Gem biology
the freak circus x land of the lustrous au
You put some books in your bag along with some gemstones you collected and putting them in, you were heading to the circus later tonight as agreed to the doctor's deal because like hell you're gonna show him where you live.
At the doctor tent
The doctor looked over the stuff you laid out on the table, books that looked old but yet taken care of despite their age, gemstone parts of different colours with different hardness levels. "These should give the answers you're looking for doctor, do be careful with the books they.....arnt like the current version of books today"
Doctor hummed picking up one of the books carefully and looking through the pages
"Interesting....and this is all the information about your species?"
"From what we got so far yeah.....is your name actually doctor?"
"Yes" he said it bluntly flipping through a page as he didn't look up, he soon pulled out a book of his own dotting every information he wrote down, at least parts that were important or interesting to him.
You sat on one of the chairs, noticing leather straps, geez he probably withdraws blood from people and does experiments with them. "I can answer any question if you like"
The doctor nodded and stayed silent the only sound was the sound of paper flipping and the sound of a pen writing down on paper.
"I have to ask, your species are beings of living gemstones but it says here that if one is not fully formed they are inanimate"
"Yeah it's a bit sad in a way, just think about it, coming so far to be formed only to not form completely and never getting a chance again but since they are like corpses we use them as spare parts for others"
Doctor nodded and wrote that down "That's understandable, it says here all of you are born to look around to be a teen and have no gender"
"That's correctly thought some of us change appearance to mimic human age in a way to look like adults, our hair acts similar to human hair but can also not look like human air but are still able to tie it up and cut it but once cut it cant grow back and as for some who wish to be girls would sometimes carve their own....ya know....water jugs" you walked over to him and looked over to see the book, neat handwriting and the pitchers of the gem body was almost similar to the orginal drawing. "your good at drawing"
"Thanks, it's required when requiring research"
After he got what he wanted from the books you showed him the two gems on the table "as you already know gems have a hardness level to 1 to 10 but it doesn't always count sometimes for example diamonds are tough but if hit the right place it shatters, now!"
You grabbed the black gemstone "This is a bort with a hardness of 10 and is a diamond class the highest and it's hard to break and this" you pointed to the pink gem next to it " is rhodochrosite a scale of 3.5 and breaks easily"
You picked up the rhodochrosite and were able to snap a piece off with ease "It's also easily scratched" You looked at the doctor who kinda looked.....zoned out for a second before nodding.
"if you lose a piece and are unable to retrieve your orginal limb, are you able to replace it?"
"Yes we can though we try not to lose any pieces as it holds our memories for example if I were to lose my legs I'd lose a lot of my memories, but when it comes to replacing with other materials, as long as they are compatible, usually in the form of similar mineral composition and hardness it should work"
"and the powder is to mimic human skin"
"Correct! Though throughout history we have to update it to be more human skin-like than how it was before to mimic the softness of real human flesh"
"the book also says you were also hunted?"
You froze up at that and the doctor definitely noticed that "yes we were when humans began to advance in weaponry they saw us as many things, but in the beginning, they saw us as gods messengers like angels due to our lustrous gem bodies, some even good luck, but as time changed they saw us as nothing more then prey to hunt, not to eat but to rip apart made into jewellery or accessories like make up and dye colours"
You held your arm clearly uncomfortable but kept going "But over time humans began to lose interest in the hunt as we hid and were mostly lost to time. But now there's a group of hunters that make it their goal to get all of us and do God knows what to us! Carrying bows and arrows and spears, nets and other traps to use on us just to break us!"
You slammed your hand on the table hard causing your arm to crack "I even lost my partner to them" You looked up at the doctor "Humans are fragile, weak but when it comes to hunting they are relentless"
The doctor approached you and you froze as he grabbed your arm gently looking over the crack "I had my fair share with humans like that, that's why I try to understand humans, to understand what makes them tick to....mimic them, to be like one as well"
"your not human are you?" you asked but you already knew the answer.
"Far from it"