As a child, Romelle dreamed of the stars.
She didn’t know anything past the pale blue sky hanging overhead the colony. Her scope of the universe ended at the height of the tall grasses, trees, and Prince Lotor’s towering statue. All that was taught that existence exists beyond the colony and that this existence is no good. It’s a corrupt thing—a plague. It ate away their beautiful planet with violent bloodthirst. It’s impossible to reach any world beyond the colony, so there’s no point or reason in trying. Nothing good is out there, except for the prince who protects them.
But the myths unravel. They spill out and tangle through the masses like a ball of yarn that has tipped over the edge of a table. They wrap around Romelle and she clings to them with a fervent curiosity. She won’t let it go. These strings of history—they are hers. The townspeople can laugh and roll their eyes. Still, she persists. In the quiet, dimming twilight of a land locked by its horizon, Romelle tells her little brother stories about a princess.
She tells him about her glimmering, white hair that floated down past her waist like clouds. She tells him that she has marks like them, in a dainty pink color. Such a lovely color, fitting for a royal princess. Her skin is a dark, dark bronze, like armor and she’s never seen without her crown.
“How do you know?” Her brother, Bandor, asks.
The details that Romelle doesn’t know, she makes up. Bandor asks her what the princess wears. She creates an elegant gown in her mind and insists it’s her clothes for when the Alteans hosted balls. Frankly, she doesn’t even know if they did that—maybe Romelle picked up the idea from a story book. Her brother is none the wiser. Besides, the princess looks beautiful in the dress she has conjured. Should the Alteans have had balls, it’d be a tragedy if she hadn’t worn something similar.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
Romelle wrinkles her nose in disgust. “No, stop interrupting.”
She tells Bandor about the daunting tales of the princess as well. How she stopped an assassination with her quick wit and rounded up a gang of thieves that bothered commoners. These myths travelled by mouth, but Romelle fact checked her sources—she spoke to several others about it too and they all agreed with the story she told.
“—and then she hits him with the, the uh, spear!” Romelle stands atop the foot of their shared bed and jabs her arm into the air.
Bandor is tucked in bed with a smile. “What’s a spear?”
“Like those…” Romelle thinks. “Sticks! No…—Oh! Like what we use to catch fish.”
“The princess goes fishing?”
“No! She uses the spear to stab her enemies.”
“She eats her enemies?” He cries.
Like all things grand and feeble, the nights of storytelling come to an end. Bandor leaves her to board Lotor’s mysterious spacecraft. He comes back in a burning escape pod with a heartbeat too faint to revive. He’s asleep forever before she can say more than one sentence. There will be no more bedtime tales.
Two Galra aid her vengeful investigations about Lotor. Galra! Those that have been written into their minds as evil help her while the crooked Lotor is being paraded as a savior. Keith Kogane and Krolia hold her hands with sympathetic gazes as Romelle cries. They anchor her down as her world starts to rot and grey.
She mourns her cheated brother. She hurts for her long dead parents. She laments for the fate of her innocent neighbors and the facade of a safe haven from the war. She cries for a civilization long toppled and a princess that had to bear the loss.
Keith and Krolia whisk Romelle away from her deteriorating colony in their high-fi space ship. They whizz past supernovas, galaxies, and stars—Keith points all of them out for her as they pass by. Still, for the most part, space is empty. Space is so…so dull. The things that are there, the things Romelle once poured over with immense fascination with her brother, exist meaninglessly.
It troubles her to see the open plains of darkness. Where will she go now that she’s left the colony? Romelle can’t go back—she’s a traitor. Lotor will have her head. She doesn’t know anything but the colony. She doesn’t know how to fly, any other languages, any other planets, or anyone but the two soldiers accompanying her. Romelle is homeless. She’s lost, although maybe she has been since the second Bandor’s eyes shut forever.
Krolia tells her not to worry. Voltron will help her. Voltron? The name seems as meaningless as everything else in outer space. There is nothing that can help Romelle.
Then, the ship docks at a beautiful, white castle floating through space. Then, Keith leads them through sleek doors and hallways adorned with the same pink and blue hues that glow under the eyes of her people.
Then, Romelle is guided into an open room filled with suited strangers and she comes face to face with a princess with clouds for hair and dainty, pink marks.
“Lotor is a traitor.” Keith stalks forward with intent. Romelle is still staring.
The princess is frozen in shock too. She stares dead at Romelle—only Romelle. Not Keith, Krolia, or the fluffy creature knelt by their side. She can’t fathom what the princess is searching for in her eyes; Romelle is hollow, through and through. She’s left everything behind.
It doesn’t even register to her that Lotor is in the room until another man knocks him unconscious and sweeps him away. The whole room breaks into chaos and Romelle is left stranded. Orders are being shouted and alarms are beeping.
In the midst of it all, the princess comes forward and grasps her hand.
Her palm is unexpectedly rough and calloused. From the spear, Romelle thinks.
“You…” She says, “Who are you?”
Day One: Constellations/Dreams
