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[burchbooks]

Reminiscence

Peridot reminisces about homeworld whilst harvesting potatoes and playing pool. Amedot Fluff.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14897012

Shards of stone and rock glistened under the light of the sun as though they were fragments of gems themselves, each one scattered along the base of each stalk. Peridot almost reflected upon this as she uprooted another potato plant, sending the specks of light cascading down alongside the dirt they were found in. She was much more preoccupied with the heat, however. It was one of the Earth's idiosyncrasies that she found herself surrounded with since she had started anew. Homeworld didn't have heat. 

Well, it'd probably be more accurate to say that Peridots didn't have heat. The richest, oldest gems could afford heat, and by proxy their pearls as well, of course. It reminded them of older times, of comfort, before the X32 star had faded out and they had gone in to decline. Now, most of the gems were left with the coldness of space itself and an almost blue orb that blocked out a third of the sky at any given point.

Peridot had never known heat. She'd never known clothes or organics either, yet here she was, in denim dungarees, harvesting potatoes with the warmth of the sun on her back. It was such an odd concept, to be honest. Accessorising with clothes other than your default standard had felt strange at first, but Amethyst loved it. She also loved potatoes, which was why Peridot had planted so damn many of them.

She pulled up another stem and started dusting off the next plant. Steven had been horrified to find out that Amethyst and Peridot had been eating them raw. Apparently, they were different to his "apples" and had to be heated up until they were mushy on the inside but not on the outside.

It seemed tedious and burnt her mouth, so she just ate them raw.

Not that she ate a whole deal. It was unnecessary and she was indifferent to it as a whole, but it did make her feel like an upper-class gem. It made her feel as though, for reasons she couldn’t pin down just yet, she had made it in life, even though she thought the notion that a raw potato meant anything symbolically was quite ridiculous.

"Hey, 'Dot!"

Her reflections were shattered by the voice that hollered across the field. She could just about see Amethyst's purple hand waving about in the air from where she was, under the massive door to the barn.

"Come play pool with me!"

What the hell was pool?

"OK! I need to finish up and then - "

"Forget the potatoes!"

Well, there was always tomorrow.

"Alright," she hollered back, standing up and giving the plant in her hand one final dust before putting it in the canvas bag to join the rest of them.

Homeworld didn't have games, either.

Amethyst was standing in a shaded corner of the barn, leaning against a table with three legs and crunching on the end of a beer bottle. She had been staring at a pool table. The dark green pelt was peeling up at the corners, slightly, and had one major scuff that went diagonally and was almost impossible to miss. The wood looked sturdy, and the design on the legs had, at some point, been intricate; however, all that was left of it now were scuffs and scratches.

Peridot put the sack of potatoes next to the doorway and fished one out, offering it to Amethyst. She strolled up and took it, eating it whole before putting a white ball down on the table.

"Here," she said, offering the cue to Peridot, "you can start."

Peridot looked from her smile, which looked genuine enough, to the stick, and back to her.

"How do you play pool?"

"You, uuh, put the balls in the holes. You see the holes in the edges?" She gestured towards the table. "Yeah. You put the balls on the table in to the holes. Whoever does that the most wins."

Peridot took the stick and walked up to the table, studying it for a moment in slight confusion. She looked to the white ball, separate from the others. She looked back up to Amethyst, who gave her a smile and a thumbs up, then back down. As it was clearly worth the most points, due to it being separate, she picked it up and put it in the closest pocket.

Amethyst just laughed.

Amethyst's laugh was different to the others' laughs. She doubled over and grabbed her side, laughing louder than anyone else in the area. Pearl's laugh was condescending, and Jasper's laugh was meant to intimidate, but when Amethyst laughed it was out of pure joy. It sounded different because it was different, and that was the beauty of Earth.

People had different laughs because they could.

None of the gems on homeworld laughed. Homeworld had a strict philosophy which stated that if no one had any emotion, there could never be sadness or negativity. The truth, of course, is that when there is no emotion, sadness blossoms and fills the void. Not that any of the gems had been equipped to deal with that.

Amethyst walked forward and plucked the white ball out of the net and placed it back where it had been, completely undoing all of Peridot's work. Peridot went to grab the ball and put it back, but Amethyst's gentle hand on top of her own stopped it mid-air.

"Watch, like this." She placed the cue in to Peridot's hands and lined it up with the ball. "You've got to put your left hand here," she said, moving Peridot's hand so that it could guide the ball, "and your right hand here," she continued, moving it so that it was under her own hand.

"Then," she said, applying pressure to Peridot's back with her own chest, so that Amethyst herself was almost in the right pose to take a shot, "you bend forward. Look down the cue and you'll be fine, P-dot."

That was very easy to say when you didn't have another person pressed up so close to you that all you could think about was how much of you was touching them, and the fact that she could hardly see because she kept on getting distracted by the scent of Amethyst, which was somehow like grapes, and the sensation of her cool fingertips dancing around and brushing over her own hand, and-

"Peri. You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm, I mean, I will be, I'm." She stopped and took a breath. "I'm god. Good! I'm good. The writer made a typo."

Amethyst just chuckled. "Take your shot then, 'Dot. I'm on the edge of my seat here."

She was on the edge of a lot of things, but Peridot decided not to comment as she took the shot. The white ball slid along the table, spinning like a planet in orbit as it curved towards the side of the triangle. They both collided with a satisfying clack before the white ball bounced off and continued to hit the end of the table. The triangle had only slightly parted, with many of the balls still clustered in the centre of the table.

"Not bad, Peri!" Amethyst took the cue and took her own shot. It looked quick and sloppy, done in half the time that Peridot took to take her shot, but it still potted a red ball. She managed to pot three more balls before she had to hand the cue back.

"How did you - "

"I've been doing this for three hundred years. Don't beat yourself up about it."

Peridot looked at the cue in her hands. As a technician, it was vital that she was able to listen to instructions and follow them through perfectly. She prided herself on being able to fix foreign engines after having only been told how to once.

"Could you... show me how to do that again? This stupid game makes no sense."

Amethyst walked over and ran her hand down Peridot's arm, lacing her own fingers through hers to show her how to grip the cue.

"Sure thing."