It's Becoming Crystal Clear (Jasper x Reader)

Chapter 24: The Day We Say Goodbye

The days seemed to fly past. Eventually, Jasper's corruption did start to progress, but you tried not to think about it too much. As you'd agreed, you would both deal with it when you had to and not let it get in the way until then.

Her fingernails had turned a bit clawlike by the day Amethyst showed her how to shapeshift into a cat. Of course, naturally that was exactly when a trailer came on TV for Return of the Revenge of the Son of Dogcopter Origins 7: Hounds of Heck Part 2 in 3D: It's Really Quite Personal, startling Jasper and causing her to leap into your lap, transforming back to her humanoid form in the process. You had bruised legs for quite some time after.

Her teeth were fairly sharp by the time you raked up all of the multicoloured leaves into one big pile. You hid in it and leapt out at Jasper when she came looking for you. She fell flat on her back, but laughed it off, yanking your sweater up so you couldn't see and pushing you into the cushiony leaf pile. That was also the day you introduced Pinky to Pumpkin, the two immediately becoming friends, and the day you introduced Jasper to pumpkin spice everything. She was thrilled at first by how everything was orange like her, but the novelty wore off almost immediately. When Halloween came, she dressed as a tiger. You took her to the zoo with the other gems the next day to see real tigers. Her favourite animals were actually the young goats, and you ended up using all of your pocket change at the feed machine so Jasper could feed them (although Amethyst did sneak into the pen at one point, and ate a fair amount of the dried corn).

Her hair was getting shaggy when you suffered a hairline fracture of the pelvis of somewhat embarrassing origin. Luckily, Steven was able to heal you and promised to keep the matter confidential. ...What are you looking at me like that for? Wait, did you think - no no no no, what happened was, you leapt to push Jasper out of the way of an oncoming car and were hit yourself, only to realize immediately after that Jasper had been standing beside the road and not on it. You felt rather foolish, which is why the injury was embarrassing. ...although you would later sustain another pelvic injury of an unrelated nature.

A few small spikes were starting to protrude from her upper arms when you all went out to enjoy the year's first snowfall. You showed her how to catch snowflakes on her tongue, and how, if you looked up, it looked like you were flying through the stars. That night when you brought Pinky in after letting him out to pee, you called Jasper to the door so she could see how brilliantly the snow sparkled, billions of ice crystals like tiny gems, nearly infinitely varied.

The next day you wore a heavy winter coat, boots, mittens, a warm hat, and a scarf. Jasper insisted on doing the same, just because she liked the look. You made snow angels, and a snow fort, then brought over the other gems for a snowman building competition. Jasper won easily, fashioning an insanely detailed likeness of Lapis, a feat which unnerved but wowed everyone. Amethyst tried to follow up by making a snowman version of Pearl, and did a pretty good job, although Pearl didn't feel that a carrot was an accurate representation of her nose. You then had a snowball fight, with just you and Jasper versus everyone else. You nearly won, but it turned out you didn't stand a chance against Opal. You were both wet and freezing when you got home, so you went downstairs and cuddled together under a blanket near the fire with your puppy curled in your lap. The temperature plummeted in the night, so as you lay in bed you slept holding each other so tightly it would've taken a crowbar to separate you.

You brought her breakfast in bed the next morning, and continued to do so except on lazy mornings when you both prefered to stay where it was cozy a while longer. You took her to work with you a few times. She was perfect for moving heavy packages and unloading trucks, and after some persuasion, Mr. Mulligan was able to convince Jasper to let him put a "See the alien!" sign in the window, which proved very good for business.