out from it."

Bonnie's face appears to flatten. You expect her next move to be to take a step away from you, but instead she leans forward on her legs, resisting it, and you are strangely impressed. "K," she sighs, "you have the weirdest friends."

You examine her eyes to see if they jest. Laughter does dance in them, and it cannot seem to determine whether it is kind or unkind.

A small hand tugs at your pants, turning your attention to Hana. "Are you saving the cake for…your boyfriend?" she says with a teasing grin not unlike the one Peridot would give you were she here.

You touch the tip of her nose, as you would with Peridot. "You got it."

When everyone has finished their cake slices, Monique stands up again. "Okay, so there's no spinning to this game, but it's still one of my very faves! We're gonna write down length predictions, weight predictions, and name suggestions!"

This does not sound very much like a game to you, yet you assume it would be rude to say that to Monique's beaming face, and so you do not.

She hands you a paper. Three blank lines, each with a set of words preceding it, stare back at you, waiting for you to fill them, as though you have the authority to place your words and have them obeyed. The shallowest of shivers flickers your wings, but you can almost feel Dr. Drakken's warm restless breath on your neck as you imagine him telling you that these slips of paper have no prophetic value, that what you write will be of no consequence to this child and his future. Would he understand how reassuring it is to be powerless in this situation? You think he might.

You glance at the first words: "Baby's length at birth," followed by a short line, followed by the word "inches." It takes you a moment to remember that your new home does not follow Homeworld's measurement system. Even then, you cannot begin to guess at how small a baby must be to pass through a mother without destroying her. You scratch down the number "6" and move on to the next line.

"Baby's weight at birth," a blank, the word "pounds," another blank, and then the word "ounces."

Mama Lipsky's voice in your memory provides some point of reference, telling you that Drakken was six pounds exactly when he was born. That, you do remember, is on the small end of normal for a baby, but neither Kim nor Ron are especially big people and you know the size of the parents has influence on the size of the baby. You tilt the pencil back and forth between your fingers and then write "6" in the pounds' blank and "3" in the ounces' blank.

"Baby's name," the last line reads.

The first name that comes to you is also the dearest: Steven. Should Kim and Ron use this, however, there will be two people in your life with this name, humans who cannot be identified with cuts and facets. You understand that humans deal with this all the time, but you do not wish to complicate their lives further.

The next name that comes to you is Drew, the name Drakken's mother gave him before he chose Drakken for himself. You imagine this would be less confusing, since Drakken no longer goes by that name, but there is a reason for that; the name brings back so many painful memories he can hardly stand to hear it.

You cannot think of anyone else you admire so.

What about someone Drakken admires?

You think back to the soft stacks of paper that he keeps tucked beneath his bed, the ones he calls "comic books," and you see a red-masked face. Quickly, you write the name down and crease your paper down the middle, dropping it with the others into a translucent bowl that Monique passes around.

In the moment that follows, still but for the sound of pencils whisking across paper, you look at Kim's tight waistband and allow yourself to wonder about the tiny raindrop of a human inside her. If you were Peridot, you would be able to map every potential genetic combination to determine how he could turn out; if you were Sapphire, you could use future vision to confirm it and know how he will be before he even arrives, but instead you simply sit back against your chair and smile. However this child turns out, you cannot imagine him disappointing.

Monique hands the bowl to Kim. "All right, Kim. Let's see what we got here."

The other women break into a cheer, and for a second your back feels cold. You did not know they were going to share the papers with everyone.

Names are read aloud, and they are names like Dan, Matthew, Joshua, Devon, and Terry. You clasp your hands in your lap. Your suggestion is going to stand out like a muddy footprint on clean white tiles.

"Here's Lapis's." Kim unfolds your paper and waves it before her. "Let's see – baby's length at birth: six inches."

A gentle titter moves around the room. Heat darkens your cheeks.

"I guess not, then," you say. You look only at Kim. She looks back at you with a smile, and the embarrassment begins to roll back like the tide. "Is that too big or too small?"

"Way too small," Kim says, her green eyes calm and kind. "I mean, for comparison, that's about the same size as Rufus."

You envision the small hairless pink creature that travels with Ron wherever he goes and have to stifle a snort. "Oh. Yeah. I just thought – I thought they had to be really small so they could come out of you without breaking you."

Kim shakes her head and rests her hand on her stomach. "Don't we wish. That would make things so much easier."

You nod. You do not need to ask what things she references, for you remember them from Mama Lipsky's picture book, their colors peaceful even as they depicted what was surely a chaotic event. "So how long are they, usually?"

"About nineteen inches. Give or take." Kim returns to the paper. "Baby's weight at birth: six pounds three ounces. And you know what? That's a totally reasonable newborn weight.

"And baby's name –"

You resist the urge to draw your legs up and hide behind them.

" – Spider-Man?" Kim's lips go still as soon as she is finished, and you recognize the look more than you would like; they will not move again until they have painstakingly selected what to say next.

Does she think it's a joke? Does she think you're making fun of her baby?

You hear a sound high and sharp, not unlike the ones Dr. Drakken makes when he needs to clear his lungs, and you glance at Bonnie to be certain she can still breathe like she needs to. Her shoulders twitch and her head bobs, amused, not frantic. "I'm sorry," she says between dry sputtering noises. "It's just…your six-inch-long baby named Spider-Man."

Kim's eyes narrow slightly, but you lean closer and study Bonnie's face. You know how it looks when someone launches laughter at you and hopes it will hit you hard enough to form a crater, and the vicious glee you would expect does not reach Bonnie's expression. It blunts the impact, and you turn back to Kim.

"Okay, so I don't really know how names work. Especially not boys' names." You say it casually, one hand seeking refuge in your hair. "I just couldn't think of anything better, so I put it down 'cause I thought he was a great hero."

Monique raises one shoulder. "Makes enough sense to me."

"Yeah. Plus, Spider-Man's real name, his secret-identity name, is Peter Parker," Kim says. "And Peter and Parker are both awesome boys' names."

She has barely come to the end of her words when the front door shoots open as if propelled by a monsoon wind, striking the wall behind it and swinging forward again. Into the narrow gap of the doorway steps a human outline, perfectly encased between two black clouds of hair.

"All right, everybody! Hands in the air," a voice snaps. "And hand over your wallets!"

The room erupts with scattered shrieks, some dramatic and others thin. From the corner of your eye, you see Tara, Bonnie, and Jessica raise their arms above their heads, even as Bonnie mutters, "Are you kidding me?" You see Kim standing with her legs spread and her weight balanced, her arms tense as rods, one held in front of her head and the other behind; even with her stomach curving outward, she looks as ready to defend her loved ones as she did when it lay flat.

You fix your gaze on the figure ahead, and you stand unintimidated. You know exactly who this person is, and she is pranking them, just as she was when she told you that Drakken's embarrassing organic noises were great works of music.

She laughs, and the sound is a thinly frozen pond, frosted hard only at its edges. "Ha! Kidding! Aw, man, you should've seen the looks on your faces." She points a finger from person to person as if to poke them from afar. "Heya, Kimmy."

Kim groans, the fight leaving her body if not her eyes. "Shego."

"Shego, what the heck?" Hana steps forward, her hands on her hips. "She's pregnant!"

Shego claps a mocking hand to her forehead. "Really? She is?" As usual, her voice tosses the words around as if they are boats in a storm, until they mean what she wants them to mean and nothing else. "Well, that probably explains why I got this invitation to a baby shower." She flicks a paper from her pocket, the same type that Butterfly delivered to you, and holds it between two fingers, turning her hand so it points up and then down, her green energy nowhere to be found. "And probably why you got the plasma-free treatment." Her other hand hangs loosely around a package, which she tosses to Kim. "Here ya go, Princess. Sorry I can't stick around. Late for a massage. Adios."

This must mean goodbye, because she winks over her shoulder at Kim, flashes a small grin at you, and vanishes in the same abrupt, unapologetic way she appeared.

A feeling like fluttering wings beats in your throat, and you begin to giggle. You giggle the way you learned to do on Earth, until the muscles supporting the midsection of your physical form ache and your legs weaken so that you have to sit down in your chair again and hold your sides. The faces that surround you are too busy emptying of fear like water into a drain to find you strange.

The party then turns to stories of birth. A few of the women present have already created children of their own, and the ones who haven't tell of what they have heard from their mothers about their own births. It is a conversation that centers around contractions, which you had thought were words with apostrophes in them, and dilation, which you thought was something that happened to eyes, and labor, for it is apparently very hard work to bring a baby out of you and into the world. You have nothing to contribute, so you sit back and nod, listening; Peridot will want to hear every detail you have gathered once you return home.

Tara, in the next chair over, turns to you. "Lapis, you've been awfully quiet."

This you are accustomed to hearing.

"I guess probably because I was never born," you say, glancing up from your fingerprints. "I came out of a hole in the ground. It was pretty easy."

Tara's eyes flinch, yet they don't move away from yours. "Oh," she says. "Um – wo-ow."

You let yourself smile at her. "It's okay. Of course you don't know what to say to that. It's crazy for humans to think about, right? But I can talk about normal stuff, too. Like – do you like reading books?"

"Yeah, sometimes," Tara says.

"What kinds of books do you like?"

"Romance. And mystery. Romantic mysteries are the best." Tara rests her head against the back of her chair and hugs her knees to her chest. "There's this one I found back when I was still in high school, Red Rose of Warning, and it's still my fave. I've probably read twenty times by now. It's just so good."

"Peridot and I have read the same book over and over too," you tell her. "Mostly when we're waiting for the next one to come in at the library."

"Who's Peridot?"

"My roommate. And best friend. She's younger than me," you say, not adding that this means she has only lived three thousand years rather than your six thousand.

"That's always fun," Tara says. "Did you know that there are a lot of schools that'll pay you to come in and just read to the kids?"

"Are you serious?" You try to imagine such this; you wonder if you would be paired with a child friendly and accepting, like Steven, or one so baffled by you as to be rude, like several of the children you have met in Middleton.

"Totally. I did it part-time in college." Tara says the word college without the disdain Dr. Drakken employs whenever he speaks of it. "I really enjoyed it – it's a great way to make a kid's day," she adds, using a phrase which you know means the child will see the event as the most fulfilling part of their day.

You tuck that idea away, and as you look at Tara it is almost easy to forget that you are not the same species, even though your lifeforce thrums on your back as it always does, concrete where hers is nebulous, scattered throughout or hidden in a place that someone has yet to find.

You stay beside her as Kim opens her presents, cracking and creasing the paper until it falls off. Drakken was right: many guests have given her bottles, and even more have given her diapers. When Kim opens your gift, she looks at you with knowing eyes and says, "Swim diapers. Of course. With the whole water thing."

"What 'whole water thing'?" Bonnie asks, yet when no one seems inclined to answer her, she gives her head a careless wag.

The baby shower does have one thing in common with a rain shower: it comes to a gradual, trickling end, the conversations growing lighter and more widely spaced. Eventually, as though in answer to a command you did not hear, the women rise and begin hugging one another in farewell. Before anyone can embrace you, you flit over to Kim and give her hand a squeeze. "'Bye. Thanks for inviting me," you say.

"Of course!" Kim says. "Thanks for coming – and kicking all our tails at Pin the Bottle on the Baby. Did you have a good time?"

"Yeah," you say, and her smile glows in a face that seems brighter than usual, the pallor you remember from the day she told you and Drakken about the baby gone.

"Tell Drakken I said hi!" Hana calls to you.

You give her a thumb's-up and let the door sweep shut behind you.

The sun tosses the shadows of trees across the lawns as you fly to the warp pad, the cake still safe in your gemstone. Your body feels lighter and easier to maneuver, free from gravity and fear. The period of uncertainty has passed, and it is a relief and a loss both.

Some of your neighbors greet you with waves and grins, which you return before opening your front door just wide enough to enter. As soon as you hear the latch click behind you, Peridot lands at your side in a flash of elation, her eyes wide with questions.

"Lapis! You're back! Is now an acceptable time to ask you several pertinent questions, such as – what was it like? Did you have fun? What did you do? If not, I can ask them at a later date."

"I mean, you kinda already did." You roll your eyes. "But I can talk about it now. It was strange but nice. I did have a lot of fun. Everybody was really nice – well, except for one person, and I think she was trying to be nice, just not very good at it yet."

There is no bitterness in your voice when you say it. You understand too well the desire for kindness far outweighing the capacity.

You continue. "We found out the baby's going to be a boy, and we guessed what we think he'll weigh when he comes, and we played some games and ate some cake. That was really sugary, so I'm saving it for Drakken. And then they all got started talking about how babies Emerge – they called it labor. Did you know it's actually really hard to get a baby out of you?"

Curiosity and awe dance in Peridot's expression like two Gems readying to fuse. "Really? How hard?"

"Well, I don't know all the details. Obviously," you say, snorting. "But I can tell you what I learned."

You sit beside her on the couch and explain to her what you overheard about delivery and dilation and contractions. The perpetual knot of Peridot's lips tightens with each new piece of information, and her cheeks seem to draw closer together as they often do when she contemplates, an odd, grimacing face but one that you know means she is satisfied.

"Anyway," you finish with a shrug, "it was really weird. I didn't say a whole lot. Except I did get to talk to this woman named Tara about books. I told her how you and I read together sometimes."

Peridot begins to wiggle, and for a moment you see her in Hana's place, nearly the same size. "Ohh, Lapis! Can we read a chapter together now? Pretty ple-e-ea-se?" She folds her hands beneath her narrow pointed chin, and her eyes beg you.

"Sure." You feel the mischief steal into your eyes as you glance down at her. "And I can do the voices for only fifty cents extra."

"Fifty cents!" Peridot caws like a shore-bird. "Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?"

"Nowhere. It was a joke." You walk into your room and hunt through your selection of books for the one you and she have been rereading, the one with the cover that shows the girl on the bike.

"You know," Peridot says, "this whole business of 'birth' sounds inefficient and unnecessarily painful. Gem reproduction is far superior."

You pause, one hand still on the book. "Yeah, except for the part where all the other life around it gets wiped out," you say, your words twisting like Shego's.

"Yes. Aside from that." Peridot sighs, not a sound you have heard often from her. "If we could have just found a way around that very significant problem, everything would have been perfect."

You drop to the couch without ceremony and open the book to the page marked with the colorful strip of thick paper Steven gave you one Christmas. "Nothing's ever gonna be perfect, Peridot."

"I suppose you are correct." Peridot pulls Pumpkin into her lap and slips her head between your elbow and your shoulder with little space left over. "But some things sure come close."

Your fingers stroke the worn places on the pages, and your back feels almost organic in its warmth.

Yeah, you think. Some things come awfully close.

"Lapis!"

The tinny, sharp-edged voice pokes the dream you are having about babies and beaches, and it bursts. You lurch to the side, wrapped in layers of cloth that you do not at first recognize.

Your bed capsizes, dumping you to the floor. You catch yourself, hands and knees on the plank of wood from the barn floor, Earth-seconds before your face would have collided with it.

You register first the gentle swishing of the water in your miniature fountain and second the outflow of worry on Peridot's face. She stands on one foot, the other tiny leg bent in a fishhook behind her as though she will have to flee at a moment's notice, her bottom lip clenched in her teeth.

You stand up and attempt to glare at her. "Geez, Peridot, what was that about?" She has not done anything like this for quite some time; it is the only reason you had stopped zipping the banana hammock fully closed every night.

"I'm terribly sorry to have awakened you like this. But…" Peridot stops and unfolds her fists, uncharacteristically hesitant. One glance at her, and you know that this worry is not for herself. It is meant for you.

The water gurgling through the fountain begins to pick up speed. "But what?" you say.

"Steven and I received a tip from a Gem settlement in the Alloy System."

The name is not familiar to you. It must have been a galaxy the Gems only began to explore during your long absence. You look away from her and study the sunlight as it spills through your window and glides across each one of your books, the sight comprehensible and soothing in a way you would have never expected Earth could be. "And?" you say.

"They're reporting that Planet 2 in the sector is receiving hostile Gem activity."

You stay the questions that you think of first – Which Gems? What kind of activity? – and make certain they are tied tightly to the pier. "Does this planet have an ocean?" you ask instead. It will be easier, you think, to hear her say yes than to have her answer those questions.

Peridot jerks her head up and down as if the motion is painful, as if it's labor.

You pull her close with a desperation you have not felt in years.