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“What’s up with these.. things on your back?”
Pearl, sitting melted into Gem’s touch, thought about her answer. It had been a calm moment before the question fell - Gem was running her fingers through Pearl’s hair, gently braiding her light brown curls. Candles speckled across the room filled it with a dim, orange glow, nestling into floorboards, pooling across walls.
She exhaled. The weight of Gem’s words sank in the air, once calm, smelling of a campfire, now disturbed. The woman behind Pearl stopped, soft hands still buried in her hair.
“I-” Pearl hesitated.
These “things” on her back. Pearl knew exactly what they were, it wasn’t easy to forget. Reminders of the past growing from inside out, traces of a punishment. They were once her wings, something she was proud of, something that rose her above others - literally and figuratively.
Nowadays, they stung of the pain she had withstood, bore the heavy guilt and the question: was it worth it?
The Watchers were always particular about their discipline, and the image they upheld. Pearl didn’t remember much from her previous life, hazy images coming up whenever she tried to think about it. Her first memories - coming back alive from the void itself, wild, uncontrolled strands of code wrapping together in a form, named in the ancient tongue of Galactic. A fledgeling, a human origin Watcher, who had joined their elite ranks.
However Pearl, as they soon learned, wasn’t ideal. She never belonged with Them. Running off, doing her own things, getting lost in the beauty of the first servers. She could spend days just hypnotised by the images of soft blades of lime grass racing alongside a cerulean canvas of the sky, and players discovering how the world worked when code was still early.
The Watchers didn’t want someone that was out of the ordinary. They had been worried about this - humans, players, so emotional and drawn to the simplicity of the early worlds, its eerie mystery pulling them forward to discover, to see for themselves. When they raised a player up to their ranks, they knew what could happen.
Pearl, as they found out, apart from her loyalty, had her own inner morals. They called a council, and they had to decide the fate of a player.
A Diamond, someone with a soul so bright they couldn’t look past it. Clever, always willing for chaos, a catalyst for events they could feed upon. She recognised the Diamond, voice always remaining a memory, even if the rest were unclear. She couldn't stand for him being exploited. Pearl argued.
And she suffered the consequences. Rebellion was never within the Watchers’ standards, the strict order they provided. First, it was talking back, and Pearl felt rather pathetic and fury burned inside of her, being treated like a helpless child to be ignored. So she acted. She sank her teeth, her motivation and her exhaustion into them, destroyed, burned bright.
So they called upon the Council, and Pearl was stripped of her flight. Out of all her days, the day of her judgement was one always at the back of her mind. Three pairs, six wings sharply split from the code making her up. Her scream echoed in her head. She lost her freedom in the sky, her status, and she fell.
She kept falling, passing worlds, void, skies, and she hit the ground, wings long broken, and her ability to change the situation, shift fate, taken. Weak, frail. But the Diamond found her, and soon after he was gone, the universe granted him his own wings. Pearl could always tell, even if her magic was weak, torn apart.
A bird, wild, soaring free amongst the clouds, that had tasted a bit too much of freedom, like Icarus who had gotten too close to the sun, blinding his eyes as he plummeted down, and was it worth it?
From Pearl’s perspective and her own story, it was. If she hadn’t rebelled, she would have been standing blindly loyal to values she did not agree to, memories manipulated, tilted, changed out of her control. If she hadn’t rebelled, her brother would have been taken under much harsher conditions, and likely ended up like what she feared for herself to become, or worse. If she hadn’t rebelled, she wouldn’t-
“Pearl?”
And she was tugged back to reality. Shoulders almost limp in the support from behind her, eyes coming into focus. Pearl turned, catching Gem’s worried look. Right. She hadn’t been speaking for a moment.
If she hadn’t rebelled, she wouldn’t have met her best friend, her soulmate, the person she would cross universes for.
She may have lost her wings, but around Gem, she felt as free as a breeze, inviting the green leaves to dance, whistling a calm song. She could be herself.
“Sorry, Gem, I just-” Pearl rubbed the back of her neck, fingers brushing past the finished braid. “It’s a really long story.”
Gem gave her a smile of reassurance, that caring glow present in her eyes and Pearl would rather jump in the void than to never be able to see it again, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel ready. I was just curious.”
“No, I’m…” She took in a sharp breath.
“I’m ready.”