The Galaxy Warp had always seemed special to me, with the stars in the sky almost always illuminating while the crystal warps reflected the light, giving the place that magical touch, but today it just felt "Normal," if I can put it that way. I looked at the place with that fascination for "magical" things to which I was exposed daily, but it was a small spark compared to the first times I came to this place.
Garnet stopped in front of one of the cracked crystal pillars and tried to test it until she quickly emitted that the thing was not going to work in any way.
"Inactive" she spoke curtly, or not really; it was difficult to read Garnet's expressions.
I approached quickly. I took out one of my metallic stickers and pasted it carefully. "Error 404: Not Found." It was funny after I understood where the joke comes from, or so I tried to think so as not to feel so bad for them.
Amethyst let out a mocking laugh when she tested the next one, repeating the process almost like a game, but when we got to Pearl, the atmosphere changed.
"Inactive" she spoke in a sigh that allowed poorly disguised sadness and nostalgia to show through.
I did not want to press her tone with any questions. Pearl was proving... difficult lately. Defensive about everything, irritated, and she knew more or less why, or at least in part.
"Do we really have to test them all, girls?" Amethyst asked, already annoyed, with a hand on her hip while looking somewhat disdainfully at the rest of the warps just as broken as the one she was standing on. "They are still inactive and that is how they will stay for eternity."
"We have to make sure that is the case" Garnet said after a brief silence.
A silence I used a bit to ask a question I had already asked many times in the past, but this time not out of my curiosity, but to distract Pearl from that sinkhole of negative thoughts reflected on her face as we continued with the task of testing the warps.
Yes, thinking about it, since she fused with Adrian, she saw a bit of the benefit of the subtle manipulations he himself performed with everyone to maintain his "stage."
"And anyway, where do all these warps end up?" I asked while pasting another sticker.
"No idea" Amethyst said, shrugging her shoulders while taking one of the many stickers I was carrying to put it on another warp. Garnet simply hummed in silence while doing the same.
Pearl, on the other hand, spoke naturally with a bit of nostalgia but much calmer than I originally thought she would, which was a victory for her.
"Well Nora, these warps were the connection to other worlds that the gems controlled throughout the universe" she spoke a bit dreamily while extending her hand toward the firmament. "As well as the gems' homeworld" she finished with her hand on her chest as she began a history class where Pearl took the trouble to explain which warp led to which planet and what they were like, which pulled her out of her brief episode of sadness until they finished and Pearl's look became somewhat bitter again. Something she herself noticed and that she would have to find a way to solve.
...
Greg was having one of those days off he took from everything, from his work or hobbies, to spend time with his beloved daughter. Getting up to date with her life in the last week, suffering the occasional micro-infarct upon hearing the dangers to which she is exposed, making him touch the 9mm he always carries by mere reflex. Paranoia, some would say.
Sitting in one of those bad plastic chairs with a half-finished beer inside a paper bag in my hand, my daughter sitting and thoughtful at my side drinking an iced strawberry juice because responsibilities, the two of us watching an old space travel movie set with ships made of mixtures of wood and metal with a clear stereotyping of pirate cultures.
"Dad, I want to build a spaceship" she blurted out suddenly as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and knowing the gems and... Adrian, it would not be something as crazy as it sounded at first, nor would it be the strangest thing in which he has participated.
I looked at her sideways to see if it was some request or something else. There was something in her look; you could tell how the gears in her head seemed to fit together another kind of plan.
"A ship, huh?" I took a drink of the beer. "The barn has plenty of spare parts; besides, if metal is missing, one can always go to the scrapyard on the outskirts of town." I finished the beer with another drink before continuing to speak. "But daughter, why do you want to build a spaceship?" I asked before opening another beer from the cooler beside me.
"Pearl has been sad or nostalgic lately? Likewise, the clear aversion between her and Adrian has done nothing but get bigger" she said while drinking the magenta-colored juice in her hand before continuing. "So I want the two of them to help me make a ship to keep them in one place for at least a couple of days." she stopped to stir the rest of the juice in her glass with the straw. "I do not really expect the ship to be completed or function, but for them to spend time together so they resolve their problems while with the ship we make Pearl feel a bit better" she finished explaining.
He weighed his daughter's plan; the truth is that it was largely good. He himself could know how emotional Pearl could get since Nora's birth; even now, she, totally accepting that Rose was gone, continued making the interactions between the two of them mostly awkward. He could understand Pearl a bit by thinking that the same would happen with Nora; as a father, his daughter will always come first, but he was a rational enough man to know the boy was not the type who would hurt his daughter or that history was going to repeat itself. Nora and Adrian were too different from Rose and him. Of that he is sure, but even so, he will still not stop scaring the boy even when he gave him a weapon of the type that could help him protect his precious girl.