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This is stupid.
Pearl gathers as much, while she’s riding a camel that’s dangerously close to tumbling off the edge of a statue decorating the entrance of Impulse’s dwarven keep.
Like, really stupid.
Pearl peers down to find a pretty steep drop to the gorge separating her base with the rest of the Soup Group’s.
Oh, so very stupid.
Pearl laughs at the absurdity of it all, settling a tiny bit of her nerves.
And yet, here I am anyway.
It was a decision she’d made on the fly, perhaps even minutes before the planned meeting between her friends for one final tour of their shared base area. It seemed like a really solid idea at the start, after all, how hard could it be to get a camel to her base? It’s not like she has no experience navigating through rough terrain on a camel. In fact, she’s gotten plenty of training in the past few weeks.
“Okay, Pearl, be careful.” Gem reminded her as she led the camel on top of a hill overlooking the cherry blossom biome, hoping to get a clear view of Joel hunting Scott down.
“Hey, you gotta trust the camel driver.” Pearl said, fully focused on manoeuvring the mount around the woods. “I’m good, I promise.”
“I trust you.”
That’s why she’s here, isn’t it? In the back of her mind, she can almost envision exactly how Gem would react to her doing this, how she’d lie back, wearing an amused grin to watch Pearl wrangle a camel on top of places where a camel most definitely shouldn’t be. She can even imagine Gem’s voice asking how she ended up in this situation, perfect clarity in hearing her saying her name, the giggling mixed in as she questions what Pearl was doing.
Gem would be here, if they weren’t avoiding each other like the plague ever since they got back from Secret Life.
That thought alone sends a pang of aching in Pearl’s chest.
It’s always awkward for a couple of days after each game. Nobody expects you to be back to normal from the get-go right after witnessing your friends tear each other apart, and that’s how everyone who knows acts as each game comes to an end. (Sometimes, it takes more than just days. It takes months to finally get used to the absence of a double heartbeat, and it takes even longer to forget the sting of frostbite on your fingers. Even then, you wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, only to be overcome with relief as you remember that you’re not alone again.)
It’s different this time, though.
It’s different, because Gem’s not here.
After the previous games, they fell into the habit of Pearl spending the following nights at Gem’s, all to help Pearl settle back in. Gem would listen to Pearl recount the memories she actually had the strength to bring up, while running her fingers through Pearl’s hair, occasionally mumbling reassurances to her friend. It couldn’t help heal every new scar she’d sustained, but it helped her sleep just a bit better at night.
(That’s probably why she kept waking up these couple of nights, huh?)
It’s not like she’s been deliberately avoiding Gem! It’s just that she's had a lot of projects to finish up, like the tunnel in her base, some terraforming work, Bingo, the secrets in Decked Out…and she’s sure Gem’s been busy, too! Gem was probably off adding the final touches to her megabase, and then she had all those other mini-games to play…
Then, Pearl recalls moments when they both had obviously spotted each other, but right as their eyes met, they’d avert each other’s gaze and turn towards another direction. Pearl recalls the emptiness swallowing up her heart as she never got her usual visitor, bugging her for building resources that she’d eventually give. Pearl recalls watching Gem and Impulse talk from across the valley, wanting so badly to fly over, yet never doing so. (Still, she wasn’t totally blind to the glances Gem would shoot her way.)
It all feels so…wrong. There’s this crawling sensation under her skin that arises just from her thinking about it. There’s no way they’re letting this go on, Pearl won’t let it.
Thus, she ignores how her heart gets caught in her throat in anticipation of the chance to speak to Gem properly again, and redirects her attention to steering the camel away from the edge.
That is, until she picks up on the sound of fireworks being set off in the distance, accompanied by a whoosh of air.
Pearl jerks up, unintentionally startling the camel, which causes it to misstep…right down into the river below. Thankfully, Pearl’s wings spring up reflexively, saving her from the fall. The camel hits the water with a big splash, sending droplets of water upwards.
The camel surviving such a fall is honestly a miracle Pearl didn’t expect, but a welcome one nonetheless. She doesn’t even look to check who had been flying past with an elytra before diving down and landing more gracefully on the ground nearby, determined to lead this absolute nugget of a camel out of the river.
A lead is produced from the assortment of items in her inventory, and she manages to tie it around the camel, starting her on the tedious process of guiding it back up to the bridge between her and Impulse’s base.
Gem would’ve been dying of laughter if she saw that. She would’ve been teasing Pearl the whole way through, and Pearl would have to endure her best friend’s snickering on the trip back home.
Instead, Pearl looks up at the bridge, and she finds that Gem had just arrived. She’s too far away to make out the expression on her face, let alone hear what she has to say.
Pearl sighs, tugs on the lead, and pushes down all the hope she had in her mind. ( It’s too early for that , she reasons.)
The trek up proved to be less troublesome, which she was immensely grateful for, and by the time she climbed up to the bridge with the camel, she can see Gem chatting with Impulse, who is also on a camel.
That…might throw a wrench in her plans. Did Impulse find her wrangling a camel over and decide to join in on the bit? Should she just get one more for Gem instead?
Interrupting her train of thought, Impulse pipes up after greeting Pearl. “Where’s your camel, Gem?”
The urge to join in on the teasing comes as naturally as instinct at this point, causing Pearl to speak before thinking her words through. “Yeah, Gem, where’s your camel?”
Caught like a deer in headlights, Gem remains standing in front of them, likely trying to process the situation she’s found herself in.
Just registering what has left her lips, Pearl chews on the inside of her cheek, electing to not focus on how her hands are fidgeting with the saddle she’s on.
Gem looks between Impulse and Pearl, then begins to bounce over towards them.
“Uh…” Gem starts, trailing off slightly as she climbs on one of the mounts. “This is my camel.”
There’s no hiding the smile that instantly grows on Pearl’s face after Gem settles on the camel with her, especially as Pearl couldn’t even feel any hesitation behind the choice.
“Oh.” Pearl says. Not exactly what she planned to say when she thought of this moment before, but her mind blanks on everything she could’ve said.
When she turns around to be greeted by Gem’s smile, many more words go unspoken.
As she snaps herself out of the daze she’s in, she grabs hold of the reins.
The familiarity and relief comes in waves, with a piece of herself she didn’t even realise she’d been missing clicking right into place. As she feels the same old breathing against her back, the giggling that’s grown to become a grounding melody in her ears, the hands that will forever mean flower crowns and silly pranks rather than the damage they’ve inflicted, she decides to save all the speeches in her head for another day.
For now, she can watch those green eyes flicker with joy, and she will believe that everything is going to be okay.