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“Check your rear tire before you hit the desert! It’s not serious, but could be trouble if left unchecked!” Were the sensible words spoken by Garnet that Steven had come to realise he should have paid more attention to when saying goodbye to everyone.
Steven had slumped himself down next to the flat tire, sitting on the Mars-like soil beneath him with his back pressed up against the Dondai. He wiped his arm across his forehead as he turned his head and furrowed his eyebrows in sheer frustration.
It was hot. A little too hot.
Too caught up in the moment he wasn’t quite sure if he had forgotten what Garnet had said or if it was the fact he had been completely distracted by the blaring pop song he was singing along to in the car when he crossed into the desert. Either way - he had made a mistake.
He had only been on the road for a couple of days. If he couldn’t cope with something as simple as a flat tire, then he really shouldn’t have been out in the middle of nowhere on his own. He had already emptied the contents of his trunk to check for a spare tire, revealing one buried deep at the bottom. The issue was more the fact that he had no idea how to change it…
Steven stretched his legs out in front of him, protected by the shade of the Dondai as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He was displeased to see that the bars on the top of his display hadn’t increased. Still no signal.
When he had decided to embark on a road trip across the country to discover himself, he hadn’t quite expected to have been on the side of the road fighting for his life.
Well, not exactly - it wasn’t as if a gem was trying to murder him.
This was a much more human scenario.
Flat tires were just a part of everyday life and people across the world dealt with them all the time. Steven couldn’t understand why he couldn’t solve the problem. It was such a simple dilemma that other people were so quick to fix and yet Steven had no grasp on the concept.
Was it something that he was supposed to know? A skill that he was supposed to pick up in his everyday human life?
Steven sighed heavily as he brought his knees to his chest and ran his fingers through his hair, drenched in sweat and now slightly sandy from the dirt that had been on his hands from the floor beneath him.
He was trapped.
Not only was he suddenly stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting out, but he had been placed back exactly where he didn’t want to go - his mind.
He had struggled for months, trying his hardest to control the emotional whirlwind that was his own mental health. There were plenty of mantras that he had thought of within his own mind to stop him from spiralling to the dark place that he had been in before and yet at that moment he couldn’t think of any of them.
Panic.
That was all he felt, along with the bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face and the humid air crushing him into a breathless box.
He hadn’t planned for something so mundane to disrupt his journey. This had never been part of the plan when he had spent so long mapping out his travels with Connie. The hours they had poured into planning the stops he was going to take on his trip.
The desert hadn’t been one of them.
Steven knew that despite being stuck in a rut he had to push through. How was he supposed to continue with his journey if he couldn’t overcome something so simple? Everything was going to be fine. All he had to do was figure out how to change a tire.
“C’mon, Steven...this is so easy!” Steven scratched his fingers down either side of his face as he stared out at the desert in front of him.
It went on for miles. A vast array of waves from the heat glistening across the surface of dirt, sand and very little shrubbery. The sight of the cactuses irked Steven slightly, taking him back to memories he wasn’t prepared to bring up if he could have helped it.
He eventually found the strength to stand on his two feet, the sun aggressively attacking his skin as he exposed himself from the cover of the Dondai. He held his hand out to shield his eyes, not doing him many favours in the bright light.
He hadn’t quite realised how far he had driven away from civilization as he stared down the neverending road into nothingness. He was well and truly stranded. There was a possibility he could have died out there - he quickly pondered on the thought, thinking about who may have cared if that were to happen.
Lots of people. Lots of people cared about him.
Steven stepped around the side of his car and stared into his trunk once more. All of the bags he had taken with him on his trip were now by his feet, his trunk completely empty with nothing more than the spare tire. He stared at it intensely, completely perplexed by the round object.
“It’s not that hard. It’s a tire. Round and...tire-like? You’re not too tire-d for this - are you, Steven?” Steven spoke to himself, even chuckling at his own puns for some kind of sanity. It wasn’t helping. Not one bit.
He leant down on the back of the trunk, the palms of his hands practically burning at the touch. He knew he would have to take the tire out of the trunk at some point - but then what?
How was he supposed to get the tire off the car? He knew he was probably strong enough to hold the car whilst he changed the tire, but he wasn’t quite prepared to test the theory. He hadn’t used his powers much since his breakdown…there was no doubt in him being a little rusty.
Turning into a huge monster could do that to a person.
He didn’t even have any tools to help him. Even if he did have the tools he wasn’t quite sure if he knew what he would have done with them. He was sure that he had seen his dad change a tire on the van at some point in his life, but that wasn’t knowledge that he had kept.
Take the tire off the car and put a new one on. It seemed incredibly simple, but Steven had anxiety at the pit of his stomach that by doing so his entire car would have been ruined. What if he did something wrong?
Just like the tire - Steven had found himself deflated over the situation. There wasn’t very much he could have done as he checked his phone once more, nothing changing from the last time that he looked.
Staring at the tire and waiting for something to happen wasn’t going to help his cause. Sure, he had powers, but none of them included controlling things with his mind. He focused his attention on the tire a little longer, perhaps making inanimate objects doing his bidding was a new power he was yet to discover? He doubted it.
Steven piled his things back into the trunk, there was no use in it being thrown everywhere around his car. He had to try his hardest to find help, or at least wait for the next car to drive past so he could desperately wave his thumb at them.
If only he could have called someone for help. He knew his dad would have been able to help guide him through changing a tire. Pearl would have been able to give him clear instructions on how to complete the task too. Even Connie, who didn’t even drive, probably could have been able to walk him through step by step - she was just smart like that.
Yet there he was in the middle of nowhere with nobody but himself. He had been enjoying the drive on his own and yet now his stomach was filled by a pit of neverending dread.
A pacing thought ran through his mind once more, the same one that told him he was certain that he was going to have died out there all alone. After everything he had been through, he found it ironic in his mind that this was going to have been the thing that killed him. Hydration really was important.
After putting everything back into his car he glanced around once more. There wasn’t anything around him for miles. He had made a huge mistake.
All he needed to do was to stay as positive as possible, negativity would have been a real killer in his current situation. He grabbed a small backpack from the back of the car, making sure it had all of the fluids from the car he needed to survive and threw it over his shoulder, immediately regretting the contact with his sweat-drenched back. He shivered at the touch before closing the door and locking the Dondai.
He stood next to his car and held onto the straps of his backpack, looking around for some kind of indicator to say where he was, other than...the desert. If he was going to have taken a walk to find some kind of life then he needed to know where his car was going to have been when he got back.
Rocks. Sand. Dirt. Road. Cactus. Rocks. Sand. Dirt. Road. Cactus. Cactus. Rock. Another rock. Another rock. Dirt. Cactus. Was that…
Steven watched as a tiny lizard scurried across the road, his face lighting up at the sight. He wiped the sweat from his brow once more as he bent his knees to get a better look at the creature. The lizard stopped in its tracks, Steven could have only assumed it was there to participate in a conversation. After all, the desert was a pretty lonely place.
“Do you know how to change a tire?” Steven cocked an eyebrow as he stared down at the lizard, hoping that perhaps the small creature would have provided him with answers.
It didn’t. Instead, it scuttled away to take safety from the road, once again leaving Steven to his own devices. Steven sighed as he stood back up, readjusting his backpack against his uncomfortably warm body. He wasn’t going to find any answers from the local wildlife.
He took a few steps back from his car and took a quick look back at it. Was the best option really to have taken his chances by walking down the road? The only thing that pointed out that human life had been in the area at some point in history.
He certainly wasn’t going to have gotten anywhere sitting at the side of the road awaiting his painful death. He may as well have made some kind of effort to survive.
Was he going to have to drink his own pee? He had seen that on a documentary he had watched with Connie once.
Steven began his walk down the long road, not even getting twenty foot away from his vehicle before throwing his backpack on the floor and taking off his black shirt. It was far too hot for any kind of clothing and the t-shirt was soaking wet with his own sweat. It certainly wasn’t doing him any favours.
He placed it in his backpack, frustrated he threw the backpack over his shoulders and immediately summoned his shield above his head for some kind of cover. For someone who had brought so much positivity into his trip - this had certainly become his lowest point of the journey so far and the incredibly glum expression on his face showed it perfectly.
Even if he did manage to find someone - what was he supposed to tell them? That he was a stupid teenager on a road trip with no basic knowledge of cars? What were they going to have thought of him? They were going to have belittled him.
He wasn’t in Beach City anymore. As much as he wished the entirety of the human population were as understanding as his hometown that certainly wasn’t the case. He had only been on the road a couple of days and he had already experienced a vast amount of road rage around him. As much as he didn’t want to admit it in front of anyone, he had tightened his grip around the steering wheel in anger a few times when the people around him didn’t understand the rules of the road.
Steven made sure to hold his shield above him the best he could, the only way he was going to receive any kind of cover against the sun.
Why did all these bad things seem to happen to him? Was the world just out to get him? It didn’t seem as if he could have ever caught a break, even if he tried his hardest to escape from it all.
Sure, the last couple of months had been spent recovering from the most traumatic event of his entire life. That was a big statement considering how many things had occurred throughout his entire existence. He had gotten a therapist and spent every Thursday talking to her about all kinds of things he felt as if he couldn’t tell his family. That still made him feel guilty as if he was speaking about them behind their backs.
That didn’t mean that speaking to a therapist hadn’t helped him. It had allowed him to come to the conclusion that he did, in fact, want to move out and find his own way in life that perhaps the Gems could have quite provided for him. He wanted to discover what it was like to be a human and not an alien hybrid.
Steven let out a long groan for no particular reason other than to express his sheer frustration with the situation. How had he allowed himself to get caught up in something so ridiculous? Why couldn’t he have just listened to Garnet? He should have just gotten the tire checked before going anywhere near the desert.
He checked his phone again. Still no signal.
Thankfully, he had only just recently taken his phone off the charger that it sat in within his car. That meant that his phone battery sat in the high nineties with pride - Steven would have lost all of his normality if his phone had run out of battery too.
Steven thought that being out on the road was going to have been fun. He hadn’t quite expected something like this to have happened - especially when he had only been exploring the country for the last couple of days. He hadn’t even gotten around to seeing many of the sights that he wanted to see.
He was a disaster. A mess. He had hit rock bottom in the past - so why not again?
Nothing he had been learning about himself over the past couple of months was coming into play. It was strange to see that once he had been presented with a stressful situation how much his body would have reacted to it. Perhaps all of the things that he had been taught in therapy were useless?
The breathing exercises. The mantras. The lies that he had to continue to tell himself to stop the pink glow that haunted him.
Perhaps being out in the desert was the best thing for him. Being out in the middle of nowhere meant that if he were to have turned into a monster again he wouldn’t have endangered any of his family or friends. It wouldn’t have been so bad - right?
Steven clenched his eyes together as he walked, trying his hardest not to let the thoughts overrun his mind. Why was being alone so hard ?
All this proved was that being alone wasn’t going to have helped his cause. Nothing had changed. He hadn’t grown or progressed in any way. If he were to have called the Gems or his dad they would have desperately asked him to give his location so they could go and get him. He certainly didn’t want that. He didn’t want them to worry.
It was just the same cycle as he had put himself in in the past. There was no escaping from his past self no matter how hard he tried. It would have always been a part of him - no matter what.
Steven wanted to give up. He wanted to give up everything. There was no use in even trying when no matter what happened he would have always found himself trapped inside of the same rut time and time again.
Therapy wasn’t helping and running away from his problems just seemed to have caused more trouble than it was worth. Why did he think this would have been a good idea?
Steven groaned as he stopped in his tracks and sat himself down on the side of the road, he could still see the Dondai in the distance despite feeling as if he had been walking for hours. He reached into his backpack and grabbed his water bottle before taking a few quick sips, wanting to savour the liquid as much as possible. He really didn’t want to have to drink his own pee.
He wasn’t quite sure what had defeated him more - the flat tire, the desert or himself.
He glanced down the road, hoping that perhaps the sights in front of him would have changed. They didn’t. Except…
Was that a car?
Steven’s eyes widened at the sight. He immediately disbanded his shield as he stood up and used his hands to cover his eyes to get a better look at whatever was coming over the horizon.
There was only one road meaning that there would have been nowhere else for the car to have gone. They had to have passed him on their journey.
“Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.” Steven begged under his breath as the car got closer and closer towards him.
He noticed as it approached it got slower, only abiding by Steven’s wishes. It was a blue and white pickup truck. Steven had never really been afraid of strangers and yet in that moment of his peak anxiety, he was somewhat nervous about the approaching pickup.
He brushed the back of his legs to remove any of the dirt clinging to his jeans from where he had previously been sitting down. He had to look somewhat presentable, holding onto his backpack, still exposing his bare chest to the world.
As the car got closer it slowed down, braking carefully as Steven watched in anticipation. The person inside of the car leant over the seats before winding down the window. Steven stared at them as the glass slowly dropped.
It was an older man, a much older man. Steven could guess his age simply from the vast amount of grey hair that protruded in all directions from the top of his head and his chin. His bushy grey beard looked long enough to be uncomfortable in the heat and Steven was unsure if he would have been able to cope with facial hair under the hot sun. The man was incredibly tanned, more than likely from being out in the sun for more hours a day than what was recommended by health professionals.
"That your car back there, boy?" The man questioned as he leant over, running his eyes over the situation at hand.
A young man with what looked to be a shiny fangled millennial accessory on his bare stomach, a head of hair that had been drenched in his own sweat, dirty jeans, flip flops and a backpack. He certainly wasn’t wearing appropriate clothing to have been stuck in the desert.
Steven kept his distance from the truck, he had never been shy to speak to strangers and yet the strange situation he had found himself in meant he was starting to struggle with communication.
"Y-yeah." Steven wanted to gut punch himself in frustration. Perhaps it was all of the things that Connie and his dad had told him about strangers on the road that had suddenly risen to the surface of his mind? They both knew how friendly he was, but that wasn't so much the case for everyone he was going to come into contact with. He had to keep his wits about him.
"Looks like you're in a spot of trouble. You got a spare?"
"Spare?"
"Spare tire."
"Yeah! I do, I just...I'm not…I can't…" Steven stumbled on his words, completely embarrassed by the fact that changing a tire was just something he had never learnt throughout his life.
"Say no more, son. I know you kids have better things to do with your technology and games rather than learn valuable life skills like changing a car tire. This is life or death - being out here on your own is dangerous!" The man explained to Steven, the poor boy somewhat believing that he was getting a stern telling off by the stranger.
Did this man know what it was like to have faced a true life or death situation? Had this man established peace across the universe? Had this man grown up with people trying to kill him for his mother’s mistakes? Had this man been stranded in space? Had this man-
“Do you know how to change a tire?”
“Me?” The old man began to laugh, finding something funny that Steven was more than confused about. What had he said that was so funny?
“Yes.”
“Oh boy, you’re a funny one. Why wouldn’t I know how to change a tire?”
“I don’t know...” Steven bit the inside of his lip, attempting not to allow his eyebrows to dip with irritation. He didn’t know the man, how was he supposed to know whether or not he could have changed a tire?
“Fifty-five years of experience with cars. If it’s got wheels, I can probably fix it.”
“Oh. I really wouldn’t want to bother you, but...is there any chance of a helping hand? Maybe? Please?” Steven awkwardly rubbed the back of his sweaty neck in desperation. If the man wasn’t willing to help him then it really was looking likely for him to either drink his own pee or die a very warm death.
Probably both.
“Well, for a start - no shirt, no service.” The man cocked an eyebrow as he glanced down at Steven’s gem. The whole look of the ‘body modification’ like the kind he had seen on the television lived up to the horrors they held in reality. He had never understood piercing or tattoos and certainly didn’t understand the gemstone embedded into the boy’s belly button. That’s if he even had a belly button to start with.
Steven glanced down and noticed he was still topless, not quite expecting anyone to roll by quite so soon. He blushed slightly with a small chuckle, placing his backpack on the floor and grabbing his wet t-shirt out of his bag before pulling it over his head.
“Hop in and we’ll check the damage.” The man leant over once more and opened the car door, causing Steven to step out of the way. The character seemed a lot different to the people that he knew back home, he couldn’t even quite pinpoint a gem inside of his mind that shared a similar persona to the man. His persona reminded him slightly of his uncle Andy.
Steven was a little weary about getting into the stranger’s car. The likelihood was he was there to help, but points from Connie’s brief lesson on interactions with human strangers kept popping up in his mind.
‘I’ve always been taught to never get inside of a stranger’s car. That one just seems like common sense to me though.’
‘What if it’s a spaceship?’
‘Steven…’
“Um…” Steven pushed his index fingers together as he looked back over at the Dondai in the distance. He was really starting to wish he had spent more time paying attention to Connie’s lessons as opposed to listening to her talk as a way of feeding his infatuation with her.
“I’m not going to kidnap you, kid. I’m just trying to save you from walking five minutes in this heat.” The man rolled his eyes, placing his hands back onto the steering wheel and gesturing for Steven to jump inside.
Steven knew what it was like to have been kidnapped. Plenty of times.
If he had managed to get himself out of these scenarios before then he would have easily been able to break free from whatever horrible things the man had planned for him. Steven hoped that he wouldn’t have to fight his way out of any situation any time soon. He had spent the last six months trying to avoid it at all costs.
Steven hesitantly clambered into the car, immediately noticing the dog tags swinging from the rearview mirror. He couldn’t quite work out what was imprinted on them, but it was certainly a name of some sort. The car was pretty dusty on both the outside and the inside. The door creaked as he shut it behind him.
Steven made sure to click on his seatbelt as the man reversed before heading back to the Dondai. He knew it would have taken them less than a minute to get back to his car, despite the walk feeling as if it was an eternity.
The pair sat in silence as they approached the back of the car, the pickup pulling up beside it. Steven sighed as he looked at the Dondai that was currently out of action. He had promised his dad he would look after the car and yet currently it was in a state that claimed the opposite.
“Woah, is that a Dondai ?” The stranger gasped, not quite noticing the age of the car when previously passing.
“Yeah, it was my dads. He gave it to me.” Steven smiled, a part of him suddenly realising just how much he was missing everyone at home. Sure, he thought about them a lot, but it was in the moments in which he got to mention them that he felt sad about not being able to see them.
It had been days. He was going to have to get out of that loop. He probably wouldn’t have seen them for a while.
“Right. Let’s get you back on the road.” The man nodded before pushing open the car door and stepping out of the vehicle. Steven was quick to follow, not wanting to overstay his welcome inside of the stranger’s car.
Steven threw the backpack over his shoulder once more as they both walked over to the Dondai. Steven unlocked the car and stepped over to the trunk as the man stood and assessed the damage of the tire.
Just as he had figured, it had been punctured.
“You said you had a spare?”
“I’ll get it.” Steven confirmed as he opened up the door to the trunk and began to take the bags that he had taken with him on his journey out.
The stranger watched as Steven took far more bags out of the trunk than was first expected.
“Are you going to college?” The man questioned, scratching the back of his neck.
“This? No, I don’t go to college.”
“A gap year?”
Steven stopped unpacking the trunk for a moment and pondered on the question.
“More of a... gap life ?” He confirmed before continuing to empty the contents of his car so that he could get to the spare tire.
“Oh, you’re running from home?”
“Not really, they know I’ve left.”
“On good terms?”
“Of course, they’re supportive of everything I do.” Steven half-smiled as he took a step back and allowed the stranger to look inside the trunk at the spare tire. It seemed the stranger was attempting to make small talk.
He didn’t hesitate to grab the tire from out of the trunk, having a lot more understanding of how to do so than Steven did. He was worried that whatever he did would have been wrong and ultimately dangerous.
It was strange for Steven to hear someone ask about his family. For someone to have asked him about his travels. He had gotten into a friendly conversation with a waitress at a diner the day before regarding his travelling, but it was nothing more than going over the interesting plan that he had meticulously put together with Connie. At that point, nothing could go wrong.
“Let me just get some tools from my truck.” The stranger instructed as he placed the tire down on the dirt below and walked towards his own vehicle.
Steven stood at the back of the Dondai awkwardly awaiting his return. He wiped the sweat from his brow once more before checking his phone. No signal. Again.
The problem Steven found himself having was that a lot of the time he would continuously check things to make sure that they were correct. To make sure that something had or hadn’t changed. His therapist mentioned something about anxiety, which Steven never quite believed he had experienced or at least tried to deny the existence of. Apparently, he had suffered his whole life.
He was learning new things about himself every day.
Steven tucked his phone away as the stranger came back with two very simple tools that he was convinced he had seen before. A jack and a tire iron.
“The name’s Thomas, by the way.” Thomas knelt down to the tire, immediately starting work on loosening the nuts. Steven winced as he heard the man's knees crack when he bent down. Steven stood off to the side and watched silently, feeling as if he needed to help in some way but not knowing how.
“Steven. It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for…”
“Don’t mention it. It’s ten minutes off my day that I can use for something good. There ain’t enough of that in this world.” Thomas shook his head, already getting to a point in which he could place the jack under the car.
He was working so fast that Steven was finding it hard to keep up. It was the man’s profession and he had certainly perfected the art of changing a tire in the least time as possible.
“Most people on Earth are good.” Steven countered, finding Thomas’ words to be false.
Thomas turned around and looked up at Steven as he unscrewed one of the bolts.
“Well, I guess you haven’t met enough people then.” Thomas sighed before going back to the task at hand. “That or you’re just incredibly lucky, kid.”
Steven thought about his words - perhaps a little bit too much. Sure, Steven had certainly spent a lot of his life wrapped up in what seemed to have been a bubble. A very intense bubble. However, that didn’t mean he hadn’t come across people that were considered bad .
He could always speak to them. He could always come up with a resolution. There was always something there that he could fix.
That he had to ...fix.
He stopped his train of thought almost immediately. Those kinds of thoughts were the ones that his therapist had been battling for months. The ones that made him feel as if he was worthless if he wasn’t putting his time into other people. He needed to be the one to help.
It was strange of him to suddenly always be the one in need of help.
Even on the road.
Steven watched as the Dondai was jacked up off the floor slightly, allowing Thomas to take off the tire. Admittedly, changing a tire didn’t quite look as difficult as Steven had thought it would have been in the situation. He should have applied logic and common sense. It was a shame his mind was prone to going blank when faced with those scenarios recently.
“So, if you’re not running away from home or your family what are you running from?” Thomas kickstarted a conversation as he placed the spare tire onto the Dondai.
“I’m not exactly running.”
“When I was your age I packed my bags and I left home. My mother didn’t approve of it at the time, but damn, I thought I knew what I was doing. Oh how very wrong I was.” Thomas explained as he tightened up the nuts.
“What happened?” Steven asked, curious to know the outcome.
“Well, like you, I didn’t quite think I was running from anything. I was sprinting!” Thomas chuckled, not bothering to look up at Steven as he told his story. Steven listened as he attempted to take in the lesson on changing a tire for his future endeavours.
“Oh.”
“I ran so far away from home that I never looked back and yet there was still something wrong. Something that I couldn’t get my head around. None of my problems went away, nothing I thought I was running from was solved. It was the same problem but a different place.” Thomas tightened the last lug nut before standing up and brushing his knees to rid himself of the dirt, his bones cracking in the process.
“Why?” Steven asked nervously, worried about what the answer could have been.
“I started to realise that I was running from myself. I was the problem and no matter where I went it was going to follow me.” Thomas furrowed his eyebrows as he turned back at Steven.
Steven gave Thomas a look of horror, this certainly wasn’t the kind of conversation he had expected to have had with a stranger on one of his first days of travelling. He couldn’t process something like that. There was no way that his mind could have comprehended something so heavy in that moment. He had already been through so much stress today, his blood was already boiling from the heat.
“I-...I don’t-” Steven began to splutter, his internal sickness breaking out from within.
“You look like a good kid though. I’m sure there isn’t a problem you couldn’t solve.” Thomas nodded, brushing his hands together as he spoke. His job there was done. Once again a quick fix.
“I couldn’t change a tire.”
“You couldn’t , but you asked for help. Sometimes asking for help is a lot harder than doing the task yourself - especially asking a stranger. You should be proud of yourself.” Thomas smiled over at Steven, seeing a part of his past self in the young man. " Admitting you need help is the first step."
“I...guess…” Steven was unsure how his inability to change a tire would have made him feel better.
“Get yourself to a garage as soon as possible and drive slowly !” Thomas instructed before picking up his tools from the floor. Steven watched him carefully. Was he just going to leave him in the middle of the desert to fend for himself? He hoped his car worked.
“Thank you.” Steven swallowed, he didn’t quite know how to repay the man for his act of kindness. Nobody would have been able to help him as well as Thomas had done.
Thomas held onto his tools and smiled at Steven before gently placing his hand on the young man’s shoulder. He wasn't willing to stick around for any longer than he needed - he just required enough time to help Steven out.
“Never stop running, Steven. One day the part of you holding you back will grow tired and you’ll finally get ahead. You’ve got this, kid.” Thomas nodded before squeezing his shoulder slightly.
"Thanks..." Steven breathed heavily, unsure what he should have said. There were no words for his current thoughts and feelings. The old man had given him advice that he wasn't quite sure he wanted to hear, but perhaps advice that he needed to hear.
"Don't sweat it." Thomas winked as he nodded slowly as he tugged the tools underneath his arm and spun on his heels back to his truck.
Steven was speechless as he looked over at the man, unable to quite fathom the right words for what he had experienced and the advice that he had received. It certainly wasn’t something that he had expected.
Within seconds the man had disappeared into his car, ready to leave the situation as if he was never even there.
Steven pinned his lips together in a thin line as he lifted his arm to wave goodbye to the stranger who had been so willing to help him out. He touched his gem as he stared out at the road ahead, the wheels of the dirty pickup truck pushing out a cloud of dust behind it.
He hadn’t quite felt as if he would have ever needed the help of human strangers - except it had only been a couple of days and he already required more help than he would have expected. Being a human was proving to be slightly harder than he had first expected, but perhaps that was the point?
There were so many people who struggled day in and day out with their own lives. Steven knew that as he continued to travel throughout the country he would have come across plenty of people who were willing to help him and he would have been more than happy to have paid the favours forward.
Steven clambered back into the Dondai and twisted the key in the ignition. He looked up and adjusted the rearview mirror, noticing how red his face was from the sun. Sweat dripped from his hairline and down either side of his face. He noticed the deep colour of his eyes, no longer plagued by diamonds as they once were.
He sighed heavily.
If his trip was going to be like this every single day then he knew that it wouldn’t have been easy.
Being human wasn’t easy…
And maybe that was the point?