Nora looked out of the open window of the off-road truck, staring at the exposed seabed while trying hard to avoid the tension in the air, which was as dense and heavy as the chains of punishment imposed by an excessively strict mother—in her case, three mothers with the true character to carry out their threats, and a father justifiably concerned for her safety.
You know, this was not at all how she had planned her week, considering how her life was: full of alien eccentricities and secrets. Many secrets she could not even consider relevant until they exploded directly in her face.
Freeing Lapis Lazuli was not a premeditated action on her part, but rather an impulse upon understanding that the stars only know how long that blue gem had been trapped, suffering in a mirror while her mind fragmented just like the cracks in her form.
How could she have known this would happen? The situation almost spiraled out of control during what was a reprimand toward her boyfriend from her mothers—a reprimand in which he ended up with one less piece of flesh than before just because he played along with her "doing something together" game. How was she to know it was not just an object? The embedded gem? Have you seen gem technology? Almost everything has embedded crystals like computer chips.
One thing leading to another, how on earth would she not release her from her suffering? Thousands of years being just an object? Without even being able to scream? She shuddered at the mere thought of trying to put herself in that situation. How could she know that gem would lash out at the first gems she saw in so long? How could she know that gem would take the entire ocean as if it were a bucket of water barely a day after being freed?
How could she know that her TEAMmates were hiding so many IMPORTANT things from her? Yes, she was young, but not telling her things would only worsen situations more than should originally be possible for something she supposedly SHOULD know.
She was furious, worried, and felt doubt growing like weeds in her mind, with a single question appearing to annoy her at every moment with recurring insecurities she would never admit: "Do they truly consider me a Crystal Gem?"
The trip was an uncomfortable silence among everyone while her father's old rock music filled the frankly sepulchral silence. She could only squeeze Adrian's hand at her side more tightly without even looking at him directly. He only returned the gesture with a half finished, closed-eyed smile that transmitted: "we are a team, you said it yourself, so just do not forget it." But that very thing annoyed her internally for truly believing deep down that she is not part of the Crystal Gems.
Nora sighed before taking Adrian's words as truth; she pushed everything aside for a bit and simply leaned against him, closing her eyes before yielding to the lack of sleep that all this tension had been generating for her.
In the end, what do all these problems matter? She was not alone to solve them on her own, that was more than clear, but even so, she was in her damn divine right to complain about anything, and so she would.
...
Pearl was truly having a terrible day, or rather a terrible recent existence since she met the being called Adrian (she refuses to think that unnatural aberration is a human being). Frustration was an everyday thing when she heard Nora talk about him with so much enthusiasm it almost overflowed. She herself was in a conflict both with herself and with Adrian, because seeing it all, it was just a distorted repetition of the situation years ago with Rose and Greg, only without one thing: a "her" in this version of the story.
Without impediments like her, the relationship between those two seemed more like what she herself wished to experience with her still beloved Rose, but that very thing mortified her more and more because, without her being an impediment, the relationship she dreamed of was achieved—but clear as crystal, she remained and would continue to never be the protagonist.
Not to mention how insufferably manipulative Adrian is above all else; showing her illusions of her past experiences was already a red flag of the highest order, and even more so when she was so immersed in those same memories that she wondered how for the love of the stars he even knew that.
Then there were her own outbursts from not being able to stand the situation every time she was reminded that she was NOT the one who would have her "Happily ever after" in this story, irrationally taking it out on Adrian again and again only for him to remind her why she was so frustrated with everything.
Nora's gaze, still innocent and not understanding why those two got along like oil and water, used to comfort her. When she was initially defended, she felt that all was not lost yet, but that advantage was being lost more and more with every negative interaction between her and him, with Nora increasingly leaning toward the side of that aberration of reality, with the liberation of that Lapis Lazuli being the straw that broke the metaphorical camel's back.
The fear she felt and how she reacted toward Adrian, impaling part of his body on her spear, was what did it, for the look in Nora's eyes had not been the same toward her since then. For the damn love of the stars... she could only see fear, anger, and confusion mixing into a dangerous determination toward him.
Pearl sighed while wishing she were as carefree as Amethyst right now and not torture herself with her increasingly depressing thoughts as a water tower appeared like a long, thin thread on the horizon as they drew closer and closer to their destination.