Work Text:
Magpie
Another wee drabble before hiatus ends. After the weekend I'll have a proper BD update.
This is more of a Dressforms side story.
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They all get along differently with humans, no matter what continent they happen to be on, their interactions tend to be the same.
Rose genuinely enjoys their company, most of the time anyway, and will talk for hours with anyone from the ruler of the land to the lowliest serf. She loves to hear their stories and their songs, and on occasion having a scandalous romp with the more attractive ones. It's no surprise really, of the Crystal Gems she is the most recognizably 'human.'
Garnet is most comfortable in her own company, she is polite but distant to interested humans and trying to have a conversation with her is like pulling teeth. She only fights them when it's absolutely necessary, and likewise only talks to them as needed. Despite this, she is fond of children, and they are fascinated by her. She will sit and watch them play for hours, and answers their questions with more words than a human would usually get from her.
Amethyst connects with humans far better than the others; all she's ever known is Earth and the Crystal Gems, it seems natural that she acts more like Earth's other native species than a gem. She eats with them, though she doesn't need to, she sleeps like them, and she generally likes their brand of 'fun.' The gem in her really comes to the forefront when there's war on the horizon, she gets excited and full of energy, almost like she can smell blood in the air.
Pearl, however...
...when Pearl deigns to speak to a human at all (and it's very, very rare) it's almost always a woman, of a certain type. A well-educated, soft-spoken graceful woman, a queen or a princess or a noblewoman of some sort. The friendship she had with Murasaki Shikibu was the longest she had ever been involved with a human, but they had bonded over Murasaki's immaculate work.
Because Pearl can give or take humans, but what she truly loves is the things they create. She has been known to smuggle things that take her fancy out of places they visit in her subspace, and Rose has had to return them more than once to their furious owners. Little idol statues, paintings, books, vases...if it was made by human hands, Pearl probably has one stashed away.
The swords are a different matter. Pearl will argue and say she enjoys them for aesthetic reasons, and that may be true, but Rose has noticed a certain kind of mad glee flashing in her eyes when she spots a sword. Swords make up the bulk of her collection, and she has never had to steal one.
Humans are very quick to settle disputes with the gems by offering one-on-one combat, and when Rose offers them the choice of gems to battle they almost always pick Pearl. Nine times out of ten Pearl will fight them so she can take their swords as the winner's spoils. Garnet prefers not to fight humans, and Amethyst rarely holds back, so it's a solution that works for all of them.
(Maybe not for Amethyst; she likes a good scrap, and moans that Pearl gets to have all the fun.)
Pearl's first won sword is a xiphos, won from a Spartan soldier who had refused to fight a 'woman' at first but was subsequently humiliated when she defeated him in a matter of seconds. She hadn't intended to take his sword, but he offered all of his weapons to her as a sign of respect. She took only the sword, and thus began her collection.
One of the most unusual swords in the collection is a Damascus steel blade she received as a gift from the Persian Emperor's favourite wife. The blade is rippled like drops of water on the surface of a pond, and it has never been used, only admired.
Likewise, she owns two shamshirs, both from Persia but received with a gap of almost a hundred years between them. The first, a relatively plain curved blade, belonged to a Selijuk Turk she had duelled with, and the second, a much more ornamental blade engraved with images of beautiful women, was part of a set of gifts given to Rose by Darius as thanks for getting rid of Alexander.
Her zhanmadao and zweihander, two-handed blades that she can wield in just one hand, are almost as tall as Pearl herself. She is not fond of them; she finds the zhanmadao wobbly and the zweihander awkward. The colourfully named bastard sword suits her better; it's stable and much more streamlined in its movements.
The urumi is an object with great pride attached to it, and one of the few swords given to her instead of taken. It is unusual for anyone to master the whiplike blade; indeed, Pearl lost her fingers and half of one foot before she got the technique down properly. The learned man who had made the urumi wept when he insisted she keep it.
She has a kampilan, one of the last created before they left the Phillipines for the Spanish coast, and she has used it to cut down more than one conquistador; the original owner would be proud.
She has several rapiers, all of them won in duels. More than one wife has come to her to beg for their husband's sword back. Likewise, most of her katanas come from headstrong young toughs gambling with the family steel, but with the katana the whole family, servants included, turn out to beg for the sword back. Begging makes Pearl uncomfortable, and as much as she wants to keep the sword she finds herself handing them back.
She even has a lance taken from a joust, a swordstick with a concealed blade, a single claymore and a jian. She has a better collection of artifacts than most of the world's museums.
If you were to ask her what her favourite sword is, she would more than likely say it's one of her katanas, especially if she's in the company of Murasaki at the time. However, Rose suspects it's really the kilij; Pearl took it from Tamerlane herself, and during their bout the kilij's blade shattered the short sword she'd been using. She still won the duel, she didn't need a blade to do that, but she was impressed enough to take it for herself. The blade is weighted at the tip and is as graceful in its movements as Pearl herself.
It's very surprising then when Pearl finally manages to manifest her own weapon, and it's not a sword. In fact, the spear looks more like the naginata, the long blade-tipped pole favoured by Japanese noblewomen.
Then again, Murasaki was able to use a naginata, so perhaps it's not so surprising after all.