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Chapter Text

Normally when I go in for an interview, my subjects ask me questions like: “Who are you?” “How did you get in here?” “Is that a metal detector?” Et cetera.

Blue Diamond just asked me, “You know Steven [Universe]?” A simple confirmation of this fact was enough to grant me access to the former Homeworld dictator.

Blue Diamond’s room was an effervescent cloudscape like nothing I’d seen before. Joy suffused the air. Other “Gems” (an alien race of polymorphic sentient rocks; see my previous article, “An Introduction to Gems,” 2025) floated on the aforementioned clouds, relaxed and at peace. I offered to meet Blue Diamond in another room for greater privacy, but she seemed unbothered by the other Gems’ presence.

“It’s nice to see them so happy, isn’t it,” she mused. “I used to spread misery wherever I went, but I’ve come to find joy to be so much better.”

I refrained from commenting on the obviousness of this conclusion. Over the years I have come to learn that what is obvious to me is not obvious to everyone.

Instead I started with a fairly softball question: how was she doing these days?

Blue Diamond smiled at me. Her smile, like her voice, was soft and gentle, with just the hint of something deeper lying beneath.

“Much better, thank you,” she said. “Era 3 has been a bit of a revelation for all of us, I think.”

I asked her to expound further. “I was never truly happy with my role as a Diamond,” she explained. “I don’t think any of us were. Even White. But now we’re free to be whoever we want to be.”

The Diamonds, of course, used to be the rulers of Homeworld, but unlike Earth’s political leaders, they did not choose this for themselves. All Gems used to be programmed to perform a specific function; the Diamonds’ function was to lead.

As Blue Diamond said, now that this prescriptive system has been dismantled, Gems can choose their destinies for themselves. But what destiny did Blue Diamond have in mind for herself? This question prompted a thoughtful hum from the big blue Gem. “I’m not quite sure yet,” she said. “But I know I won’t be ruling over other Gems any time soon.”

This statement was likely correct; Gems now elect their leaders, and while the Diamonds are still popular among certain factions of Gems, they’re hardly uncontroversial. On that note, what did Blue Diamond think of Zircon’s re-election? (P.S. Zircon, if you’re reading this, return my calls!)

Blue Diamond shrugged. “I try not to worry too much about things like that anymore,” she said. “During the first election I was terribly nervous that it would all go disastrously wrong. But it seems Homeworld gets by just fine without us.” She sounded wistful as she said it, almost sad.

Of course, Homeworld is hardly “without” the Diamonds. They still live in the palace in the planet’s capital city, and their doors are almost always open to citizens in need of help. I pointed this out to Blue Diamond, who waved a giant hand.

“Of course,” she said. “Still. We used to think we were so important, so essential. Especially White. I suppose it’s a relief in some ways to know we were wrong. But…it does make me wonder, sometimes, if I’m truly any use at all, here in my room of clouds.”

One word leapt out at me from this statement: use. Homeworld was once obsessed with the concept. In Eras 1 and 2, a Gem’s worth was measured entirely in usefulness, in how well they could serve the Gem empire. I wondered if Blue Diamond’s concern about her current usefulness might be a holdover from those days. Perhaps it was bold of me, but I decided to ask her.

In response, Blue Diamond smiled at me, as if I’d said something very funny. This, I noticed, was something she did quite a lot. “Probably,” she said. “You have to understand, we believed in usefulness, in perfection, for thousands of years. It’s going to take a bit longer than we’ve had so far to truly unlearn it.”

And what was it, exactly, that Blue Diamond had believed for so long she was useful for? “I was good at holding court,” she told me. “Keeping up appearances. Observing formalities. Leading diplomatic delegations. Yellow never had any patience for that sort of thing.” She chuckled, then her face changed and her smile slowly faded. “And White was – in her own head a lot.”

I presumed she meant this literally. The four Diamonds’ ships were designed so that they could come together to form a giant mecha. White Diamond’s ship is the “head” of this mecha, and she reportedly spent several thousand years inside it before finally leaving in the beginning of Era 3.

Blue Diamond’s ship, meanwhile, is one of the arms, and this is fitting, for Blue Diamond was not just a smiling figurehead; she also conquered planets. “I never had as many as Yellow or White, but I oversaw the development of quite a few colonies. They came out rather well, I think.” Here she paused, as if considering the words she’d just spoken. “Although, looking back on it now, I suppose I ought to say they went rather badly.” She sighed, her big eyes making her look like a tragic anime character. “It’s…difficult, sometimes, to look back on everything and realize we’d gotten it all so wrong.”

This I could empathize with. Readers who are new to my work may not realize this, but I was once a strong proponent of the now-debunked Sneople Theory (to wit, that the world is run by snake people, or sneople). It was a herculean effort to reckon with the flaws in my theory and eventually reject this worldview in favor of the truth. To admit you are wrong is never easy, and while I encourage my readers to draw their own conclusions about the Diamonds, I nonetheless ask you all to keep that in mind as you read on.

Speaking of realizing you had it all wrong, was there ever a time prior to Era 3 that Blue Diamond had questioned what she’d been taught?

Blue Diamond gave a noncommittal hum. “Not really, I suppose,” she said. “Yellow and I had our minor little rebellions in the millennia after we first emerged, of course, but White stamped those out fairly quickly.” She didn’t elaborate on how, exactly, White Diamond had quashed their rebellious sides, but I felt it would be insensitive to ask. “And I certainly never thought much of organic life. I suppose it’s embarrassing to say now, but we never really thought of any of you as people. To us, organics were…background noise.”

That may seem hard to believe – but then, what do humans think of diamonds? The kind that are formed not by Gem injectors but by the Earth’s mantle? To us, they’re just expensive rocks. I pointed out this irony to Blue Diamond, who seemed a bit nonplussed by it.

“That’s interesting,” she said at last. “I confess I don’t quite understand all your human idiosyncrasies. But I suppose it says something that both our species are so quick to disregard that which doesn’t look like us.” The edges of her mouth turned up wryly. “This interview isn’t painting the most flattering picture of either of us, is it?”

I told her what I tell all of you now: that I am a disciple of Truth, not an errand-boy polishing the shoes of Flattery. She laughed as if I’d told her a joke. It occurred to me that perhaps being stuck in the role of Diamond for so long had warped her sense of humor.

We circled back around to the topic of realizations and regrets, and I asked if there was anything in particular she regretted most. At this question, she closed her eyes as if struck by a blinding light, and a cloud near her head dissipated out of existence, causing an unsuspecting Citrine to fall flat on the ground. Blue Diamond opened her eyes again at the noise.

“Sorry about that,” she said, and plucked the Citrine off the ground, depositing her on another, still-intact cloud.

“No problem,” said the Citrine. “This stuff’s great, BD.” She stretched out and relaxed into the cloud with a deep sigh.

Blue Diamond smiled, then turned back to me. “My apologies,” she said. “You wanted to know my biggest regret. I’m sure it won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone that it’s about Pink.”

By “Pink” she meant the original Pink Diamond, also known as Rose Quartz, not the current bearer of the Pink Diamond gem, which is of course Steven Universe. I’ve written much on the subject of Pink Diamond already, so I won’t repeat it here; if you’re unfamiliar with this controversial Gem, I encourage you to check out my previous article, “Pink Diamond: A Complicated Legacy,” 2025.

“Pink was…” Blue Diamond’s big eyes drooped a little as she continued, but there was still a whisper of a smile on her face. “She really was the best of us, you know.”

I stayed quiet as she spoke, not wishing to interrupt her reminiscence. “She could be quite selfish,” Blue Diamond said. “Extraordinarily so, at times. Yellow used to complain about it. And I know Steven feels – well,” she cut herself off with a wave of her hand, “I don’t wish to presume how he feels, but I know he has…complicated feelings about her actions. No doubt Spinel does as well.” (The Spinel in question was a playmate of Pink Diamond’s, abandoned in a cosmic garden for six thousand years. She currently lives in the palace with the Diamonds.)

“But to tell you the truth,” Blue Diamond went on, “I wish I’d been strong enough to be as selfish as Pink. For so long, all of us on Homeworld thought our only purpose was to serve the empire. I think we needed someone selfish to wake us up from that. I think that was the only way we were ever going to change. That’s why I say she was the best of us. None of this would’ve been possible without her.” She gestured to the clouds around her, then smiled and leaned in closer to me. “Plus, she told the funniest stories.”

She leaned back. “But while she was still with us…we didn’t treat her how we should’ve. I used to make her cry. Well,” she amended, “I used to make everyone cry. But Pink and Yellow especially.” Her shoulders sagged with a deep sigh. “I thought Pink and I were so close. But on reflection, I don’t think I listened to her very much at all. I wonder if I ever really knew her.”

Did anyone ever really know Pink Diamond, I asked?

She looked at me, surprised, then a flicker of a smile returned to her face. “Probably not,” she said wryly. She opened her hand and blew into it softly, producing a cloud which she sent drifting up into the room. We both watched it ascend. “Still. I should have done better.” Resolve hardened her voice, and she looked me right in my (admittedly much smaller) eyes. “I am doing better. I haven’t made anyone cry for years now.”

Was it difficult to find other coping mechanisms to manage her sadness, I asked?

Blue Diamond blinked at me curiously, big and slow, then chuckled. “Oh, stars, what a misunderstanding,” she said. “You see, I don’t get sad anymore.”

I stared at her. Surely I’d misheard. A person can’t just…stop getting sad, can they? But when I asked for clarification, Blue Diamond confirmed that she’d meant exactly what she’d said.

“Like I said earlier,” she said, “joy is so much better than misery.”

But you can’t have one without the other – anyone who’s seen the Bixar movie Outside In (which in my opinion was decent but overrated) knows that. Besides, it seemed to me she had felt emotions such as regret and guilt and wistfulness throughout our interview. How did she explain that, if she never got sad?

Blue Diamond shook her head. “It’s not that I never experience negative emotions anymore,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t allow myself to get sad enough to cry. That’s when the trouble begins, you see.”

This made a little more sense. But something about her words still bothered me, and a mere minute’s thought revealed to me the cause of this uneasiness. For you see, in that moment she reminded me of Samurai Rabbit.

For those who aren’t “in the know,” so to speak, Samurai Rabbit is an anime from the ’90s that was tragically underrated at its time of airing but is now critically acclaimed and upheld as one of the greatest anime series of all time, at least by people with good taste anyway. Its lead character, the titular Samurai Rabbit, undergoes a deep emotional journey in which he learns, among other things, that true nobility is not about suppressing your emotions but embracing them. But it is only after many episodes that he learns this – many episodes of Samurai Rabbit furiously choking down his sadness and pain for the benefit of those around him. It was this chapter of Samurai Rabbit’s tale (or “tail,” I should say) that Blue Diamond put me in mind of.

Feeling that it would be irresponsible not to make an effort to tackle the subject, I told Blue Diamond about Samurai Rabbit. This was a feat in and of itself, as Blue Diamond knew neither what a samurai was nor what a rabbit was. I’m still not entirely convinced she understood, but she at least pretended to, and promised me she’d try to watch it. (This led to another tangent in our conversation. Apparently the Diamonds have access to all of Steven Universe’s streaming service accounts, but, as I explained to Blue Diamond, Samurai Rabbit is not available for streaming. “Then how will I watch it?” Blue Diamond asked, bewildered. I then had to explain bootleg anime websites to her.)

As our interview wound down, Blue Diamond offered to let me try out one of her clouds of joy. She produced one for me and held it in her hand while I jumped up onto it. “Now just relax,” she said, and I did.

Reader, believe me when I tell you – those clouds really work. I’m a natural skeptic myself, so I was hesitant to take the widespread praise for them at face value. But, while luxuriating in that magically soothing puff of evaporated water, I realized that I’d never felt more at ease in my entire life.

Of course, this realization prompted me to come to another, more worrying realization: that this feeling of intense peace and relaxation could easily lead to complacency. We seekers of Truth must stay ever-vigilant, after all. So though part of me longed to stay in that fluffy embrace of joy forever, I drew on all my strength and asked Blue Diamond to help me down from my cloud instead.

Thus, while I would recommend visiting Blue Diamond’s cloud room if you need an occasional break from the stresses of capitalism, intergalactic politics, and anime message board arguments, I would caution against staying there too long. And if by any chance Blue Diamond’s reading this, I would caution her against staying there too long, too. No one can be happy forever. Just ask Samurai Rabbit.

Chapter Text

Yellow Diamond only wanted to talk about work.

It was a bit of a hassle getting her to agree to an interview in the first place, but nothing an intrepid reporter like myself couldn’t handle (with a little help from Blue Diamond, who batted her giant eyelashes at her yellow counterpart and got her to grudgingly agree to speak with me for an hour).

Once the terms of our interview had been hashed out, Yellow Diamond marched briskly back into her room. I had to jog to keep up.

Yellow Diamond’s room was, well, yellow. But it was also surprisingly colorful: plants of all varieties hung from the ceiling, sprouted up from pots on the ground, and bloomed outwards from sconces in the walls. Some of the plants I recognized from Earth; others were clearly extraterrestrial in nature. It seemed Yellow Diamond was trying to turn her room into a mini arboretum.

“Now,” Yellow Diamond said upon reaching her giant desk, clapping her gloved hands together, “what is it you wanted to start with? The Cluster reconstruction project?”

I told her I was happy to hear anything she wanted to tell me.

“Well,” said Yellow Diamond, sitting down in her chair in a manner I can only describe as ‘Diamondspreading,’ “I presume you know what the Cluster is, if you’re a friend of Steven’s.”

Indeed, I did know a thing or two about the Cluster – not from Steven but from Peridot 5XG, a major source for a previous article of mine (“Meep Morp: An Art History of Little Homeworld,” 2027). In addition, I myself had actually been present for the emergence of the Cluster during the Diamonds’ brief attack on Beach City at the end of Era 2 (during which, I must say, I showed a remarkable amount of courage, albeit also a good deal of the foolishness of youth). But I was curious to hear Yellow Diamond explain it in her own words.

She huffed out a short, displeased breath, although whether her displeasure was with me or with herself, I couldn’t tell. “The Cluster was an awful project of mine from Era 2,” she said. “I squandered millennia on it. Gem shards stuck together, forced to fuse until they formed a mass so big and unstable it could be used as a geoweapon. Its initial emergence was supposed to destroy the Earth. It failed.” She grimaced. “It was, in short, an ethical disaster, a logistical nightmare, and a complete waste of time.”

And the reconstruction project? “An attempt to piece the Gems stuck in the Cluster back together again,” Yellow Diamond explained. “It’s time-consuming, of course. The Cluster can’t be taken out of the Earth’s core all at once without destroying the planet. Instead, we must extract it piece by piece, a few shards at a time.” She pulled up a screen to display images of the process as she described it. “First, Steven communicates telepathically with the Cluster and asks it to split off a few component shards into a small bubble. This bubble is then propelled up a narrow shaft that some of the Gems living on Earth have drilled into the planet’s crust. Once it reaches the Earth’s surface, the bubble is retrieved and teleported to Homeworld. It is then delivered to me, where I must carefully separate the shards, identify which particular Gem they belong to, and store them in a safe and properly organized manner until they can be reunited with the rest of their Gem. I don’t need all the shards to piece a Gem back together, but I do need most of them.”

Speaking of which, what did the actual process of bringing a Gem back to life entail? I assumed it was more complicated than simply fitting all the pieces together. Yellow Diamond pulled up another diagram in response to this question. “Restoring a Gem to consciousness from a collection of shards requires a small amount of the other Diamonds’ essences to bind the shards together. I then use my reconstructive powers to make any necessary alterations to the Gem's physical form.”

If this undertaking sounds daunting, that’s because it is. By all estimates, the Cluster comprises millions of Gem shards. “I’ve barely made a dent in it,” Yellow Diamond admitted. “I’ve managed to reconstruct most of the Gems from my smaller fusion experiments, but it will take time to piece everyone from the Cluster back together. But it’s the least I can do.”

How else did Yellow Diamond spend her time? She raised an eyebrow at me and gestured around her as if the answer should be obvious. “I grow plants,” she said. “Have you seen the gardens outside the palace yet? Those are my doing.”

I had not, but I promised to check them out. Yellow Diamond scoffed and stood up. “Nonsense, we’ll go see them now.” I was beginning to realize that I was not the one in control of this interview.

If I had been impressed by the collection of plants on display in Yellow Diamond’s room, I should have saved my reserves of impressed-ness for the palace gardens, which were far more worthy of the emotion. Plants of all kinds grew in every direction, many of them barely recognizable as plants at all. They were all different colors, all different shapes, all different sizes, et cetera. As a lifelong connoisseur of the weird and bizarre, the gardens were a treasure trove.

As we strolled through the grounds, I almost stepped on a space cactus, but Yellow Diamond thankfully plucked me away to safety in one of her hands, which was bigger than I was.

“That plant’s needles are poisonous,” she told me, sounding annoyed with my carelessness. “If you stepped on it with your fragile human body, you’d die.” She considered her words. “But I suppose at least this interview would be over.”

I offered to leave her to her work if she truly didn’t want to continue, but she waved me off. “I told Blue I’d give you sixty Earth minutes,” she said. “A Diamond should always keep her promises.”

Did she still identify strongly with her role as Diamond, then? She squinted at me when I asked this question, possibly because it had nothing to do with growing plants or reconstructing Gems. “The old Homeworld system was a failure of literally intergalactic proportions,” she said sharply. “I have no interest in preserving it, only in dismantling it and salvaging whatever life hasn’t been totally eradicated by it.”

I apologized for any implications I had made to the contrary, but pushed the point a little. Perhaps she didn’t wish to continue being the type of Diamond she had been before, but did she still consider herself to have the responsibilities associated with Diamondhood? Again, she seemed baffled and not a little affronted by the question. “Of course,” she said. “We Diamonds have ultimate power over life and death. And a duty to make up for our past mistakes. How can we not have responsibility?”

I chose not to mention the way her sentiment echoed the well-known slogan of Mosquitoman, firstly because I find contemporary superhero media juvenile and unserious compared to the many challenging and thought-provoking anime series being produced today, and secondly because I didn’t think she would appreciate it.

Instead I asked if there were any plants she was particularly proud of. She gave me an even, thoughtful look, then nodded and said, “Follow me.”

I thought she would take me to another part of the garden, but instead I ended up following her to a warp pad, where she waited for me to catch up and then warped us both away.

We arrived on a rather desolate-looking planet, barely more than a hunk of rock floating in space, although luckily it still had a breathable atmosphere. Yellow Diamond took off walking at a spirited pace, and when I struggled to keep up with her and asked her if she minded slowing down, she sighed and scooped me up onto her shoulder instead. I don’t mind telling you, reader, that riding on the armored shoulder pad of a former alien dictator while visiting another planet in a distant region of space is literally the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

Eventually we reached a canyon whose walls were dotted with people-shaped holes – presumably a Kindergarten where Homeworld used to grow Gems by sucking the life out of the rest of the planet. To my surprise, there were Gems working in the canyon. Some were operating machines that seemed to be drilling or perhaps implanting things into the ground, others were taking samples of the rocks and dirt, others were measuring the holes in the canyon wall, and still others were documenting the work being done around them.

As Yellow Diamond walked past these Gems, some of them looked up and nodded at her and then went back to work. The others ignored her entirely, apparently unfazed by her presence. Only one of them spoke to her – a Bixbite holding up a recording device who gave her a casual wave.

“Hey, Yellow,” said the Bixbite.

“How is the project progressing?” Yellow Diamond asked.

Bixbite gave her a thumbs-up, a gesture that is becoming more common among Gems as human-Gem interactions increase. “We’ve seen a 33% increase in soil viability since we made the adjustments you proposed, just as Peridot predicted.”

“Good,” said Yellow Diamond. “I’m conducting an interview right now, but I’ll stop by later.”

“An interview?” Bixbite asked. Yellow Diamond gestured to me, and Bixbite peered at me, apparently noticing me for the first time. Her face broke out into a grin. “Hey, you’re like a weird little Steven! Good for you!”

I thanked her, for there is no higher compliment than being told you are weirder than Steven Universe himself, and Yellow Diamond kept walking. Eventually we emerged from the canyon, and I gasped aloud as I saw what was on the other side of it. There were Gems here as well, taking samples and making measurements, just like in the Kindergarten – except these Gems were studying grass. Or, well, it looked like grass, anyway, if grass were purple. It was some kind of plant, is my point.

What was this place, I asked Yellow Diamond? I had been under the impression from our walk through the Kindergarten that this planet had been used up by the Gem empire for Gem production.

“It was,” said Yellow Diamond. “This is a former colony of mine. Hundreds of years ago, all life on this planet went extinct due to our Gem injectors. Now,” she gestured at the purple alien grass, “we’re bringing it back.”

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. It was my understanding that life could not be restored to a completed Gem colony. Even Earth’s Kindergartens are currently devoid of life.

“That was our belief too,” said Yellow Diamond. “But I have been working with,” she grimaced in distaste, “Peridot 5XG, and together we have found a way to combine Gem technology, a variety of Earth horticultural methods, Diamond essence, and my own powers to begin revitalizing the planets that were ravaged by the empire.”

And the other Gems working on the project? “Volunteers,” Yellow Diamond said sharply. “I no longer have the authority to order other Gems around even if I wanted to. Many Gems nonetheless offered to help with the revitalization efforts. We Diamonds aren’t the only ones with regrets, you know.”

I noted that the Bixbite from before seemed to have a relatively friendly relationship with her. Was that true of all the Gems working on the project, or were some of them frostier?

“I’m not here to make friends,” Yellow Diamond said, as if she were a contestant on America’s Next Top Alien Dictator. “But I have a cordial working relationship with most of the Gems here.” She harrumphed. “Just not Peridot 5XG.”

I was well aware of Peridot 5XG’s opinion of Yellow Diamond, but I was curious about Yellow Diamond’s take on their relationship. “She has interesting ideas,” Yellow Diamond admitted, begrudgingly. “But she is terribly uncreative with her insults.” She smirked a little. “Pink was much more adept in that department. You should’ve heard some of the things she used to call me.”

Did that mean she missed Pink Diamond, then?

“Miss her?” Yellow Diamond snorted. “Ha! Pink was a spoiled, self-centered brat. Entirely incapable of taking anything seriously, utterly uninterested in the needs or feelings of those around her, only concerned with what she wanted. And, oh, the tantrums she’d throw when we wouldn’t give in to her! The destruction she caused!” She threw her arms up in the air, jostling me slightly in my position on her shoulder, but she was too worked up to notice. “And she never listened. Oh, she’d claim she wanted to know every single thought that went through my mind, but did she ever actually take any of my advice? Of course not. And Blue and White, well, they wouldn’t hear a word against her for the first several thousand years! And when she inevitably disappointed them like she always did, and White retreated into her own head like she always did, and Blue made her cry like she always did, who was left picking up the pieces? Who got stuck actually taking care of her?” Here she folded her arms against her Gem-studded chest and hunched her shoulders, again forcing me to adjust my precarious position. “And after all that, to never even say goodbye – the sheer thoughtlessness, the ingratitude, the cruelty – !” She clenched her jaw. “Truly, she was incorrigible to the last.” 

After this outburst, Yellow Diamond fell quiet and surveyed the small enclave of life growing around her on a dead world. A few moments passed, and then she huffed out a frustrated sigh.

“I miss her every day,” she said, her voice suddenly much softer. “I wonder what she would think of me now.”

We watched the breeze ripple through the purple grass for a few minutes. It made me wonder what other kinds of life used to call this planet home, before. I asked Yellow Diamond if she knew.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m sure there are a few notes written in the logs somewhere. But most of the planet’s life was likely deemed irrelevant and not documented at all. That life is gone forever.” Her expression hardened. “This planet will never be what it once was.”

Did it trouble her? Knowing that no matter how hard she worked, she could never fully undo the damage she and the rest of the Gem empire had caused?

She hesitated, but not for long. “It’s unfortunate,” she said. “But it cannot be helped. There’s no sense dwelling on it now.” And with that, she turned on her heel and headed back towards the warp pad.

Still perched on her shoulder, I took the time to look around the planet’s environment more carefully than before, searching for signs of the revitalization project: a blade of grass here, a tendril of purple there. Most of the landscape, though, was still gray. This world would take a long time to heal. Still – the fact that this team of Gems were able to generate any life at all in a place that long ago had its life-force completely drained out of it was nothing short of a miracle.

Back on Homeworld, Yellow Diamond set me down on the ground, which I have to say was a bit of a disappointment, and we returned to the palace gardens to wrap up the interview. There, Yellow Diamond showed me a magnificent variety of alien flora: one plant with petals that spiraled in a mathematically improbable pattern, one plant that ate its own leaves, one plant that changed color to camouflage itself among its neighbors, et cetera. She’d even cultivated a rosebush from Earth, which she handled without fear thanks to her gloves. But the highlight of the hour, in my opinion, was a collection of plants that actually sang.

They formed a chorus together – some on the melody, some on harmony, all singing a strange, almost haunting otherworldly tune. There were no lyrics, or at least nothing that sounded like lyrics, and the song changed shape and key enough that I can’t truly describe it beyond the fact that it was delightfully weird. But what I can describe to you is the sound that one particular plant made. It wasn’t so noticeable at first, as my ears were still adjusting to this new style of music, but the longer I listened to the plants sing, the more I realized that one of them was off-key. Rather jarringly so, in fact.

I pointed this fact out to Yellow Diamond. She looked surprised, then tilted her head to listen.

“What do you know, you’re right,” she said after a few seconds, but made no move to do anything about it.

I asked her if she planned to try and fix it, or perhaps remove it altogether. It was rather disrupting the otherwise beautiful soundscape the rest of its botanical brethren were producing.

But Yellow Diamond shrugged and shook her head. “No need.” She smiled, then, and winked at me, as if telling me an inside joke.

“After all,” she said, “if every dog were perfect, we wouldn’t have pork.”

And that, reader, is the story of how I became a vegetarian.