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Rose shrieked with delight as she pushed deeper into the clearing, walls of wildflowers grabbing her curls. Not even the occasional prickle of thorns against her skin was enough to slow her down.
“Pearl, you just found this?!”
Pearl fought the urge to rise and curtsy at her Diamond’s - no, Rose’s - arrival. The sensation of sitting, relaxing as it might have been, was foreign. Even if idle, a Pearl shouldn’t look it.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Every day, I’m finding something…new!”
That was another word that took some getting used to. Homeworld’s insistence on order might have been beneficial for raising a colony, but it was suffocating for someone as unique as Pearl’s Rose. Fortunate for them both that they had found a planet that felt similarly.
Rose made her way to her cross-legged companion, eager to get a better view of the enclosure. It was a small field completely encircled with brush and wildlife, dots of white buds poking through the ground inquisitively. A dome of overhead trees allowed only the smallest aperture of sunlight necessary for the gems to sufficiently see one another. And despite their relative proximity to a human settlement, the grounds were quiet, their only interruption a stream of soft wind.
They locked eyes with a common understanding - something like this would…could…never exist on Homeworld.
Pearl broke the silence, taking advantage of her newfound right to do so. “I was able to infiltrate a nearby storage of human knowledge. I can name all of the plants here, if it would please you.”
“Oh, Pearl, you don’t need to endanger yourself on my behalf…”
Pearl waved away Rose’s concerns with a flick of her hand. “It was no trouble at all. Really, it was not nearly as heavily guarded as it should have been.” Reaching behind her, Pearl pulled a large tome into view. Rose could see embossed florals on its cover, designs pushed deep into the supple leather that made up the cover. Kneeling down, she ran a finger over them. She was endlessly amazed by what humans could do with such limited materials on hand.
“Scarcity breeds creativity,” Pearl said, reading her companion’s mind. “Would you like me to read it?”
“Please,” Rose breathed. She had not quite taken to the humans’ language as easily as Pearl did.
“As you wish, my…” - Rose gave her a knowing look, cutting off the name before Pearl could catch her mistake, “Rose.”
“What we’re sitting on is something commonly referred to as ‘grass’. It grows best when it is warm, and withers in the cold.”
“Grass…” Rose rolled the word in her mouth like a small candy, a human delicacy that she was quickly growing fond of. “So this planet grows its own cushions?”
“Yes, isn’t it fascinating?”
“And nobody puts them there intentionally? It grows totally on its own?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around the concept.
“No. I suppose the planet just knows when to start making it.”
“Growing without reason or motivation…even the plants on earth are intrinsically human, don’t you think?”
Pearl laughed. “I suppose so.”
“What other plants are there? Does Earth have a lot of them?”
“Oh, yes! The book states that there are thousands more that it didn’t name, or that possibly haven’t been discovered yet.”
Rose, who had now settled into a sitting position, leaned her head into Pearl’s neck to get a better look at the opened page. Blue heat rushed into Pearl’s cheeks, a reaction that, the longer she spent on earth, the more open she was to discovering the reason for. But she remained silent for the time being. After all, the two had millennia ahead of them for such conversations.
“Fascinating! Tell me everything you can.”
Pearl cleared her throat. “Well, the other interesting thing that I’ve discovered is that humans actually assign meanings to flowers. Like a language.”
“So how would I say ‘nice to meet you! I am from a different planet and want to know more about you and your world’?”
“Mm, it’s not quite that specific. They’re more representative of feelings. Like ‘love’ or ‘friendship’.”
“Oh, okay. So what flower would you give me?”
“Hm.” Pearl tapped her chin, considering the question. The most obvious choice would have been gardenias, but she didn’t want to be too forward…
“Perhaps this one,” she eventually responded, flipping to the appropriate page and tapping it. Rose followed a drawing of a densely green plant with her eyes.
“It’s ‘thyme’,” Pearl explained. “It means ‘courage’. Humans also use it to make things smell nice-I mean, I’m of course not implying that you smell nice! Or, well, that you smell bad . T-that is to say…”
Rose laughed as Pearl spluttered knots, trying to explain herself. “Pearl, it’s fine. I think it’s a lovely choice.”
Pearl came to a frenzied halt, possibly in the middle of explaining the nuance that existed between the words ‘scent’ and ‘odor’.
“You do? Oh, good. I was worried that you would be displeased.”
“Of course I like it. You chose it, after all.”
Eager to hide evidence of her blush, Pearl dipped her head forward into the book. “Shall I name more plants?”
“I’d love nothing more.”
“Well, these white ones sticking through the grass are called ‘white clovers’, unless they’re these fluffy ones, which are apparently ‘dandelions’…”
Time was a concept unfamiliar to the gems, but even they could tell that quite a bit of it had passed as Pearl illustrated their surroundings. The diversity of their spot meant that there was a near-endless amount of wildlife for Pearl to describe, and Rose found herself settling deeper and deeper into Pearl until her head was resting in her lap.
Eventually, a small flash of purple caught her attention. The plant was hiding in the shadow of a much larger one - a “snapdragon”, apparently - as if embarrassed to be spotted.
“What about that one?” Rose asked.
“Which one?” Pearl asked, her mouth slightly downturned. Rose lifted her head and pointed directly at the flower.
“That one, under there. What is it?”
“Ah, well…that would be a ‘sweet pea’.”
Rose’s eyes shone with childish delight. “You’re kidding me. That is the cutest name for a flower that I’ve ever heard. What does it mean?! It’s gotta be something just as sweet.”
“Well, Rose, that one means…”
Pearl inhaled deeply. She had been here too long.
“‘Goodbye’.”
With shocking speed, the scene dissolved, leaving nothing but Pearl, the tome, and a sea of lily-pink clouds behind. Getting in had been difficult enough, and she wasn’t looking forward to the trip out. But what was the rush? She hugged the book closer to her chest, as if to replace the weight she had lost from her legs.
At least part of that memory was real.