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Rose swept down the factory steps at a clip, white ruffles billowing around her. “Start the engine, Moss, we gotta go!” she called to the waiting driver, who scrambled for the switches and muttered “What has she done this time” under her breath. Although the back door on the near side of the vehicle opened automatically, Rose swung around to the street side and vaulted over the edge of the open cockpit to sit beside her. “Okay, go, go! Hurry!”
Moss Agate, quiet and focused, wove through the traffic of the gem homeworld’s capital city, making for a route to the back roads that would take them farther afield and home. “You want to see something, Moss?”
“Well, ma’am, I’m sure you’re going to show me.”
From the folds of her gown Rose pulled a dormant gemstone–a pearl, misshapen and battered, yet still glowing with life.
Moss almost swerves off the aerial lane. “Oh my–Rose, who is that?!”
“Can you believe, they had her sitting on a desk like a dang paperweight. I asked what happened and they just said her supervisor got a bit frustrated, as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to happen. I’m telling you, I’m going to get to the bottom of what goes on at that place. I don’t care if the others try to stop me.”
“It’s a terrible shame,” Moss murmured in agreement, keeping her thoughts about her employer’s tendency to get in over her head to herself.
Rose wouldn’t have heard her anyway. She was gazing down at the iridescent white stone cupped in her palm. “We’ll be home soon,” she whispered, enfolding it safely beneath her other hand. “I can’t wait to meet you…my Pearl.”
***
Shortly before hitting her in the side of the head hard enough to knock her back into her gem (as was the standard procedure anytime there was someone in the factory they didn’t want her to embarrass them in front of) Ammolite had told her, “Don’t you dare be late, and don’t you dare be early.”
So Pearl regenerated her body while counting seconds, as she had been for the past four hours. “Fourteen thousand three hundred ninety nine, fourteen thousand four hundred! Alright, where do I need to–oh. Oh no.”
She had no idea where she was. It had to be some unfamiliar part of the factory–one of the offices or receiving rooms they never allowed her to set foot in–it had to be…right? “Ammolite? Where–” Something about this place seemed so wrong, so foreign. In half a second, she put her finger on it. The constant sound of falling water, the sound that had marked every moment of her waking life so far, was absent. The hush was so heavy it seemed to force her downward from above. She put her hands over her still-slightly-ringing head against its assault, digging her fingers into her close-clipped hair as true panic began to take hold.
And then there was a soft voice behind her: “Pearl?”
Nobody ever called her Pearl. Her name was decommish, baroque, freak spare, little fool. Whatever this place was, it was far away from where she was supposed to be. And if she was not in terrible danger now, she would be as soon as Ammolite discovered she was gone. But her stubborn, inborn politeness overwhelmed her fear. She turned to face the voice.
In front of her, across the room, with her arms braced against some imposing piece of furniture and a bewildered smile on her face (as if she were the one whose breath was taken away!) stood Rose Diamond.
If Pearl had been able to form any coherent thoughts before this moment, the ability had indubitably left her now. As it happened she let out a shrill and undignified squeak, clapped her hand over her mouth, stumbled over a bump in the carpet, caught herself, and shook her head frantically, searching for a course of action and coming up with random facts instead. Space was expanding at a rate of 74.3 +/- 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec. Dangit, what good was that?!
She finally managed to recover herself enough to fall to her knees, place her hand to her shoulder in the standard salute (she was even ninety percent sure it was her right hand this time), and drop her chin to her chest in a deep bow, making a valiant but fruitless attempt to quell her disruptive blushing and trembling, hoping they would maybe at least communicate how deeply she regretted everything about this interaction.
Through the stray wisps of hair hanging over her field of vision, she watched the polished shoes of this magnificent gem step toward her. Her body braced for whatever gale of punishment was coming, but the Diamond’s voice only brushed lightly above her: “Pearl? Are you alright?”
Pearl debated how to acknowledge this question with no improper dialogue or eye contact. Finally she just bobbed her head noncommittally back and forth, neither a nod nor a shake. She didn’t feel like she could pull off such an obvious lie as claiming to be alright in this situation.
“Can you hear me?”
The head-bob, apparently, had not been sufficiently communicative. She wanted her to speak up–or maybe she didn’t. Maybe this was a test. Maybe this was a joke. Then again, if it were any of the above, wouldn’t she have said something more commanding, more likely to elicit a reaction?
“Don’t be frightened…please,” the gentle voice continued above her. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the floor below. “I won’t hurt you. Is something wrong? Can you speak at all?”
Pearl finally accepted the possibility that she was in fact expected to say something. She had no idea why, but that did seem to be the situation. Whatever might be done to her as a result of a wrong move, she decided, couldn’t be much worse than what would happen when she got back to the factory, and as far as disgracing one of the monarchs of the empire with her impudent presence–well, it was just another disaster in a long line of disasters; might as well go big. She folded her hands against her forehead and said, in a near-whisper that still seemed much too loud in the uncanny silence, “My deepest apologies, your grace–I mean, I mean, your excellency–I don’t know–where to find someone else to address my response to you through–or I would never be so rude as to speak to you like this. I don’t understand where–that is, I’m not sure–I didn’t know I was going to come here, I don’t know where I am. By my own oversight, I’m sure! I–please, if your will should allow, please forgive me–”
“Oh dear! No, no, you haven’t made any oversight, you’ve just–I would have explained if you’d been–available to explain to at the time–although now I guess I don’t know where to start–well, first of all, about where you are. This is an estate outside the city, and I live here most of the time…the staff is very small, so most of usual formalities aren’t really practical. You can speak to me, and look at me and all, as is needed. I really don’t mind. And…you can call me Rose.”
Rose. The name seemed to hit Pearl’s hearing with a sharp, melodious ring. She thought suddenly of what it would be like to say it herself, out loud. Almost unconsciously she moved her lips around it, mouthing it silently. No, pay attention! She was saying something else.
“Are you afraid, Pearl?”
Yes. Terrified. Completely out of her depth. Completely over her head. “A little,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t shake too much.
“I want you to know that you’re safe here. I want you to stay here with me. Do you think you can work with that?”
She widened her eyes at the floor. “You want–I mean, of, of course,” she said, and she didn’t even care that her response was probably inappropriate in its enthusiasm, because at this point she could only conclude that none of this was real. She didn’t know what else she expected of herself, of course, useless confused defective who’d been hit in the head with a few too many wrenches. All her daydreaming had finally spilled over into some kind of encompassing unreality. What else would explain this?
“If it isn’t too much,” Rose spoke again, somehow even more gently, “I’d like to look at your face–”
Pearl gasped out something like “Go ahead,” something bizarrely informal said because she was still convinced that this couldn’t be happening, and all at once she felt soft, fragrant fingers lifting her chin, and all at once she was looking her in the eye, and it was impossible and it was beautiful and she was grateful for the sharp intake before because now she was not sure she would ever exhale again.
“Is something wrong?” she asked yet again, yet again condescending to the needs of someone who, ideally, should need nothing, should only give, should always give. Yes, something was wrong. Everything about this was wrong, so unbelievably wrong. But it wasn’t as if she was in a position to say that.
So she tried to explain, instead, anecdotally, in her breathless voice: “Ammolite used to tell us that if we ever looked directly at any of the diamonds, they’d be so radiant that–we’d be destroyed, just like that, just–by being so unworthy.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized that this could sound insulting, or flirtatious, or any number of potentially deadly things. “Not that I–really believed that, of course, I mean, what would even be the mechanism–oh–I’m sorry, I’m so, so incredibly sorry, this is why–they don’t let me be around when anyone comes to the factory.”
“What do you mean?” She was laughing softly. Pearl didn’t know what to make of that.
“I just–always talk too much and say silly things–I’m sorry. I know you must have thought–I’m sorry, I won’t–I’ll do whatever you ask.” This all-purpose response didn’t seem quite enough, somehow, to cover the massive missteps she’d already made. “What I meant to say was”–and even as the words left her mouth she knew they were wrong too, everything she could possibly say would be wrong, being here at all, just being here at all, was wrong. There was a mistake. She did not deserve to even dream this. “What I meant to say was that you are the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in my life, even if it didn’t kill me.”
Rose’s soft laughter turned to uproarious laughter. Because, Pearl thought, she apparently hadn’t panicked her new servant enough times in the past minute, she crouched down to her level, meeting her eyes again. “I’m glad to hear you’re in the habit of talking too much, my dear,” she said. “See, this is a very big house, and I’m nearly alone in it. I want you here because…well, silly or not, I could really use someone to talk to.”