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“Pearl?”
Pearl startles, and glances up.
“Rose,” she exclaims happily, bouncing to her feet. “You should see the things the humans are creating.”
Rose sets her hands carefully on Pearl’s shoulders as she begins to bounce.
“Should I?”
“Oh, yes,” Pearl says, her hands fluttering between them.
She spins around and gathers the objects that she had been fiddling with before turning back to Rose.
“Look!” she proclaims, holding the haphazard pile of objects out before her.
Rose glances down at it.
There’s a moment pause before—
“Is that—” she turns her head. “Is that a pointed stick?”
“Oh,” Pearl says happily, dumping all of the objects beside the stick on the ground and holding it up, “Yes.”
Rose opens her mouth, and then closes it again.
Pearl holds the stick happily before her, waving it lightly as she rocks in anticipation.
“Is that—” Rose pause, and licks her lips, “Is that all it is?”
“Oh, no,” Pearl says, rocking forward with a smile. “The humans—oh, they’ve gotten so clever.”
She smiles slyly up at Rose, and Rose glances down at the stick before smiling warmly back.
“They use it to write, you see!”
She jabs the stick up, and Rose leans back to avoid being stabbed in the cheek.
Pearl waves it as she starts to speak.
“See this end,” she continues jabbing it up, and Rose takes a minute step back. “See how it’s carved at an angle—” she waves it in Rose’s face, continuing to bounce. “And the inside’s hollow, so—”
Rose catches Pearl’s wrist as it drifts closer to her face again.
Pearl chokes off and glances up at Rose in surprise.
“So?” she asks, smiling a warm smile down at her and interlacing their finger around the stick.
Pearl makes an incoherent noise of happiness, lower lip wobbling tremulously.
“Well,” she warbles out before drifting off and glancing at the stick held between their hands.
She blinks at it, and then looks up at Rose’s smiling face.
She blinks some more.
Rose continues to smile, twitching her head to toss a heavy lock of hair over her shoulder.
“Oh, Rose,” Pearl says instead of continuing, gazing up at her.
“Oh, Pearl,” Rose responds in kind.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Rose smiles.
“So are you.”
Pearl blushes and giggles, looking down and away.
“Oh right,” she says suddenly glancing up and bouncing.
Rose tightens her fingers around Pearl’s, holding the stick at a safe distance from her face.
“Well, it’s not so much the—” Pearl glances at the stick before glancing back at Rose, blue blush still high in her cheeks, “—pen, they call it a pen—that’s the interesting part, you see.”
Rose nods and Pearl smiles brilliantly up at her.
“It’s what they’re using it for!”
Pearl twists half into Rose’s chest, not making an even cursory effort to unlace their fingers, and nods excitedly at the pile by their side.
“The things they’re writing, Rose!”
Rose looks down at the haphazard pile, blinking as she tries to determine what among it could possibly be what Pearl is describing.
“They’re mostly wrong of course,” Pearl says, spinning back to face her. “But oh—”
She flashes Rose another brilliant smile.
“Oh, they’re trying.”
Rose smiles back at her for a moment until Pearl begins to fidget, speech finished.
“Really?” Rose asks, and Pearl immediately begins to smile again. “Why don’t you read some of it to me.”
“Oh,” Pearl says excitedly, disentangling their fingers in an instant and diving down to the pile. “Oh, I have just the thing.”
She spins back to Rose, stick abandoned in the pile below, and in her hands a roll of a limp yellow something.
“This is papyrus,” Pearl adds helpfully. “The humans are quite excited about it.”
Rose blinks down at the black scribbles scribbled across the inside.
“Much better than their previous attempts at a writing material—”
She waves it and Rose smiles as Pearl does not almost stab her in the face.
“—I think they might really have it this time.”
Rose continues to smile, nodding down to the scroll.
“The Egyptians, they’re quite sharp,” Pearl murmurs absently, rolling the scroll between her fingers.
“The Egyptians,” Rose echoes.
“Oh, they’re the ones by that river—” Pearl glances up and smiles. “The longest one, oh—” Pearl gestures vaguely towards the horizon. “They’re just over there.”
Rose turns to glance at the horizon, finds nothing, then turns back to Pearl with a smile.
Pearl is looking back at her scroll.
“Ah!” she declares victoriously, bouncing and lifting the roll before Rose’s face. “It’s right here, I think you’ll really like it.”
Pearl twists so that her shoulder is not quite touching Rose’s stomach, and Rose drops a hand absently to her back.
“Oh—” Pearl murmurs, jumping beneath her touch and blushing a bright blue in her cheeks.
After a moment she relaxes back into it, angling the roll up for Rose to see.
“Their writing system could use a little work,” she says idly, trailing a finger just above the page over the black characters. “It’s a little ambiguous.”
She looks up at Rose with a knowing look that is only slightly marred by the blue spots still burning brightly on her cheeks.
“You know how it is.”
Rose smiles and nods.
Pearl smiles brilliantly up at her before turning back to the scroll.
“Well, this character—” she proclaims, hand drifting back to the beginning of the line, “well, it can mean a lot of things, but here it’s just the syllable ‘a’.”
Rose leans her head down on the top of Pearl’s head and hums in response.
“And this one—” Pearl continues, voice only cracking a little bit, “—this one’s…”