August | 2015 | Site Title

Winning the war. Pearl/Rose, PG.

–

“We won,” Pearl gasps. “We won! We’re alive, we’re alive, we’re alive!”

She launches herself into Rose’s arms, and then Garnet is there, slinging her arms around both of them, and then Rose lifts them up, sobbing – from relief or grief, Pearl will never wonder. Pearl can’t stop laughing, though the acrid smell of war still hangs in the air. There is so much dust from cracked gems that the rolling hills are obscured in their haze. Green-gray clouds swirl in the twilight sky.

“We won,” Rose whispers. Her tears trickle onto Pearl’s shoulders. To Pearl, they are an absolution.

–

They don’t retrieve the shards that night. They pick their way across the battlefield to a fallen warhammer the size of a ship and slump together in its long, tempered shadow. Pearl has spent so much time as a living dead thing that she is charmed by the harmlessness of this monolith of a weapon and its violent slash in the earth. It is remarkable how quickly the nonviolence of entropy swallows war, and with it fear.

Rose gathers Garnet and Pearl into her lap in that quiet shade and holds them, wordless. There’s no more need for riveting speeches on the sanctity of Earthling life. There is no more need for anything but this, this body-to-body-to-body love that has never needed to be won. They stay there until the night is deep, all stars and a sliver of a crescent moon; it’s only then that Garnet shifts and slides away. She feels more acutely when in motion; she will pace up and down the field until morning, not seeking the fallen, still knowing where their pieces lay.

In Garnet’s absence, Pearl curls closer to Rose. “We did it,” she whispers.

Rose’s eyes are shut, chin resting against her chest. For a moment, Pearl doesn’t think she heard her – but then she shifts, pulling Pearl flush against her. “My brave warrior,” she says. “My Pearl.”

They are still fused when the sky turns pink.

Site Title

Month: August 2015

The End of Fear