A Novel Concept
Greg Universe moves the needle over the vinyl record, and music projects out over the cool sand, weaves between the crashing of the waves on the shore. He takes Rose’s hands, and steps on an otherwise inconspicuous button. The rigid, sand-speckled floorboards the two are standing upon immediately wakes, streaks of pink and white illuminating them like tangible holograms.
Rose knows Amethyst and Pearl and Garnet are behind one of the hands that has long since fallen from the Crystal Temple. Of course, Amethyst isn’t even bothering to keep herself out of sight.
It’s just as well, though, because Garnet knows this doesn’t bother Rose. It never does. Over the last several thousand years at least one of them has always been with her. Gems are an extraterrestrial species, a spacefaring race. It doesn’t feel natural not to orbit something. The dormant Pink Diamond, the revered Rose Quartz—she is as good a star as any. Better, in some ways, than any entity they’ve orbited around thusfar. The only thing worth making the center of your circuit, if you asked Pearl.
Perhaps Greg would say otherwise—had said otherwise, actually—but to the three of them, this instance and this human are no different than any of the others that have come before.
Garnet has to admit, Rose is smiling and laughing and genuinely enjoying herself. Of course, she always enjoys her time with humans; she longs to be a part of their stories. A part of her longs to belike them, though Garnet knows she will likely never confess as much directly.
Rose is impressed by Greg Universe’s routine—particularly with the flair of the kiss; standing atop that speaker to dip her had clearly been a good choice—but only about as impressed as a gem can be with any human. He’s trying, really trying, but he’s still human.
Universe is despondent, even in the face of Rose’s starry eyed approval of the dance and the kiss. “We… we didn’t fuse.”
There is a pause, and then an incredulous “What?” cracks out over the beach.
Laughing, Rose extracts herself from his arms. “You can’t fuse. You’re a human!”
“I know! That’s the problem,” he says morosely. “I’m just a human.”
“That’s not a problem. I love humans—you’re all so funny!”
Garnet can feel the human’s grimace from here. “Look,” he says, tone becoming rather strained. “These last few months have been great—”
“Oh, yes,” Rose smirks.
He speaks a little more insistently, “But I’m getting a little worried about the future—”
“Oh! Just ask Garnet.”
“I’m starting to wonder if you… respect me?”
“Oh!” She laughs, a rich and feminine giggle. The kind of laugh that never fails to charm her human consorts into forgetting what they had been speaking about, though Garnet thinks she can detect a hint of genuine amusement as well. “Oh, you’re hilarious, Mr. Universe!”
“Rose, please!”
She laughs on. It will work eventually.
“Can you just—talk to me for one second—!”
She keeps laughing.
“Like a real person!”
Rose Quartz goes silent. She goes silent, and her façade of the perfect romantic human partner cracks. The music has stopped playing, the record spinning and scratching above even the sound of the waves. “I’m… not a real person,” she says. For the first time, she is beginning to look uncomfortable. Her equilibrium is destabilized; for once, she does not seem to know what to do. Her control over the human and this situation is slipping.
A human has never called her out before. Garnet scarcely calls her out. What sort of human is this Greg Universe, really?
From behind the stone, Pearl twitches, ready to leap to Rose’s defense. Garnet touches her arm.
“No. Let’s see how she handles this.”
“I thought—haven’t we…?” Rose falters, hard. Her voice becomes small. “Is this not how it works?”
Garnet’s known of Rose’s interest in ‘how it works’, but only from a recreational standpoint. How she sounds now defies that presumption utterly. She isn’t merely curious because humans are amusing and silly creatures with bizarre customs like mating, she wants to know.
“Oh,” Universe says. Garnet can hear that something fragile within him is beginning to shatter like so many gems on the battlefield. This conversation is rapidly evolving into something charged and serious. “Oh, this is so weird, you really are an alien!” He puts a hand to his forehead, tangles fingers in his mane of hair, begins laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” asks Rose.
The laughter fractures, becomes broken. Moisture leaks down his cheeks from his eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
Greg Universe looks at Rose directly. “How are we going to make this work?”
That’s a new one.
“Fusion?” asks Rose, skepticism warring with the incredulity in her demeanor.
“No, us!” He sniffles. “We’re really, really different.”
And Rose Quartz, revolutionary tactician, winner of wars with impossible odds—she looks lost. “What do we do now?”
“Let’s just—talk,” Universe says, and he holds out his arms.
Garnet supposes she could have checked to see what Rose would do. She supposes she could have shown up to the makeshift dancefloor tonight already knowing how the night would end. She did not check, though, and so she is just as interested as Pearl and Amethyst to see Rose take the wordless offer and step back into the human—her human’s—arms.
Rose Quartz has always wanted to be a part of the human’s legends. She has always wanted to understand what the humans refer to as romance, and play a part in one of their stories about it. Moments like this, holding someone and speaking honestly about a Homeworld they would never see, about your own existence as something other than human, are never chronicled, if they ever existed at all. This moment is entirely novel.
And Garnet wonders, is that what Rose has been looking for this whole time?