The next afternoon the children ran up to the entrance of the temple, where the three of them sat, the Crystal Gems had been filling her in, trying to get her to understand humans and earth.
"Lucy! Lucy! Are you Lucy?" Jenny asked, as the pack of human children ran over, Rolando included.
"She's got to be!" Buck said. "See! She's ok!"
"We brought her to the healing fountain before taking her out of the mirror." The pearl told them, as they started wrapping their arms around Lapis, she let them, looking at the gems confused, the ruby smiled at her and made a fist with her thumb sticking up…was she supposed to punch them?
Lapis didn't feel like punching her friends, so she ignored the ruby's advice and put her hand on their heads instead. "Hey, thank you for everything."
"So, she would have broken?" Jenny asked.
"We don't know," The pearl said. "But we didn't want to take chances. Kiki was right to get us."
Kiki looked at Lapis"I'm sorry Lucy…I know you didn't want me to."
"I'm here now, it's alright, Kiki." Lapis said. "They helped me." Lapis said…still unsure what to make of it.
"Do you want to build a sandcastle with us? Or, oh, you can actually take turns in Citchen Calamity now! Oh! And eat Cookie Cats!" Steven said, ideas pouring off of him in excitement.
"Let's…start with the sandcastle." Lapis said, trying not to feel overwhelmed.
The children clustered around her pulling her to the beach. Sitting down and shoving piles of sand together, "What are we making?" She asked. And the children talked over each other to reply.
"It's like a big house-." Sour Cream began.
"With turrets!" Steven broke it.
"And secret lairs and dungeons!" Rolando added.
"Like this." The pearl said simply, projecting an image of a building, not too unlike their temples.
Lapis drew the water up the beach. Making it surround the sand piles they made, like in the picture the pearl had made. "It's a moat!" Steven yelled.
"You can control water?" Kiki asked and Lapis nodded smiling, it was so easy to make her friends happy. They seemed in awe of the simplest of her abilities. "Between you and Pearl. We're going to have the coolest sandcastle ever."
The children pushed sand into piles. Lapis used water to shape it and keep it sticking together, and the pearl added details to it, lines for windows and flags. Lapis loved feeling the sand and water in her hands, she loved being able to touch her friends and turn her head to look around her at the world.
She stayed with them for six days, but it wasn't that simple. She yearned for home and spent every night staring at her distance home. The humans were fun, and in the afternoon, she spent time with them, and they taught her things humans knew like to play Citchen Calamity for real, what a TV channel was, how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
But they couldn't tell her what the point was to Citchen Calamity, and she watched them eat their sandwiches without touching her own. She wasn't the same as a human, no matter how much she liked them.
And then there were the gems, they didn't have a master, she quickly realized. And Rose Quartz seemed to be truly gone. Steven showed her the gem in his stomach to prove it. But she wasn't like them either. They were welcoming, they showed her their temple and their world, trees and flowers and the ocean. They welcomed her, almost completely…but she wasn't like them.
She didn't see the point in the life on this planet. What made it better than homeworld? Why shouldn't they use the resources to expand gemkind?…but…the human children lived here. They used the resources here. They would die without the resources. She didn't want to take their resources.
She sat in confusion under the night sky, watching the ocean lap against the shore. She was meant to terraform worlds. To level them with a wave of her hand. She was powerful, and important and…she wasn't any of that here. The children and the gems alike treated her like…she was no one. A friend. She liked being a friend. But on homeworld she had had respect…she had…known who she was. And she didn't here.
She waved her hand, and the ocean ripped away a chunk of beach the size of the dwelling Sour Cream lived in. The gems looked over from where they sat in the entrance of the temple. The pearl looked over in concern but the ruby just raised a hand, waving at Lapis. Lapis waved back.
They were nice to her, almost painfully nice. They were supposed to be traitors, easy to hate, the reason she had been locked away. But they were just some lost low rank gems without anyone to tell them what to do. She felt bad for them…it was hard enough not knowing what to do as a lapis. She couldn't imagine being a pearl or a ruby without orders.
They were patient. They answered her endless questions about earth and the war, and humans. When she asked the ruby why she put slaps of color onto a piece of cloth. The ruby explained about human art. But when she pointed out that the ruby wasn't an artist gem type the ruby drooped. "I know," she said. "But I like it." She was always doing that. Hurting their feelings. A lapis should never have to consider a ruby or a pearl's feelings…did pearls even have feelings? Or was this one just that defective? Regardless, this one had feelings, and they were hurt all the time.
When Lapis had asked her why she was walking next to her, or what made this planet worth protecting, or whether their rebellion had been worth so much pain.
The gems came over to her now. "Hey. Nice hole." The ruby said, as they sat down next to her. They were so ridiculously nice to her. Like she couldn't see their silent glances, and warning looks. A perfect code the two of them knew and she didn't. They were afraid of her; she didn't blame them.
"It's a hole." Lapis said "…I was just terraforming…seeing how it felt."
"How did it feel?" The pearl asked.
"…it didn't feel like anything." Lapis said. "I didn't feel anything."
"I'm sorry." The pearl said.
"I want to go home." Lapis said
The gems exchanged the same warning looks.
"Why?" The ruby said.
"Nothing is right here. I…I hate it here. Everything made sense on Homeworld, nothing makes sense here!"
The Pearl was stiff. The terror plain on her face.
"I won't tell them about you! I don't want to hurt you, and I certainly don't want the children to get hurt. I just…want to go home…you understand, Pearl? You said you miss home too."
The Pearl looked down, wringing her hands. "I do miss Homeworld. All the time. And I can't blame you for missing it either. But missing Homeworld doesn't mean I can't enjoy earth, that there aren't things and people worth staying for here. If you leave us. You will never see those human children again. You will never see this planet again…there's a lot of life here and it's good…and…you won't get that on Homeworld. No matter how nice things may seem there."
It was an impassioned speech. The pearl speeches about earth had always been less enthused than the ruby's. And Lapis was taken off guard. Still, she held her ground.
"I have thousands of years of bad memories of this planet." Lapis said. "You can't fix that in the few months I've been with the children. Or the few days I've been with you. You can't fix that in the next decade or in the next ten. I want to go home. Because I know home. And I love home. This planet is…nice, in a way, and I don't wish it any harm. But I don't belong on it…and I don't want to."
The ruby spoke, "I didn't belong here at first either…I didn't want to stay. I wanted to go back…even though it meant I would be shattered. To protect My Sapphire. I couldn't see the beauty in this world…but eventually I did. Frogs are cute. Leaves change color. Trees can be used to make fires to keep My Sapphire warm."
Lapis blinked. "Sapphires are ice gems." She pointed out.
"Yeah…but My Sapphire always liked fire." The ruby said with a smile.
"…I'm glad you two like this planet so much…But I can't! It was my prison; don't you understand that?" Lapis sighed, staring out at the ocean. "I can't stay here. I just can't."
"So, you're going to leave?" The pearl whispered.
"I have to. I have to go home." Lapis said.
"Okay." The ruby said. "We won't try to keep you."
The pearl looked on the verge of a mental breakdown.
"You said you won't tell them about us. We trust you. You're our friend." The ruby said.
"Thank you." Lapis said. "Thank you. I'll go tomorrow, that way I can say goodbye to the children."
"Can we stay with you tonight then?" The ruby asked.
"Yes, of course."
They laid out in the sand. Staring up at the sky. Eventually the pearl found her voice again, and told Lapis some stories humans had once made up about the stars. About how they used to be people, it was a silly ideal, but almost a comforting thought, that even humans longed to go to the stars.
The children clung to her, the twins, Sour Cream, Rolando, PeeDee and Steven. Buck hung back until Lapis called him over, and then he hugged her as tightly as the rest. She made the ocean by the beach lift and part and come crashing down. It cheered them up briefly as they watched in awe.
She thanked them for helping her, and she thanked Kiki again for getting the gems.
Jenny tied the ribbon that had once been around her mirror around her wrist "Keep it? To remember us with?" She asked.
"Of course." Lapis promised, touching the soft fabric with one hand before pulling them back into a hug.
The gems hung back, the Pearl wringing her hands and occasionally muttering to the ruby, she fell silent as Lapis walked over.
"Thank you." Lapis told them. "You've helped me so much."
"We just wish you would stay." The pearl said.
"I know. But I can't."
"We know." The pearl sighed.
The ruby just flung herself around Lapis's legs, hugging her tightly. "I'm going to miss you." She said.
"I'm going to miss you both as well. Thank you for everything."
She gently disentangled herself, spreading her wings, and flew away. Pausing only once to look back at the small spots that were her friends on the beach, before she turned back to the stars, and took off for home.