» @triiallinggemstcne
Lars closed his eyes. He had stopped keeping track of the time since departing from the gem homeworld. It had been too long. Fights with other gems had been brutal. If nothing else, Emerald had certainly put her mark on their ship. It had come to the point that, no matter how many times they stopped to repair the ship, it never stayed at full speed for long. Would they have been home by now if they had just managed to avoid those attacks? Lars wondered about the possibility.
He wanted to imagine that they were close to Earth’s galaxy. Elaborate tracking was offline to preserve power and hide themselves from the systems of potential enemies. The off-colors had never been outside of their homeworld’s orbit, and Lars hadn’t had such an interest in astronomy to be able to know exactly where they were. They knew the approximate direction to head in, and that was it.
The ship was rocking and creaking, and Lars tried to imagine the Earth’s ocean. Perhaps they were close. After all, they hadn’t encountered any Homeworld ships in quite a while... It had given him the confidence to try and sleep again. The inability to feel tired anymore made it a learning experience, and of course it was risky, but it was a simple way to pass the time-- and above all else, it made him feel human again.
P I N K . The color haunted his dreams recently, and it was even stronger now. A bright, loud, consuming shade of pink. It was such a loud color that it almost drowned out the sounds of shouting and alarms. Almost. Lars jolted awake the flashing, vibrant, alarming shade of red.
“ Captain Lars!! There’s a ship nearby- It’s heading in our direction--!! ”
Rhodonite’s anxiety-ridden words punctured his ears, and Lars was awake.
❝ Set our trackers to them. Let them know that we’re here. Don’t engage in combat yet... I want to see what they do, first. ❞
