Chapter Text
Ever since Pearl began expanding her original starter base, she’s been working on some kind of big secret project.
It probably has something to do with her choice of theme this season. Or maybe it's an even bigger, more spectacular redstone machine than the already very impressive Dyeduction. Whatever it is, Pearl’s determined to keep it a secret, which means Gem is even more determined to figure it out.
She watches Pearl from a distance, using her spyglass. Pearl’s base is developing into a labyrinth of different structures, with so many entrances and passageways wedged into tight corners, each building blending together into a larger whole. It’s getting big enough that Gem can get lost in it. She gets turned around even from afar, watching Pearl enter a building and emerge somewhere completely different a few minutes later.
This morning, Pearl seems to be harvesting some of the many different plants around her base. She clips back the fast-growing vines that crawl up the sides of her buildings, wades through dense fields of flowers to uproot entire plants, and even collects bark from the bushes and trees. Gem can’t imagine what she’s doing with it all, and she’s even more confused to see Pearl deposit her harvest into a large pool and leave it there.
After a while, Pearl spreads her elytra and rockets off in the direction of the shopping district. Gem takes the opportunity to poke around her base and investigate directly. She stops at the pool first, which has a small channel out to the river, not quite wide enough for a boat to pass through.
When Gem steps into the pool, the water only comes up to her knees. The bottom is full of different stems and leaves, weighed down by rocks to keep it from floating up to the top. Nearby is a small hut filled with shelves and shelves of the same plants in various stages of drying.
Gem has been toying with the idea of a proper scientific investigation for a while now, and clearly Pearl is the perfect subject. She takes a recording device out of her pocket and begins to describe her surroundings.
“This is Dr. GeminiTay in the field, reporting on my observations at PearlescentMoon’s base. Recently, I've observed several anomalies in Pearl’s behavior, and I came to the conclusion that I must analyze her natural habitat for hints as to what may be causing this…deviation.” Gem nods, proud of herself. She sounds so professional! “It appears that Pearl has been soaking plants in water, then letting them dry. The purpose of this behavior is as of yet unknown.”
Nearby the pool and the shed full of drying plants is a building that Gem knows has been here for a while, but she doesn’t think she’s ever been inside. The top floor is full of more plants in the next stage of the process, whatever process that is. One one side is a pile of fully dried plant material, and on the other side is a heaping pile of fibers and several chests stuffed to the brim with very tiny wood shavings.
Gem relays this information as best she can into the recording device, then takes a staircase down to the basement, which is much larger than the room above. The center of the room is taken up by several large spinning wheels, each hooked up to a redstone device that Gem doesn’t even bother to try and make sense of. Presumably they help automate the process, though they all seem to be shut off right now. Gem is tempted to flick one of the levers to see what happens, but she’s not Grian. She has more self-control than that.
Though, it would be really funny if she broke something.
Gem peeks outside to make sure Pearl isn’t back yet, before running back to switch the lever on, giggling to herself. The wheel starts spinning, but since there’s no fibers or threads on the spool, nothing else interesting happens. She’s disappointed, but also relieved that she didn’t break anything. She flicks the lever back off and moves on.
Pearl has hung several picture frames around the room, but instead of artwork, the frames contain embroidery projects. The largest of them reads live laugh love in familiar cursive lettering, surrounded by a border of leafy vines . Most of the others are textless, with designs of different plants and flowers.
A large table on the left side of the room is covered in dozens of small scraps of handmade fabric. Some are of higher quality than others. None of them look like the sort of crochet pattern that Gem’s used to seeing on Pearl’s body. Pearl must be trying to branch out with her projects, and these are some of her first attempts. There’s another embroidery project hanging right above the table, the only other one with any text, which reads, Start small.
Beside the table is an ordinary loom, and next to it, a larger, more intricate version constructed out of several different types of wood. Normal looms are only used for banners, but Pearl’s handmade loom seems to be built for broader purposes. On the other side of the loom, in the back corner of the room, is an iron door without any visible way to open it.
At this point, Gem can safely assume that she's found the room where Pearl keeps her mystery project. Clearly it's some kind of fiber art—or several different kinds at once, from the look of it. But all the things she's seen so far are just pieces of the puzzle, and she still can’t figure out what Pearl’s making.
Her only remaining option is to see what’s behind the locked door.
Now, Gem could easily go home and construct her own lever to open the door, or just break through the wall herself, but that’s no fun. She’d much rather figure out how to use this secret door the right way. Knowing Pearl, it’s not a special kind of lock that only she has the key to, but some kind of thematically relevant puzzle that anyone can figure out if they try.
So Gem tries. For a good long time, she looks around the room for hints. She stops in front of the table of scraps, looking at the embroidered message. Start small. It doesn’t quite fit with Pearl’s sense of interior decoration. The live laugh love one is clearly a joke, a reference to last season, but there’s nothing about Start small that holds any sort of meaning to Gem.
Unless it’s meant as a clue.
In a moment of inspiration, Gem stands on her tiptoes, reaching over the table to take the frame down from the wall. She looks over to the door, but it hasn’t moved. When she flips the frame around, she can see the messy backside of the stitching, plus a hand-written note from Pearl, reading, smaller than that.
Definitely a clue, then. Gem switches on her recording device and begins to narrate.
“The wild Pearl is known for her cleverness,” she tells her imaginary peer-review science board. “One of the defining behaviors of a Pearl is to set up puzzles for her friends. It’s important to provide her with enrichment by participating, which is why I’m doing this, of course. Not because I’m nosy.”
She paces up and down the room, the reassuring rhythm of her footsteps against the floor helping to clear her mind. That is, until she steps down on a block that makes a strange metallic clanking sound.
Gem may not know much about redstone, but she knows a hidden hopper when she hears one. The spot where she’s standing is just a few blocks away from the door. All she has to do now is figure out what to throw into it.
“Pearls are practical creatures,” Gem says. “This Pearl would not choose something rare or difficult to access as the key to a door she uses all the time. It’ll probably be something inside this room.”
Start small. Smaller than that. The answer’s sitting right in front of her. Pearl doesn’t start a crochet project by jumping into it blindly and hoping for the best. She plans it out beforehand, making patterns and testing out stitches. All of the different test swatches on this table are her way of starting small, practicing for the big project she’s making.
Gem grabs one of the scraps of fabric, dropping it on the floor above the hopper. The door opens with a loud clank, and she enters the room, holding her breath in anticipation.
She’s not expecting Pearl to actually be inside. She knows for a fact that she saw Pearl fly off, though admittedly there was plenty of time for Pearl to sneak back into this room while Gem was wandering around her base. But the surprise of Pearl’s presence pales in comparison to the shock of what she’s making.
Pearl is hunched over a player-sized figure made up of many different kinds of fabric, lying on top of a large worktable. Only one of its arms are attached, the other sitting right beside the empty shoulder, and both legs end just below the knee, still unfinished. Most of the fabrics look coarser than the soft wool yarn that Gem is used to, but there’s no mistaking who it’s supposed to be.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Gem blinks several times, unable to believe what she’s seeing. “Pearl, are you multiplying?”
Pearl laughs, sitting back and looking up at her. “Do you like it?”
Gem takes a few steps closer, taking it all in. The new Pearl’s plastic button eyes have been replaced with wooden ones, and her hair is a mixture of several different textures and shades of brown. She’s wearing a white postal jacket like the one Pearl’s wearing now, but this one is made out of a more refined version of some of the swatches in the previous room.
When Gem commissions new outfits to fit her themes, she doesn’t spend much time thinking about the work that goes into it behind the scenes. She just pays their exorbitant prices and assumes they must have worked very hard. Now, having seen all the steps in Pearl’s process, she’s baffled as to how her clothesmakers are able to deliver their finished products so quickly, or how Pearl herself has gotten so much done without anyone noticing.
“It’s beautiful, Pearl. It’s so detailed.” Gem can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t feel like an understatement. “Have you been working on this all season?”
“Only since I decided on my solarpunk theme,” Pearl says. “It shouldn’t take me much longer. I’ve processed most of the fibers that I need already, and that’s the slowest part.”
“I have so many questions,” Gem says. It’s a little disconcerting to see this new version of Pearl in an unfinished state, looking so much like Pearl does now, but lifeless and incomplete.
“I can explain it to you if you want!” Pearl looks excited at the prospect. “There’s a lot of steps, but if you break it down it’s actually pretty simple—”
“Have you been hanging out with Mumbo recently?” Gem asks. “None of what you’re doing is simple, Pearl. This is very complicated!”
“Already had a peek around my base, did you?” Pearl tuts in mock disappointment.
“It’s only fair! You don’t get to complain after what you did to my base with all those pickle messages.”
“Ah, well.” Pearl shrugs. “You may have a point.”
“What is it for, anyway?” Gem can’t help but notice that Pearl isn’t making these modifications to herself, but to an entirely different entity. “Why do you need another you?”
“Gem!” Pearl laughs at her. “You got all the way to this point and you still haven’t figured it out?”
“What do you—Oh. Wait.” Gem blinks. “Are you—you’re building yourself a replacement body?”
“There you go,” Pearl says. “We got there eventually.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Gem says. “How do you get yourself into a whole different body? Can you turn back after you’re done? If you can just go around switching bodies, what’s stopping you from being a—a pig, or a sheep or something?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Pearl says, waving her hand dismissively. “I just, y’know…” She pauses, frowning. “Well, I—hm, okay. I’m not sure, actually.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I don’t know how it works,” Pearl says. “It just sort of happens. Like how everyone gets new outfits to stick through respawn.”
“That’s normal, though. Everyone does it!”
“Yeah, but how?”
Gem opens her mouth, then closes it again. She doesn’t know. How does she not know?
She feels a little dizzy from how fast her thoughts are racing. Gem pulls up a chair and plops herself down, trying to get her thoughts in order.
In this world, and in every world since she spawned, there have been rules. They vary from place to place, and they can be changed, too—even bent or broken. Gem knows people who break the rules—some of the most infamous rulebreakers in the world reside on this very server with her—but she’s never counted Pearl among that number.
And, now that she thinks about it, that seems like an oversight on her part. Gem has known Pearl for longer than most of the other Hermits, and she can’t remember ever questioning how Pearl came to exist in this form, this version of herself that Gem’s always known.
Gem has never broken the rules, or at least, she’s never knowingly attempted to do so. She’s happy where she is, building and mining and fighting the normal way, seeking out challenges from within the confines of what’s supposed to be possible. She’s amazed by the accomplishments of her reality-bending friends, but that sort of thing has never interested her.
Now, standing on the edge of what seems to be a rule-breaking realization, Gem wonders if this is how they felt—Etho, or Cleo, or Doc, or Pearl, apparently—any of the Hermits that ever asked the right questions, or put the pieces together, or stumbled upon a loophole in the rulebook.
She clings to the fabric of her lab coat in wonder. What kind of force tethers this silly costume she’s wearing to her own body? Why does it stay with her even after death? How does any of this make sense?
Is everything just a—
“See, you can't question these things,” Pearl says, bursting through her train of thought. “Or it all falls apart.”
“Falls apart?” Gem asks, alarmed. “What does that mean? That sounds bad. Is it bad? Have I broken the world?”
“No! No, of course not, don’t worry.” Pearl rests a soft hand on Gem’s shoulder. “Well, maybe a little bit, but it’s fine. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
Gem puts her head in her hands, taking a deep breath. It helps, a little. “This is—a lot, Pearl.”
“Here, let me show you something.” Pearl holds up a swatch of fabric, which Gem is reasonably confident in identifying as crochet, though she doesn’t know the specific stitch. “It’s like this. The fabric holds itself together just fine if you leave it alone, but when you pull on the edges…” She does just that, and the first row collapses on itself, then the next, then the next. “Things start to go a bit wonky. But…” She pulls out a crochet hook and starts stitching, rebuilding the row she’d just unraveled. “You can make them right again, if you learn how. It can go back to normal. Or, well, normal enough.”
“But what about people who don’t want it to be normal?” Gem asks. “How do they deal with it?”
“You’ll have to ask them about it,” Pearl says. “That’s not how I do things. I prefer to patch the holes I find rather than explore what’s inside them.”
Gem leans her head against Pearl’s shoulder. “This really hurts my brain.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Gem. I didn’t mean to push you into this.”
“It’s okay,” Gem says. “The fact that I made it through two and a half seasons of Hermitcraft before getting here is probably pretty impressive, right?”
“It’s not for everybody,” Pearl says. “Like Grian, for example.”
“Grian?”
“He noped out of it even harder than I did, you know. Did it so well that I’m not sure he even remembers anymore. I don’t want to bring it up with him, because if he did forget, I think he meant for it to be that way.”
“Huh. I had no idea.” Gem lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if I want to go his route or not. Or your route, or some other route. I feel like I know way less about the world than I did this morning.”
“You should probably talk to someone other than me about it,” Pearl suggests. “It’s different for everyone. But whatever you do, it should be your own way, not someone else’s.”
“My own way.” Gem smiles. “I like the sound of that, whatever it is.”
“Don’t stress yourself out over it,” Pearl warns her. “I know the way you are. Take your time, Gem. You have basically forever to figure it out.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll try.” Gem wraps her arms around Pearl. “Thank you, Pearl.”
“For what?”
“For explaining stuff,” Gem says. “For being my friend. For being so cuddly, too. You are so soft.”
“Aw, you’re welcome.” Pearl hugs her back. “Would you be mad if I got less soft, though?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gem says. “I love every version of you.”
Pearl laughs softly. “I love every version of you too.”