Scared And Young
Meeting Amethyst was… an experience, and that’s not a phrase Garnet uses lightly.
Naturally, Rose Quartz was the one to find her. Stars only knew what their leader was doing in the Kindergarten that day, but it’s not Garnet’s place to ask questions like that, either. According to Pearl, Rose had simply wanted to go off on her own. Had she been looking for something? Even seven-hundred years after the rebellion, they’re still finding and bubbling the shattered and/or corrupted remains of friend and foe alike. It’s possible Rose was simply doing that on her own, as Garnet liked to do.
No matter her reasons for being in the Kindergarten that day, she came back with Amethyst all the same.
“Oh my.” Pearl covers her mouth. Her eyes are big, nearly teary. They haven’t seen another gem in centuries, and it’s as much that as the obvious youth of the newcomer that has her this way. She rushes over to the warp pad, where Rose is holding the small purple gem on her hip like a child. Her gem is embedded into her chest, the lucky symmetrical thing. “Who is this? Where did she come from? I’ve never seen her before.”
“This is Amethyst,” Rose explains with a gentle smile. “We met at the Kindergarten.”
Both Pearl and Garnet have to hide their grimaces at the reference.
“I thought the Kindergarten had been emptied,” Pearl says. She’s looking at Amethyst like she’s a miracle—and, in a way, she is. “How is this possible?”
Garnet is far more curious than cautious. She steps closer.
There is an utterly feral growl before Amethyst, in a surprising show of agility, flips out of Rose’s hold and over her shoulder. She shapeshifts into a bird and flaps up to one of the outcroppings in the temple’s antechamber.
She’s smaller than the other amethysts that Garnet has met. Downright puny, really—no good, since amethysts are a warrior caste (it’s their hardness; a seven Mohs is nothing to turn your nose up at). A symmetrical gem like her shouldn’t be this undersized. But if she emerged late, long after all of the others from the Kindergarten were gone…
“Wha…? Is it something I said?” For once, Pearl doesn’t seem to know what to do. She keeps looking from Rose to Amethyst, who is doing her darndest to continue hissing and growling threateningly despite maintaining her avian form.
“I’m a person, you know!” barks Amethyst from her perch. “I didn’t leave all of my friends behind just so you can talk about me like I’m not here!”
“Friends?” Pearl asks Rose.
Rose gives a small, morose shake of her head. “When I found her, she was playing on a boulder all alone. There was no one else around for miles.”
Garnet, still looking up at the young gem—and oh, she is so young, less than two millennia if she is a day—takes another step closer. She says, “We’re sorry if we offended you.”
As Amethyst informed her much, much later, Garnet’s characteristic monotone can sometimes come across as bitingly sarcastic. In hindsight, that explains a lot of Amethyst’s initial reaction to her.
“Oh,” scoffs Amethyst. “Like I believe that!”
Then, just like that, Amethyst has regained her bipedal form and leapt down from her perch. She doesn’t produce a weapon (does she know how?), but she does make a mad dash for the sunlight and sparkling ocean she can see outside of the temple.
“No!” cries Rose, staying Pearl’s hand as she moves to retrieve her spear from her gem. “She’s just scared. I don’t think she’s ever met another gem before.”
Well, in that case, someone should head her off. Garnet moves, and there is a bit of a scuffle as Amethyst strikes out, untrained and sloppy, but worse things have happened. Soon a squirming, shrieking ball of fury is dangling from Garnet’s right hand. She holds Amethyst at arms’ length and doesn’t allow herself to wince or loosen her grip as Amethyst twists around and bites down hard on her hand (which is harder than it sounds, since it feels like Amethyst has her beat in the Mohs department, if only barely). Garnet’s lucky this one doesn’t seem to know how to summon a weapon yet, otherwise keeping Sapphire’s gem this close to such a destructive source would be making her very uncomfortable.
“Let me go, you square-haired, two-gemmed—”
“Hey.” Rose talks softly, but she may as well have shouted. “Garnet is my friend. Please don’t speak to her like that.”
“Then tell her to let me go, damnit!”
“You were trying to run away. You’re in an unfamiliar place with a lot of unfamiliar geography. We don’t want you to get lost and hurt yourself.”
Amethyst softens somewhat, though she does still give a halfhearted swing at Garnet’s leg. She misses, so no harm done. “Can you put me down,” she mutters grudgingly. “Please. I won’t run.”
Garnet glances at Rose, who nods, and then slowly lowers Amethyst to the floor of the temple.
Immediately, Amethyst lunges for her. Her hands have become claws, and her teeth are much sharper than they were a second ago. Utterly feral. “This is for treating me like—”
Garnet swats her away, but not hard enough for it to hurt, necessarily. The young gem bounces harmlessly off of her gauntlet and lands right into Rose’s arms.
“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t try and attack my friends, either,” Rose says softly. “We’re only trying to help you.”
“She isn’t!” A fierce and indignant gesture in Garnet’s direction, but Garnet knows better than to be offended. She can already See Amethyst becoming an integral part of the Crystal Gems.
“Garnet doesn’t say much, but she would never try to hurt you,” Rose promises. “None of us would. We are the Crystal Gems.”
“That’s right!” Pearl chimes in. She’s only slightly hesitant about marching up to stand at Rose’s elbow and look at the young gem with her mussed up white hair. “We’re not Homeworld.”
Amethyst frowns. “What’s Homeworld?”
“Oh.” Pearl clearly hadn’t expected that reference to go over Amethyst’s head. “Well, Homeworld is…” She makes a small sound of discomfort. “How would you describe Homeworld in only a few words?”
“A dictatorship at the apex of a harmful caste system based upon superficial and inherent physical properties,” Garnet replies.
“Okay, now she’s just making up words to make me look dumb,” says Amethyst, gesturing to Garnet again.
“Actually, it’s not a bad description,” Rose Quartz admits. “If you visit with us for a while, we could tell you all about it and you can make the decision of whether or not you’d like to stay after that.”
“Well, okay,” Amethyst mutters somewhat bashfully. She digs her pinky finger into her ear. “Not like I got anything better to do, I guess.”
Garnet smiles as Rose puts the young gem down, and this time she doesn’t try to run or attack anyone. Famous last words.