Sparkly

Blur

A girl sat on a rock, facing away from Caroline. She shone with all the colors of the rainbow, her dress an elaborate concoction of floof and frills.

She turned to Caroline, her eyes wide.

"Where am I? Who are you? I want to go home." she said.

She looked like a teenager, like the entire Gem Squad, but she had the innocent eyes of a young child.

"You're on my planet. I think your consciousness is inside me right now. Don't worry, we'll get you home."

The words slipped out of Caroline's mouth without her thinking about them, but she considered the words anxiously for a moment.

If this creature went home, would that mean she would take her power with her?

The creature nodded, trusting Caroline.

She couldn't avoid taking a child to their parents for the sake of crime fighting. Caroline hoped that was the reason she was making this decision and not because she was exhausted by the responsibility being Blue Crystal put on her.

"Where is my body?" the girl said, looking around the empty plains nervously. "I want it back."

"I have a shard of it here, but last I saw, most of it was in space. I can take you to it." Caroline offered.

"I want the whole thing not some tiny shard." the girl said, screwing up her face.

"And I said, you'll get it." Caroline said patiently.

Caroline opened her eyes, still aware of the creature's presence inside her. Her crystals split and surrounded her, and she made herself intangible and rose through the roof.

As she had in her dream, she rose farther and farther above the earth, moving so fast the world below her became a shrinking blur, and entered space.

It was easy to find the asteroid with the creature fully conscious.

The rainbow girl slipped into the asteroid, and the gems shifted shape into the form she'd appeared in Caroline's head.

"Okay I'm going home now! Come with and meet my Ren!" she said, grabbing Crystal's hand and teleporting before she could protest.

Crystal found herself floating in a blindingly bright place with many shimmering colors. She felt her eyes adjust rapidly to the ever present glow. There were massive pillars extending from far to either side of her into arches above her head in the faint distance. Spaces in between the pillars extended into smaller passageways, and in front of her there was an equally massive entrance into what looked like a throne room.

Overwhelmed by the grandeur, she limply let the girl pull her through the air into the throne room, where an older, brighter person surrounded by a floating mist of tiny white rocks was talking to a boy with a long cape of dark multicolored gems.

The older person beamed when they spotted the rainbow girl.

"You're finally home, Czesh!" they said.

"I was sleeping and got a bit lost. But look I brought a friend!" Czesh said.

"Uh... nice to meet you." Crystal said uncertainly.

"You know they have kind of short lifespans though?" the boy said.

"Yeah, so what?" Czesh replied.

"It'll be much longer if you leave that shard with them." the parent said.

"You can have it as, as a reward for keeping my consciousness." Czesh said lightly.

"Thank you. What about the others?" Crystal asked.

"The other what?"

"There are a few more shards with other people... other humans." Crystal specified.

"Oh, I don't need them." Czesh said.

So nothing would change with the Gem Squad.

"Is there anything else you'd like, human?" Czesh asked.

Warning bells went off in Crystal's head- if creatures with much longer lifespans, unknown moral codes, and immense power hung around earth, it could be bad.

"No, you've been great. Thank you so much for showing me all this, um, Czesh?"

"Yeah?" Czesh asked, misunderstanding Crystal's questioning tone.

"So that is your name. Anyway, I'll be going home now?" Crystal said.

"Byebye! Maybe I'll stop by your planet sometime." Czesh said.

Crystal smiled at the little girl, trying not to wonder what kind of trouble she could cause wandering around earth.

She was relieved to find that her teleportation brought her straight back to her room as usual.