Fall for the Leaves (A continuation of “Flower Fields”)
The leaves the crunch under us as we walk send a satisfying feeling down my spine. I watched out for different ones, being sure to step on one when I see it. I can feel Romelle being pulled along with me, following my lead. Her hand is placed comfortably in mine and we’re laughing as we end up in a sort of dance with the leaves.
The paladins are talking with the others. I hadn’t remembered all of their names yet but i knew Veronica and Rachel since they were Lance’s sisters. I swung Romelle around, catching sight of them. The people around the marketplace had watched us with interest. I wondered if they were staring at our altean marks or if they just thought we seemed happy….
Romelle slowed our swinging to a stop and took deep breaths. She always seemed to lose it easily. I wondered why, but I also didn’t think it was too serious. I smiled at her as she smiled at me. My scarf was around her neck, covering most of her chin. Her cheeks were stained red from the chill.
“Deep breaths,” I say, keeping both her hands in mine. We breath together until hers regulates. She nodded, signifying that she was okay.
“Sorry, I think I need to work on breathing more,” she said laughing lightly. I could see that she was having concerns for herself, but for the moment I let it go. I pulled her over to the others. I walked over to them to see Matt and Sam talking to Pidge about something. They all seemed excited about something. They probably had something they wanted to build. I smiled at them before moving on to look over at Keith and Lance. They’re bickering about their earnings.
“I just think we should combine our money and find something together!” Lance insists. I watch as Keith sighs. He probably would do it if it weren’t for the things the Lance usually invests his earnings in.
“I’m sorry Lance but I don’t want to spend over half of my savings on your skin products,” Keith says. He’s leaning against one of the stands where an olkari had different kinds of tech.
I shake my head at them when someone touches my shoulder lightly, I look over to see Shiro. A man stands next to him and I look him over. He has light brown hair. He wears a thick jacket that is similar to Lances, only the color is black. I smile at them and turn to face them fully. Romelle is pulled along with me, suddenly noticing the two of them.
I’m about to say something when I realize that they’re holding hands. The man that stands with Shiro sticks his hand out.
“I’m Adam. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says. He stands there awkwardly before I take my hand and grab ahold of his elbow which surprises him.
“Hello, I’m Allura, Princess of Altea and the Legacy of Voltron,” I let go of his elbow but he leaves his out for another second, still confused.
“Babe, put your arm down,” Shiro whispers, slightly nudging Adam. He complies and looks between Shiro, Romelle and then back to me.
“You didn’t tell me she was a princess!” Adam says turning away from me. I hear Romelle laugh next to me and I grin. Shiro is attempting to console Adam, telling him it’s okay and that his introduction was fine.
“How long do you think they’ve been together?” Romelle asks as she leans towards me to make sure I here her. I chuckle and glance at them.
“I’m not sure… They could have been together before Shiro got captured and if that’s the case then it’s been for quite some time,” I whispered back. Shiro and Adam were speaking to each other for a couple seconds longer before turning back to us.
“Sorry about that Princess.” Shiro says nodding towards me, “it appears my fiance wasn’t fully prepared to meet you.” He grins, showing me his teeth, I chuckle and nod.
“It’s quite alright. Adam, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend,” I say gesturing over to Romelle. She lifts a hand next to her head and waves it in greeting.
“I’m Romelle! It’s nice to meet you,” She says sticking out her arm. Adam goes to take her hand but hesitates and moves it towards her elbow.
“You too. I hope to hear about all of your adventures with Takashi!” He excitedly chuckles. I smile softly at them.
“Only if you tell us more about Shiro. He insists on focusing on the mission so we never see much of what he’s like,” I mumble that last part but I’m certain all of them were listening. I see Keith walk away from Lance and towards the Holt’s.
“Excuse me, I need to talk to Lance. Please talk to Romelle in my absence,” I smile at them brightly, moving around them, patting Adam’s arm as I passed. He turned to watch me walk away. I wondered what he thought of me… I wasn’t like the other people he’s met before. I knew that much.
I walk towards Lance as he stands alone. He looks around himself before catching my eye and smiling. I threw my arm up and waved as I came closer. He began to walk towards me and we met between on of the vendors.
“So how did convincing Keith to share his earnings go?” I asked, chuckling as his face turned sour.
“Awful! He won’t even considerate. He says it’s not important,” Lance pouts and leans his head against my shoulder as he wines. I shake my head and rub his back, “He simply doesn’t understand the effort it takes for my skin to be this beautiful!”
“Lance… If you wanted him to walk around with you, you should have asked.” I say and he pulls away from me, still frowning.
“That’s not why I want him to come! I just want him to contribute to what’s important to me!” He continues to pout. His slouch seems to get worse and I roll my eyes.
“What are your sister’s going to say when they see you like this!” I sigh as he glances at me before fixing his posture. He looked around us for a couple seconds before looking back at me.
“Are they here? Did you see them? Oh no! Are you guys planning to do something?” He’s staring at me and I laugh at him as he stares at me intently.
“That’s ridiculous! Of course not. If I wanted to do something to you, I’d team up with Keith or the Mice.” I say as I pull him over towards the booths.
A Puigian is sitting there looking through all of their stuff. I look at individual objects when I see something…
“Well, I’ll have you know that anything you could plan, I can get out of in a synch!” Lance exclaimed. I looked at him then over towards where Keith was looking at a booth. He had a… skin care collection in his hands. I grinned.
“Hey Lance, maybe you should get something for Keith. You know, to convince him to help you buy your skin care products. Not because you like him.” I said. Lance stops blabbering about getting out of my evil plans and thinks about what I said. He glances over to where Keith is and I feel a smirk come to my lips.
“You know what? You’re right! I’ll find him the best present ever!” Lance looked around frantically before his posture deflated once more, “One problem,” he looked at me cautiously, “I don’t know what he’d like…”
I picked up the object I had spotted before and presented it to Lance. His eyes widened. The pocket knife was absolutely stunning. The small set that came with the knives all had rainbow blades and black handles. I placed them in Lance’s hand.
“Buy them and give them to Keith. I’m sure he’ll love them,” I stand and dust my skirt off, “I should get back to Romelle before Shiro and Adam bombard her. I’ll see you in a bit!”
“Okay! Thank you Allura…” Lance smiles down at the knives, “this means so much to me.” I shake my head, already making my way away from him.
Romelle is already on her way towards me, rushing to get away from everyone. She has a huge grin on her face and I can’t help but smile softly at her. She has something in her hand and I realise she’s actually running towards me. She lunges at me and I attempt to keep my balance but fail, tumbling over. We laugh and she sits up on my lap.
“Sorry! I just got so excited. Adam was telling me about these plants that they call fruit. I wanted to try it with you!” Romelle shows me a fuzzy brown ‘fruit’ that looks like it could use a razor. I inspect it and glance at Romelle.
“Coran said it was fine. Adam said we should cut it open and eat the inside though. So I assume that means the fuzzy part isn’t meant to be consumed.” She says as she places it in my hand. I feel it for a couple moments before handing it back to her.
“Do you have something to cut it open?” I asked as she rubs her hand over it. I look at it, thinking about what it must taste like.
“Yeah!” she says as she pulls her bag in front of her. She rummages through it before pulling out a knife that looks awfully familiar.
“Is that one of Keith’s knives?”
“Oh! Yeah. He told me that if anyone was bothering me and I didn’t want them to, to just pull it out and point it at them.” Romelle says and she places the knife and the fruit back into my hand.
I open up the knife and use it to cut into the mysterious brown fruit. As it split open juice spills into my hand. I frown at the wet stickiness and close the knife. The inside is a green color with black seeds in it.
I hand her one of the halves and close the knife. I placed it in my pocket for the time being and bring the fruit close to my face. I sniff it for a second before moving it away looking down at it a little confused. It smelled… sweet?
I watched as Romelle used her hands to pull the brown away from the green pulp of the fruit. When enough of it was removed she took a small nibble of it. Her eyes widened and she turned to me.
“It’s really good! Taste it!” She exclaimed. I chuckled and took a bite of it, skin and all.
At first I cringe. I guess Romelle was right about not eating the skin of it. But the fruit was good. It was sweet but also had a slight tang to it. The texture was a little off for me but I could overlook it.
“You’re right! It does taste good!” I say excitedly. I took another bite of the fruit and smiled.
I turned to face Romelle but saw him. instead. I blinked and he was still there. I backed up slightly, all my happiness starting to drift away as he stared at me steadily. Romelle was staring at me, concerned.
“Allura? Are you okay?” She asked. I’m about to run away but I can’t seem to move. I thought I was better. I thought he was an illusion. I thought he was dead…
“Romelle, we have to leave.” I take her hand and walk away. She tries to stop me, tries to get answers but I’m pulling so hard. We’re equal in strength and for once I feel like I’m weak because hes still there, “Romelle, please. Please, lets just go.”
She stops fighting me and stops, nodding. “Okay…” She starts to follow me as we walk away from the market, away from the people. I'm taking deep breaths, trying desperately to escape.
I look back to see if he's there, but I realise it's not him. It's a cardboard cutout. I stop and stare at it. He's not here…. He's not here.
Romelle is looking at me, shes trying to fugure me out but I cant hold it in anymore. Tears stream down my face, my marks glow and I feel my energy surge out of me. The tears that fall to the ground instantly grow into flowers and I smile down at them, calming down. My marks stop glowing and I look at Romelle.
She's concerned about me. I know that. I squeeze her hand and take deep breaths. “Can we go home? Please?” I ask. She nods slowly.
“When we get there,” she stops for a moment, “I think we should talk about it. You really scared me.” I nodded.
“That's probably for the best.”
She moves me over towards a bench on the sidewalk away from people and has me sit down. She crouches in front of me and I look at her, feeling sad that she had to deal with this. Her hands squeeze mine and I know it’s better to tell her once we’re home, but I want to tell her now. I want to tell her what’s bothering me and why it hurts.
“Romelle… You know how the paladins and I fought in the quintessence abyss? How the paladins and I had trusted him?” I look at her and smile sadly as she nods, “Well when we thought he was good, when we believed that he had good intentions and wanted to help us defeat his father I had gotten close to him,” I squeezed her hands tightly. I hoped I wasn’t hurting her with my grip but they wouldn’t loosen. A tear slid down my cheek and onto our hands.
“Lura, you don’t have to tell me if its too painful” She’s got a look in her eyes that tells me she knows. She hates Lotor as much as I do, but she still cares about my feelings about him. She still wants me to understand…
“I have to tell you,” I say and she nods, “Before Keith came back with you, I was with Lotor. He had guided me to this place where I learned alchemy. Lotor had tried to learn also but… he wasn’t worthy of the information.” I feel my throat tighten and my voice crack as I continue, “When we got back…” I sucked in a deep breath, “he kissed me. I kissed him back. I thought that because we had been through all of that together then it must have meant he truly cared for me.”
I turn away from Romelle when I feel her aura change. I grip tighter. I know now that it’s hurting her. I can’t look at her. I choke as I speak up again, “And when you came with Keith, telling us what he did, I just felt so betrayed.” I close my eyes shut tightly, “when we went to attack him, and we told him that we knew, he flipped around. He was so consumed with power,” I cry harder as I gasp for breath, “Romelle, I keep seeing him. He’s dead but he’s everywhere.”
“Allura,” I feel Romelle lift my head to look at her. I open my eyes and stare at her through my blurred vision. She uses her thumb to wipe my tears away. I bring my hand up to cover her hand and take in deep breaths, “You deserve someone who will love you and wish for your happiness. I love you no matter what happened,” She pulled my head down to place our foreheads together.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.” she says as She stands and pulls me off the bench. I nod and rub at my face vigorously.
We walk aimlessly around the market. We pass Lance as he shows Keith the knives he got him, stuttering over his words. I had smiled at them as Keith had gotten excited. We walked along the cobblestone, the horse drawn carriages going around us.
Romelle pulled me over to one of the horses and we pet its snout. They made a noise that sounded like rolling air. I tried to mimic the noise and Romelle joined in. The horse made more noises.
“I think we’re starting to get it!” Romelle exclaimed as she tried again. I laughed and shook my head.
Once we were done messing around with the horse we started to head farther from the market and towards the forest. We walked slowly, holding hands and admiring the plants. Romelle stopped once it seemed like it was pretty deep into it. She looked out through the trees over to the horizon. The sky was beginning to change as the sun began to sink. The pink and peach color clashing and mixing with the darkened part of the sky made me smile.
Romelle was looking at me when I turned to face her. She had a gentle smile on her face. Before she could look away I pulled her close to me. I stared into her eyes and took deep breaths.
“Allura… we should head back to the lions soon,” She sounded breathless. Her cheeks turned red and mine began to glow. I leaned in to kiss her. As our lips met, I could feel the magic flowing out of me and into her.
When I pulled away I realised her markings glowed also. We stared at each other for a few moments. They slowly dimmed and she grinned. Her hands moved away from mine and she cupped her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and her smile was full of confusion but excitement.
“What was that?” She seemed to yell quietly, “It felt like- Like magic!” She looked at her hands and moved them slowly. She looked back at me and had this look of serenity on her face.
“That is magic.” I say as I take her hands back into mine, “love is magic!”
“Magic…” She laughed, “We are each other’s magic.”
(Yes I realise that there are indents in the beginning Im too lazy to erase them ahh)
