Everything fades away, come turning of the tide | Day 332 [OPEN]

[grandiflora]

Who: Rose Quartz, OPEN
Open: Open
When: Evening of 332
Where: Monument -> Rose's house
What: Most of the Bastion is grieving, angry, or trying to deal with said emotions. Rose? She's just trying to settle in to this strange new life of hers.
Format: Action
Warnings: Possible spoilers for Steven Universe? Also possible talk of war and the like

[Not everyone was affected by events recently passed in the Bastion. As much as Rose would have liked to say she had a feeling regarding it one way or another, she really couldn't. This place was still new to her. It's people were still new to her. The passing of one whom she had never spoken to was sad and she was more than understanding at the sorrow the others around her felt...

It was just not an emotion she herself could dredge up properly.

There were always going to be casualties, and for as peaceful as the Bastion itself was their situation was hardly peaceful at all. Time would pass as it always did, regardless of how any of them dealt with it.

In the quiet that had settled on the Bastion in more current days, Rose had spent time on the Skyway as she always did, hoping for some hint of her Gems out there in the haze. There was none, but she returned with a good haul of shards in the meantime.

Today, however, she wasn't out there like she normally had been. Instead she could be seen, barefoot as always, taking trips from the house with the observatory room to the Monument and back again. Three times she went, carrying a wooden flat of some sort of strange plant. A fourth time she returned not with a plant but a shimmering pink weapon at her side.

Though she'll hardly expect to be approached given how busy everyone must be, she'll certainly respond if anyone does.]

Comments

[countingthunder]

[River means that she has another errand to complete, but since Rose should already know that, she doesn't bother to clarify.

She just sits down on the floor and stares at the moss as though expecting it to do something.]

[grandiflora]

[Well, she does, and if she isn't going to be interrupted from the task she'll willingly leave River in her home to do just that.

While Rose is gone, though, the moss does actually begin to move, slowly with an almost lethargic wobble to it's strange form. Almost as if it's waking up for the first time.]

[countingthunder]

[River just sits and watches for a few minutes before she starts talking to the moss.]

Born away from the world you came from. Do you think this is home? Is this good enough? Or do you feel it, something that stopped existing before you ever started?

[grandiflora]

They're used to it, actually.

[Rose speaks from the doorway, voice quiet and thoughtful.]

My plants haven't been back to the Gem homeworld in thousands of years.

[countingthunder]

Only used to it because they don't know any better.

Never been to Earth either.

[grandiflora]

No, of course not, but that doesn't mean they can't be happy. Just like human beings, plants can adapt.

[She adds with a faint smile:]

Actually, they quite liked Earth. Or, I should say, their ancestors did.

[countingthunder]

Don't adapt if we don't have to. Stubborn, force the world to change instead.

Easy here. Throw a penny in the wishing well.

[grandiflora]

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Humans of old certainly had to adopt to their environments long before they were ever capable of building around it.

[countingthunder]

But then we learned how to use them. How to change them. How to ruin them. Got better at each one.

[grandiflora]

I suppose there is something to be said for humans and their innate need to control.

[Rose sighed quietly, not that she needed the air to do so. Her gaze went to the moss, fingers fiddling with the moss gently.]

But I really can't say that the Gems were much better...

[countingthunder]

Worse, maybe.

All that time.

[grandiflora]

... I know. That's why I left.

[countingthunder]

Delaying the inevitable.

[grandiflora]

[That finally earned a stare, more confused than angered, though some part of her felt she should have had such a reaction.]

How does a human child know so much about the Gem War?

[countingthunder]

And you shall know them by their crafts.

[grandiflora]

[It takes a lot more to properly creep a Gem out, but there is a bit of uncertainty on Rose's face at that.

She can't read this girl any better than Greg can read her, and that's not something she was truly prepared for.]

5,000 years is a bit... long for a human to live, isn't it?

[Unless she's missing something else entirely here.]

[countingthunder]

She shouldn't remember.

Never even been to Earth and she's measured in obsolete solar cycles. Barely a year in the underworld.

[grandiflora]

[And now she's confused...]

What do you mean?

[countingthunder]

I can't say it any more clearly.

[grandiflora]

... you can't... "say" it any more clearly?

[Can you do something else clearly instead?]