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On Earth
“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through us, failed to spoil us.”
—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
***
Homeworld was small from space, smaller than Lime Pearl could ever have thought before; pale and scarred, wreathed with a hazy smear of atmosphere that looked like it could dissolve into the void of space around it if one thing went out of balance.
That was where her office had been—her Zircon’s office, she had to remind herself—down one of those cracks. She ought to have known which, but she couldn’t tell. The vantage was just too strange. What she could remember was gazing up at a jagged gash of sky.
She had always looked up. Not for the hope of glimpsing stars, like other planets had in such abundance—the sort of thing Beige would wax rhapsodic about. No. Lime would peer up at the sky and imagine the lives of other Pearls playing out in studied silence all around her.
That sky hadn’t changed since she emerged from the Reef’s waters—
And neither had those lives.
Homeworld whispered with Pearls, but only other Pearls could hear.
Now, the ship—not more than a barge, that strange word that had been among the first imports from Earth—was gently wheeling its way ‘round to take aim at its green destination. The sky was changing. So, too, Lime realized, would their lives.
Lime set her holopad down on her lap just in time for—
“Lime! Look!”
She was looking, of course, nose pointed attentively at the window, bearing up right before Beige threw her arms around her from behind and slid into the empty seat beside. Beige’s face sank into Lime’s shoulder and she gave a little squeal of delight.
“You’re going to miss it,” Lime cautioned, moving her arm so Beige could see.
Beige tucked her chin against Lime’s shoulder and snuggled closer to watch.
“It looks beautiful,” Beige cooed.
“Yeah,” Lime said flatly. “And it’ll look even better the smaller it gets.”
Beige’s ribbon tickled against Lime as she shifted in her seat. The holopad, tempting but just out of reach, was still alight with notes; transcripts of official announcements; and the images of Earth that had tempted a few Gems, already, to come see.
There was only one ship running. They had been lucky to find it nearly empty.
“You can work later, Lime,” Beige purred in her ear. “There’s plenty of time.”
There’s never enough time, Lime wanted to say. But she saw that Beige knew what was on her mind, just as well as she’d known her favorite zearl wanted to be doing something useful. Lime let the words go, following Beige’s lead in settling in to watch.
No surprise the Pearl whose sign-name is Adventure wants to see Earth.
“There’s plenty of time,” Lime agreed grudgingly.
Time could be oddly personal to a Pearl. Years standing still could feel like decades and decades like centuries. Lime steadied her breathing, another new idea she’d picked up from Beige, and tried to focus on the facts in front of her as she had on so many cases.
Months. That’s how long the campaign season would last as Gems jockeyed for position under the strange new system of democracy Pink Steven had introduced. Days. That’s how long they were scheduled to be on Earth. Hours. How long the journey would take.
“They couldn’t even give us a warp-capable ship,” Lime couldn’t help grumble.
“It’s more fun this way,” said Beige. “It’ll give me time to work on my new poem.”
Lime couldn’t argue with that; she even let herself smile.
“These bird things you’re so excited about better be amazing,” she said with a chuckle.
“They will be! You’ll see!”
Lime turned her head and the tips of their noses crossed, Beige’s eyes wide and bright.
“It’s Earth,” Beige said. “Earth would never lie to us.”
Lime let her breath free in a satisfied sigh, and Beige grinned.
***
Gems were used to time in big units—especially Pearls.
But minutes could matter too. When change came, at last, it took only seconds.
Lime had known other Pearls had sharper hearing than hers. Had realized, in a century or two, that hers was still fading. Had fretted until she could feel every photon of her form shake with worry. But in the end, it hadn’t mattered much: Her Zircon never stopped talking.
“That’s fascinating, my Zircon.”
On that day, it was the twelfth time she’d said so. Her eyes were fixed on the Zircon’s mouth, but she hadn’t heard—or said—anything new in years. There was a certain resolve that came in knowing she was defective, but she would survive after all.
She enunciated with care: “Quite so, my Zircon.”
Lime Zircon liked to pace. She glanced over now and then, just long enough for her Pearl to wonder if something untoward had glinted in her tone. But that never lasted long, and the Zircon could go on all day without stopping. Organizing her thoughts, she said.
They never quite got organized.
Lime Pearl stood still and straight. Rolling her eyes was her only indulgence—
And when those eyes settled, they came to rest on Beige Pearl, poking her head into the office.
It wasn’t unusual to see Beige go by, to share a knowing glance with her. What was unusual was how she stopped today, her smile bright as starlight. Her gaze cut a quick line from Lime to the Zircon’s back. She straightened up. And she rolled her eyes, too.
It was so blatant, so daring, so silly—
Lime could help but feel touched.
And when she saw other Pearls copying the gesture every now and then?
She couldn’t say she was surprised.
From then on, Beige and Lime would always find each other.
***
Between the stars, the sky was dark. When there was no more to see, Beige returned to her poem.
Everything is different on Earth, Beige began. On Earth, all songs are love songs.
Lime swiped idly through her collected photos, the little crowds at her speeches.
On Earth, no Pearl can be a stranger. On Earth, the water welcomes you home.
Lime pinched, zooming in on the photo. Pearls: Silent, attentive, and few, gazing up at her on stage. It was strange to know they had listened so carefully to her talk about change, a feeling she had no words for yet. And that the Zircons attracted crowds three times that size—
She knew what to call that feeling. But she couldn’t say it in public yet.
On Earth, all Pearls have swords.
Lime raised an eyebrow.
“All Pearls?” she asked.
“Mmhm!” Beige chirped.
“That sounds a little impractical.”
“Nuh-uh!”
Beige whirled toward her, spinning like a top so her ribbon would dance.
“Are they handing them out at the spaceport or do we have to sign up?”
“Oh, Lime! You don’t need one!”
Letting her holopad down on her lap, Lime Pearl leaned over in her seat, throwing an arm over the empty seat beside her in a careless slouch that felt so satisfying. “Oh, I don’t?” she asked, a moment of faux-falsetto highlighting the question. “Why’s that?”
“You know what they say on Earth! The pen is mightier than the sword!”
“I guess we’ll see—” Lime started, but it was too late; that thought seized Beige, one hand holding her sheaf of paper while the other batted at it with an inky implement, the pen in question, her fingers smudged with her enthusiasm as it spiraled across the page.
That would’ve been unacceptable a few months ago, Lime thought—
And she turned a softer smile to the window, toward the gray-green glow of Earth.
***
Lime Zircon had adoring clients around the block at the slowest times, and though Gems knew how to line up orderly, single file, it made them no less demonstrative in their affections; anything for the Gem who could save them from the consequences of their own actions.
“You’d best watch out, Pearl,” she would say. “Soon, I’ll earn a dozen others like you.”
“Of course, my Zircon,” said Lime Pearl, just as she had for millennia. “I hope you do.”
Then, without fail, that same Zircon would be off with one of her colleagues, or with the Beige Hessonite, since she’d been favored with an office in the fleet command complex not long ago; and Lime Pearl would go to work, just as she had for millennia.
It had started as a sort of game. Go over her Zircon’s files, make corrections, find the right way to free someone. It wasn’t that they deserved it, of course. She didn’t think of that at all, in the beginning. Each case, instead, was a puzzle. If she could solve them—
Then maybe she was more than just a hat rack.
Sometimes, the answer was obvious. Other times, it took days to work out; when she had no access to the files, she would stand there and think about them. Now and then, her answer was so cunning that she simply sent a response out and the trial would get cancelled.
In the receiving parlor, she could hear clients praising her Zircon; her Zircon in turn bumbling to explain her latest stroke of brilliance. Lime would smirk, at first, until slowly—slowly—the ember of hope that her Zircon might notice, might praise her, fizzled out.
One day she saved a Pearl from getting shattered. And then another.
For, though they might not be esteemed on their own, perhaps Pearls could not just be done away with frivolously; under the law, they were as much the Diamonds’ as anyone else’s; and one fine day a cruel Agate went into exile for incautiously threatening her Pearl.
Her Zircon took credit—how could she not?—though she wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
And then Lime no longer had to wait for anyone else to tell her she was more.
She knew.
And she knew what had to change.
***
Earth was—
“Bright,” was the first word to come to Lime’s mouth.
“Complicated,” Beige agreed, not sure where to look.
There was just—so much of it—the sky was barely recognizable as sky, so different was the color. And all the textures of the clouds? And the light. Beige flapped her hands, on the edge of a wordless joy that could easily turn overwhelming.
From behind, Lime braced her by the shoulders.
“Do you—” The unfamiliar hand-sign came slowly at first, then: Want. Want to go back inside?
Beige shook her head slightly, then added: I don’t want to.
The pilot had warned them Earth had no spaceports. Little Homeworld would use Warp Pads, someday. And the organics—the humans—were unused to the sight. So here they were, in the—
Forest? Beige signed uncertainly, something like: A-pile-of-very-pretty-rubble.
Lime stepped aside, guiding Beige with her as other Gems left the ship—
And two others—Pearls!—were coming towards them.
“See?” The purple one had a ready smile; she tilted her head toward Lime and Beige, doffing her beautiful gem their way. “I knew they’d be okay.” She beamed warmly at her slightly smaller yellow-orange companion, and just as warmly at Beige and Lime.
“Mmm,” went the other, eye glittering. “Hello! Welcome to Earth!”
“Hello,” Lime echoed, glancing to Beige, then the others. “Are you the welcoming committee?”
“Do you have our swords?” Beige asked.
“Swords?” the smaller Pearl asked with a giggle; one hand went daintily to her mouth, but she held the other just so, her fingertips in contact with the other’s—a sign for goodbye, once, but now the time to part would never come. “No! But we are here to help—that is, Byzantine and I—I’m Tuscany—we heard there would be Pearls on this ship, and w-we just thought, well ...”
“Maybe we could be friends?” Byzantine asked, and Tuscany’s polite smile became a grin.
“Oh! We were on our way to Little Homeworld,” said Lime. “Do you want to join us?”
“Sure! If you want to,” said Byzantine. “But most of Little Homeworld isn’t done—they don’t really have a place just for Pearls yet. So, Tuscany and I have been staying out here! In what they call ...” She paused to think of the word, drumming on the side of her head near her gem.
“Nature!” Tuscany piped up. “This is called nature, and it belongs to everyone equally.”
“You have a home here?” Beige asked; Byzantine nodded. “Right here with the birds?”
“Well,” said Tuscany, “we do see birds from time to time, yes. We could show you!”
Beige and Lime shared a look, and Lime simply nodded.
“Show us the birds,” she said, lip quirking faintly.
***
Lime Zircon expected her Pearl waiting dutifully outside the office upon her return—
And she was waiting. But she was looking elsewhere, along with everyone else on the street: A hundred pairs of eyes raised toward one of the many giant monitors that littered outdoor spaces on Homeworld. The Diamonds had been silent for some time now. It was unlike them.
But the person who addressed Gemkind now was very different.
“And, um, in conclusion: That means everyone is free.”
Steven glanced off to the side, listening. Then:
“Yes, that means Pearls, too. All of them! Okay, talk again soon. Bye!”
Lime Zircon glided up to her Pearl’s side and for a moment they just stared at one another.
“Well, Pearl, I hope this unexpected—extraordinary—turn of events won’t sour our relat—”
“Zircon, you’re an idiot.”
“I absolutely agree, Pearl—wait. What?”
“The rest of what I’ve been waiting to say is in your inbox. Goodbye.”
The sound of Beige’s laughter welcomed her first steps into freedom.
***
Lime had hoped to bring her cause to Earth; to fill the stands of her next speech with Pearls.
But maybe, for now, this was better.
The newness of Earth was so much, but Byzantine and Tuscany seemed to understand it well, leading them on a wending path through grass and across dark, rain-swept earth with a scent like nothing they’d experienced before. Soon, daylight was fading through the needles of the trees.
Tuscany spoke little, but she knew songs, and she could tell when one or the other of her guests was feeling lost—she’d be there to squeeze Lime’s hand or join Beige in a sweet harmony. Now and then she would give a pine cone or a pretty stone to Byzantine and they would laugh.
The little trinket invariably went into Byzantine’s gem.
“Gifts,” Beige whispered, plucking at Lime’s sleeve. “They’re giving each other gifts!”
They all worked together to build a fire. Lime and Beige were lying on the grass, looking up at the stars, their minds all full of the strange connect-the-dots pictures Tuscany had talked about, when the shy Gem prompted: “Tell them about the ship, Byz.”
Byzantine scratched the back of her head, firelight glinting on her pearl.
“Oh, well, the ship—the ship you came in on, it ... I sort of built it.”
Lime sat up, Beige wrapping her arms around her. “What?”
“Yeah! Well, couldn’t have done it without Tuscany, that’s for sure. I was ow—um, assigned to a Nephrite. She always sent me down to the old parts of Homeworld, you know, where all the real broken down stuff is, to look for parts. Tuscany belonged to my Nephrite’s Hessonite, and when I brought stuff up she’d file papers so the parts went into storage and I had to go back. I hadn’t seen my Nephrite in three centuries when Pink Steven showed up. It was pretty relaxing.”
“We had enough pieces for a whole ship,” said Tuscany. “Putting them together was Byz’s idea.”
Lime gawped. “How did you two ever figure out how to put together an entire spaceship?”
“Oh, you know,” said Byzantine. “One piece at a time.”
“When we were set free, we decided to give it away,” said Tuscany. “To other Pearls like you.”
That’s amazing, Lime wanted to say, but she was stopped by the way Beige was staring.
She felt a slight, soft tickle—and realized—some strange Earth creature was sitting on her.
“Bird! It’s so pretty,” Beige squeaked. “Oh, Lime, it looks just like you! What kind is it?”
“That’s a finch,” said Byzantine. Tuscany’s hands rose to her lips in wordless delight.
“I think—I want—this to be my first gift to you,” said Beige. “Do you want to be Finch?”
Finch.
“I—I think I’d love to be,” said Finch. Beige was slowly reaching out, until—gently, gently—she could stroke the very tip-top of the bird’s head. It sat there on Finch’s wrist a few moments more, enjoying the attention. Then—fwoosh!—off into the treetops without a care.
Tuscany and Byzantine had settled back into each other’s arms.
Finch felt happy tears in her eyes. Her name wasn’t like a pine cone or a pretty rock, but she could feel it in her gem just the same. “Tomorrow morning,” she whispered, “we’ll go and look for a name for you. You can have any you want—or all of them.”
“And then,” said Beige, voice catching in her excitement, “when we’re good and rested? We can go back to Homeworld. And you’ll explain to all those other Pearls they can do the same.” Foreheads and forms touched, like willowy reeds in the gentle, warm breeze. “They can choose.”
Putting her arm around Beige, Finch looked out at the sunrise and the whole world of possibilities before her.
“I think I know how I want to finish my poem,” said Beige.
“Oh?”
On Earth, all Pearls are beautiful.
***
A few months had gone by. Now, all the posters said her name: Fly free with Finch.
That morning, she’d gifted Beige a name, too: Linnet.
Beside her, the Yellow Zircon was still talking—
But she’d spent long enough hearing why a Pearl wasn’t fit for office.
“You don’t know anything about Pearls,” Finch said softly. “But you’re afraid of us.”
The world went silent around her.
As she gathered her thoughts, she looked into the crowd and locked eyes with the first row, one Gem at a time: Linnet and Byzantine and Tuscany, so many of the Pearls she had met on Earth—and, to her relief, so many of those she once worried would be left behind.
As Tuscany’s hand danced over Byzantine’s and Linnet smiled up at her, Finch knew.
They were building something, here on Homeworld and on Earth. Together.
One piece at a time.