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Steven often looks up at the portrait of his mother and wonders. Her eyes are shut, but even now, he feels her gaze on him.
He only has vague memories of her. The feel of her hair tickling his neck as she holds him. Her height, towering over Dad and even Garnet, making the long dresses she always wore seem like the drapes of a curtain. The sound of her voice in a lullaby, an adaptation of one of Dad’s many, many songs, so long ago it is less the voice itself that remains in his memory, but the memory of the memory.
“Sometimes, you even look like her,” Pearl murmurs in a moment of weakness, unable to meet his gaze.
“Your mother left much of her magic behind when she decided to live among mortals,” Garnet says as Steven fails, again, to summon even a lick of magic. “Only Pearl saw most of it. Perhaps that’s affected you, and what you can do.”
“Y’know,” Amethyst says over tears late one night, “she was kind of my mom, too.”
Nobody talks about what happened to her.
Steven was too young to remember. He must’ve been a few years old, at least, when it happened. He’s been to the library and read a lot about what kinds of things you can remember at certain ages, so he was probably four or five.
Ten-ish years ago, his mother disappeared.
“Nobody really knows what happened,” Greg says to him when Steven finally gets up the courage to ask. “At least, if they do, then they won’t tell me. All I know is that one day she was there, and the next… she was gone.”
“She didn’t say goodbye?”
“She put the ring that I gave her — that I wove out of verbena and thyme — she left it next to my pillow.” Greg gestures behind him to the van and he gives a soft laugh. He wears that same ring now where a wedding ring should go. “When I woke up with that next to me… I guess I knew.”
“She was always kinda weird, even for a fey.” Amethyst speaks around a mouthful of meat. Steven doesn’t know what kind it is, but he’s gotten used to the stench of raw meat by this point. “And I’m one of the few werewolves who like fey.”
“What do you mean by ‘weird?’”
“Like, she never used any magic — ‘cept her wings sometimes, I guess —” It’s the first time Steven has ever heard anyone say his mother had wings. They aren’t in the portrait. “— and she healed people sometimes, if regular ol’ first aid couldn’t cut it. And she always knew way more than any other fey about anyone. Like she was spying on everyone all the time. Kinda creepy, but like. I guess not too out of the ballpark for most of your kind.”
“Oh, you should have seen her, Steven.” Pearl always sounds as if she could swoon when she talks about his mother. “Rose always did what was best for everyone. Even though she vanished, I’m sure she’s still thinking of us.”
“Everyone else seems to think she died.” And what could possibly have been good for everyone else by just dying off-screen, like she was some minor character in a bad movie, instead of someone everyone loved and adored and treasured beyond measure?
“No.” Pearl’s voice is hardened, resolute. “Rose is not dead. I would know. I served her directly. We are tied together by an invisible string of fate, the bond still held by…”
Steven zones out, because Pearl always does that. “Then why don’t you go look for her?”
“If she wanted to be found, I would know.” A pause as Steven stares at her, knowing just how much of a cop-out that answer is. “And… we tried. But she seems to have just vanished, like water evaporating.”
People don’t just vanish. Even if they’re fey.
“I could read the signs to try to pinpoint her location,” Garnet says over her afternoon tea. “But even if I found something, it would likely only lead to her corpse.”
Fey don’t just die.
“Not even I could have foreseen it,” Sapphire murmurs when Steven approaches her. “It was troubling, but it was not surprising.”
“Huh?”
“We fey have always been unpredictable creatures. Rose more so than any of us. She evaded my future vision in ways only Ruby ever has.”
“Ruby,” Steven whispers to her when he gets a moment alone — just as she’s about to cook dinner — “none of you would ever leave, right?”
“Of course not, Steve-O!” Ruby laughs, as if the question is the most ridiculous thing in the world, as she lights the gas oven with the tip of her finger. “We’re all here to stay!”
But Rose left, and they’d all thought the same thing then.
Steven looks up at the portrait and, for a split second, could have sworn he’d seen her eyes open.