It had been ten days since he decided it would be better without Lance, and four since his progress skyrocketed. His most visible achievement was his "level up" in close-combat training: Allura let him fight stronger bots than before, something only Shiro could (and was allowed to) do in the team. Needless to say, he was more than satisfied with himself, finally all that hard work and consistent practicing paid off.
There was something off between him and Lance though, that much Neff could have seen—but then again, Keith was extremely careful around the others to keep their secret to themselves, and the only thing that changed between the two paladins (publicly) was that Keith did not get mad at him anymore.
...That many times.
The team stopped by an almost uninhabited planet. Only one part of it was populated, but since that race lived underwater and had a much less civilized culture, they decided against contacting them. Instead, the landed on the other half of the planet with the intention of getting food.
It was not a difficult task at first: Coran directed them around what was edible and what was poisonous. However, the surface mostly consisted of lakes, some of them as wide as an ocean, but each and every being freshwater and abundant of aquatic plants; they were spiked with rocky cliffs and tall hills, but no forests whatsoever. Animals, if they had ever seen one, were either birds or insects and bugs: the lands were devoid of mammals and reptiles, the biggest creature they saw was something like an ostrich—but as soon as it noticed them, it dropped off all its feathers and fled into the ocean.
By nighttime almost everyone returned to the castle save for Keith and, because she was assigned to him and his lion, Neff. The red paladin sure took his time, he cancelled his training plans today. Apart from collecting food, he was secretly having the time of his life. Even if the lands were not connected, he used his jetpack to jump between them. Once, when nobody (or so he thought) was watching him, he tried to catch a bird something like an astrapia: he caught its long tail, but it immediately slipped out of his fingers, and, surprised by his failure, he just barely avoided landing in the water.
He returned to the lion in a small side valley, where Neff waited for him, but he approached her running. He did not state any kind of problem over their radio, so his hurry must have stroke her strange: even stranger, when he, not even bothering with stopping crouched down next to her.
"I have to show you something!" he said with a big, excited smile on his face. Grabbing her below her knees and curling an arm around her waist, with a loud thump he jumped off the cliff with her.
After a few seconds of a fall he activated his jetpack again and shoot up, aiming at a particularly tall hill-peak—or was it a mountain, there was no ground-level on this planet to measure it. He never carried anyone like this before, but his hands were strong and safe, he held her without a single shake or a flinch.
When he landed, far away from the oceans' bright, bioluminiscent surface, they found themselves in an almost pitch-black darkness.
"Look!" He put her down on her feet, probably in a bigger rush and more roughly than he should have done so, and once he took off his helmet, he pointed upwards.
Without any kind of light source, the sky above them welcomed the galaxy in its own colours. Shining in a faint blue and lilac hue, just like a meadow of candytufts, hundreds of stars dotted the scenery, forming a pleasant chaos. A tight set of stars clamped together into one big ray of light, just like back on Earth, the Milky Way: but here, the line was much curvier, it almost looked like...
"An N!!"
A very crooked one, to be fair.
Keith was feeling like standing at the edge of the world, and he was not far from the truth. All around them an endless abyss gaped at them, and the horizon was so far that the waters' dim gleaming was but a memory than a sight. All the other peaks were just small, bent old men compared to their Goliath, and they only had a few meters of land under their feet, pushing them into the ever-imminent danger of falling down.
However, the red paladin did not mind any of these: with his helmet under his armpit, his eyes, sparkling with thrill and anticipation at her reaction, were fixated on her.